Bob Gale

In Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly visits a dystopian timeline where Biff Tannen has taken over Hill Valley, murdered Marty's dad, and married his mom. This turns out to be because his older self in 2015 stole the DeLorean to give his younger self in 1955 a Sports Almanac that enabled him to become wealthy by gambling. But when you think about it, it would take more than results of sporting events for a less-than-brilliant teenage bully to become a wealthy corporate titan. Biff to the Future, a new six-issue miniseries from IDW, tells that story. Beginning with young Biff receiving the almanac, it follows him as he realizes just what he has and how to use it, and then start accumulating money and power.

Of all the movies I obsessed over in my youth, I don't think that any of them had a character as thoroughly wretched as Biff Tannen. As the primary villain of the Back to the Future trilogy, he exists to ruin multiple generations of the McFly family, with horrible schemes that are responsible for breaking the timestream itself. I mean, it's one thing to cheat to win, but to use time travel to cheat so much that it winds up turning his hometown into a nightmare dystopia? That's honestly the least of what Makes Biff such a horrible person. Now, though, we're getting a few more details about the fall, rise, fall, rise, and fall of Hill Valley's least favorite son in the form of IDW's newest Back to the Future series, Biff to the Future, from BTTF screenwriter Bob Gale, Derek Fridolfs, and Alan Robinson.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when everyone was excited about Back to the Future, because we finally got to the second movie's promised future of hoverboards and Jaws XIX? Well, for some of us --- dare I say, a lot of us --- that excitement never goes away. We're just stoked about Marty McFly and Doc Brown literally all the time, and fortunately, IDW is giving us a very good reason to stay that way. For instance, ask yourself just what you know about Doc Brown. In all likelihood, you know that he's really into DeLoreans, that he fell off the toilet this one time, that he's really into cowboy times, that he has a doctorate in something, and that his best friend is an 80s teen, but that's probably about it. Fortunately for us, we're about to learn a whole lot more about Doc Brown's past in IDW's Back to the Future #2, by Bob Gale, John Barber, Erik Burnham, Marcelo Ferriera, Chris Madden, and Dan Schoening. Check out a preview!

IDW is going where they don't need roads. In a press release that is apparently from the future, the publisher announced Wednesday it'll be publishing a new Back to the Future anthology comic starting in October. Subtitled Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines, the series will follow alternate versions of events from the movies, fill in the gaps between them, and offer up prequel stories. (Maybe we'll see Doc Brown's college years!)