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Doc visits the future
Emmett Brown Visits the Future
Part of: Back to the Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines
Issue number(s): 4
Page count: 7
Writer: Bob Gale
Erik Burnham
Penciller: Erik Evensen
Colorist: Jose Luis Rio
Editor: Tom Waltz
Publisher: IDW Publishing

Emmett Brown Visits the Future was the second of two stories printed within Issue 4 of Back to the Future: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines printed by IDW Publishing in 2016. In Japan, it was published by Takarajimasha in the Back to the Future: Untold Tales trade paperback in 2017.

It told the story of how Dr. Emmett Brown first traveled into the future and how he got the money to purchase the Mr. Fusion, the hover conversion for the DeLorean time machine, the suspended animation kennel for his dog Einstein, and the rejuvenation treatment for himself.

Publisher's Summary[]

OUT OF TIME! Marty's been Doc Brown's assistant for a couple years now-but that doesn't mean Doc shares his secrets. Clandestine dealings with Libyans and a mysterious stainless-steel car are bad enough... but what else is Doc keeping to himself? Plus, Doc may not have been the first person to visit the past, but he made up for it by being the very first to visit... the future.

Plot[]

On October 26, 1985, after Marty McFly arrived at the Lone Pine Mall and discovered that Doc had used a bulletproof vest to survive being shot by Libyan terrorists, Doc loaded a plutonium pellet in the DeLorean time machine. He then packed up the remaining cartridges, and, with his dog Einstein accompanying him, took Marty home.

As Marty headed into his house, Doc set the time circuits to August 8, 2015, and accelerated to 88 mph to enter temporal displacement and travel to the future.

When he arrived on August 8, 2015,  he was surrounded by automobiles from his own time period and realized that he had found himself in the middle of the Hill Valley 1980s Car Expo. He entered his DeLorean in the contest and won first place, 10% off hover conversion worth $3995.00 at Goldie Wilson Hover Conversion Systems.

He sees a Mr. Fusion unit in a store window, for sale for $8,200. He needed to find enough money to cover that, $36,000 for the hover conversion, and California sales tax. He had some silver dollars, which were family heirlooms that he had brought with him as he assumed that silver would only escalate in value. However, when he took them to the Hill Valley Stamp and Coin Shop, the dealer would only offer him $6,300.

Doc realized that he needed to find a better source of income, so he decided to see if anything that he owned in the past would get him enough money. He went to the Blast from the Past antique shop, but when he saw that the prices for the merchandise there were much too low, he knew he was looking in the wrong place.

He went to the Hill Valley Public Library and discovered the internet. Using a public computer, he searched online for prices of valuable items to find out what would be the most valuable investment. Finding what he was searching for, he left the library, entered the date April 18, 1938, into the time circuits, and headed towards his destination.

He arrived two miles outside of Hill Valley, parked the DeLorean behind a billboard advertising Studebakers, and left Einstein behind to guard the car. At a shop in town, he paid one of his silver dollars for his purchase and headed back to the DeLorean, and then back to 2015.

Once there, he went to Southby's Auction House to sell a near mint first issue of Action Comics for 2.5 million dollars. He then headed back to the DeLorean, where he had stored several more copies of the same comic book. With his investment, Doc had surmised that he had managed to set himself up financially for life. He then took off in the DeLorean, which had been successfully hover-converted and had the Mr. Fusion unit installed.

Behind the scenes[]

  • The splash page for the story bore the credit "Action Comics #1 appears courtesy of DC Comics".

Appearances[]

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