btothef:

Page 68-74

Marty accidentally travels through time and crashes the car into the barn like in the movie, only now when the crash is over and everything stops in silence he says the hilariously terrible line “Damn.  I’m in a barn.  How did I end up in a barn?”  and sounds like a line Duke Nukem would say and I kind of love it. 

Daaaaamn.  I’m in a barn.

-Marty McDuke Nukem??

And AGAIN the story jumps back several hours so we can meet Peabody and his family before they interact with Marty.  Only instead of the racisms we got with our last jump back in time when we met Libyans, here nothing happens.  How much nothing happens?  I’ll tell you:

Otis Peabody comes in from a long day at the farm, his wife tells him the car battery died so they’ll have to get a new one, he complains they’re too expensive ($14.95!  Because it’s the 50s!) and the kids ask for a TV because then they can watch Eisenhower, then they all eat dinner in silence and go to bed.

None of this matters and it’s such a drag on the story (a dude just travelled through time for the first time ever!  LET US NOT DISCUSS DEAD CAR BATTERIES FOR TWO PAGES) that it’s kind of incredible it wasn’t cut sooner.  The whole “whoah we’re in the 50s” is done again anyway when Marty stumbles around downtown, so there’s exactly zero point to this scene.

Then the car crash scene happens again but in one sentence:

Several hours later, the object struck the barn.

And no, I have no idea why Gipe wrote “the object” (which remains forever unspecified) and not “the DeLorean”.  In any case, Marty stumbles out of the car with his radiation suit helmet over his head and this scene happens:

 

 

but now the kid (Sherman is his name) extends his hand and says “Peace.” and Marty drops an uninterrupted stream of confusion with, “Hey.  Hello.  Where am I?  Excuse me, who are you?  Where am I?  Is this Hill Valley?” and secretly he’s still worried about where the Libyans are and if they’re about to finish him off.  

Peabody shoots at him and Marty goes back to the car and says “Damn crazy farmer!” and drives off, running over one of the pines.  

And what’s amazing/terrible is that while he’s driving Marty still doesn’t realize he’s travelled through time and is instead worried about where the Libyans are.  This whole “wait I’m in the 50s?  This has got to be a dream” thing survives a little in the movie (one line, and even Marty doesn’t sound like he believes himself when he says it), where it’s played more like “whoah, did time travel really happen?  I need to confirm this!”  Here Book Marty just flat out refuses to even entertain the possibility that his machine designed for sending someone travelling through time somehow - SOMEHOW - sent him travelling him through time:

He had survived but still had no idea where he was.  At least the people spoke English… but there was something about their clothes that seemed different.  Replaying the scene in his mind, Marty concentrated on their outfits.  The women’s dresses looked old-fashioned.  Perhaps they were very old hand-me-downs.  Then there were the hair styles.  Something seemed different about them, too, but Marty couldn’t say exactly what it was.  He had seen these people before - or types just like them.  They seemed to be out of an old black and white movie.

MARTY YOU ARE DRIVING WHAT YOU KNOW TO BE A TIME MACHINE.  WHY WOULD SOMEONE YOU’VE JUST MET SEEM DIFFERENT AND OLD-FASHIONED AFTER DRIVING AROUND IN A TIME MACHINE?   MARTY.  I KNOW YOU CAN PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER, MARTY.

Anyway SPOILER ALERT: Marty doesn’t put the pieces together, but instead concludes that he’s still in the present and he’s just “frightened and disoriented” because “his brush with the Libyans had upset him more than he cared to admit” and keeps on driving to his house.

Up next: the last horse crosses the finish line as Marty finally realizes he’s in the past!