Wednesday 4 February 2015

So I Read Rocket Girl: Times Squared

A 250 word (or less) review of Rocket Girl Vol. 1
by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder; Image Comics




As someone who grew up mostly in the '90s I consumed a huge amount of the best of '80s culture. Despite being too young to have experienced landmark movies and cartoons as they happened, I subsisted on VHS tapes of a certain kind of '80s movie; a certain kind of '80s movie with an infectious sense of fun, a sort of goofy science fantasy premise, and a timeless sort of charm. Rocket Girl is the comics embodiment of this kind of '80s movie and I find it endlessly winning. The comic is a time travel adventure which bridges our 1986 past with an alternate 2014 filled with amazing technology that is run by the Quintum Mechanics corporation. Detective Dayoung Johansson, a jet-pack sporting Teen Cop from alternate-2014 deduces a dangerous secret and travels back in time to 1986 to solve the case and stop her future from ever happening. What follows is a comic full of rocketpack adventure, high concept conspiracy, and '80s nostalgia depicted with some solid comic storytelling and masterful character acting. Sure, it's a little goofy at times (time traveling teen cops with jet packs?), but it's deeply charming and tons of fun (time travelling teen cops with jet packs!). If you can suspend your disbelief a little and give it some time to assert itself you'll almost certainly enjoy it. I did.

Word count: 226

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