Unnatural narratology has recently focused our attention on unnatural representations of time. It is usually assumed that the 'typical sjuzhet' must be linear, while the 'variable sjuzhet' is unnatural and belongs exclusively to experimental works. Instances of time travel are also considered as unnatural story elements that have been conventionalized by popular culture. In this paper, these supposedly unnatural ingredients of narratives will be examined in the context of the semiotic potential and the cultural tradition of European comics. I shall argue that a variable sjuzhet should be considered as a natural quality of the medium because of its tabularity and its non-linear organization, and that most time travel that we find in comics is a mere extension of the motif of the 'extraordinary journey' and does not engender time paradoxes. Thus, it appears that, in the comics tradition, the graphic potential of time travel has predominated over scriptwriting complexities, highlighting the specificity of the 'graphic imagination'.