Don't you wish you could fly? Of course you do - and so does Dayoung Johansson aka Rocket Girl. Difference is, Dayoung can, hell it's the reason she joined the NYTPD - the New York Teen Police Department! And like every good cop, Dayoung's on the trail of a crime, this one perpetrated by an evil corporation called Quintum Mechanics. Except the trail has taken her from a very futuristic-looking 2013 back in time to grimy, familiar-looking 1986, and she's got to stop Quintum from doing something that creates her alternate future - after all, what's right is right, even if your timeline is erased... Like their one-shot comic last year, Halloween Eve (and if you've not read it - 'tis the season, my friends!), Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder have teamed up again to give us Rocket Girl #1, a series financed by Kickstarter and now published by Image. Also, this comic rules! I often rail against time-travel stories - usually written by Brian Michael Bendis at Marvel Comics - for a variety of reasons, mostly because it's a hackneyed trope, but time-travel in RG#1 isn't the story, it's instead used to frame the story. And anyway the appeal of Rocket Girl #1 is Rocket Girl herself. Rocket Girl is an amazing character - she's an idealistic and young cop (15 years old!) who's good at her job, honorable, sassy, knows how to throw down, and loves being a girl with a rocket-pack who can fly. Plus she's a superhero. Not long after she repairs her rocket-pack in 1986, she picks up a distress call on police radio and heads out to take on a murderer, single-handed it turns out as the real police are busy hiding behind squad cars waiting for backup to do their job for them. What's not to like about her? She's brilliant! You're probably wondering why a teenager would be a cop - well, in the future all cops are kids apparently! It's a fun concept by itself but I think it's this way because kids see things in a much less complex way to adults - black is black and white is white to them and there are no grey areas yet. If somebody's doing something bad, they must be stopped - simple as. It's an interesting choice for Montclare to present this alternate 2013 world to us of flying cars and teen cops without giving us any help in understanding it and underlines this comic as being more character-focused than anything else - to its credit. Then there's Amy Reeder - wow, what an artist! DC readers might be familiar with her work as she took over art duties from JH Williams III on the New 52 Batwoman, drawing several issues before leaving DC (lot of that going on isn't there?), and she's also worked on Madame Xanadu, and the aforementioned Halloween Eve, and all of those books looked awesome. Rocket Girl is no exception. I love Dayoung's Rocket Girl outfit, it's futuristic but not too futuristic looking, like a more streamlined vision of the Rocketeer that's also classic sci-fi retro, and her vision of 1986 is very convincing from the hairdos, big hoop earrings, and the sleazy old Times Square, filled to the brim with XXX video stores, porn theatres, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Reeder's time spent drawing Batwoman shows in this issue as Dayoung's fight sequence against the cowardly cops shows in a series of fast-moving, well choreographed panels. Reeder's characters' facial expressions are also one of her strengths and even without Montclare's script you can tell what's happening in a scene just from the visuals. Image are having a stellar year putting out title after title of first class comics, and firmly among them is Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder's Rocket Girl. The first issue is fun, imaginative, and enormously enjoyable with a great, original protagonist rocketing this delightful new series onwards. Check it out, guys, you'll love it!
Published by Image Comics, Rocket Girl #1 by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder is out now