Rocket Girl Volume 1: Times Squared

by Brandon Montclare

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Dayoung Johansson is a teenage cop from a high-tech future investigating a megacorporation for crimes against time. She goes back to New York in 1986 to investigate the Quintum Mechanics Corporation. What she finds is far different to what she expected. As she slowly pieces the clues while trying to navigate a different place and time. Discovering that what she knows about her home is really an alternate reality that shouldn’t exist.

Rocket Girl: Time Squared is the first five issues of this bright and quirky series that combines high-tech gadgets in a time where New York wasn’t exactly a safe place to live. Just a quick search of New York in the 1980s and I found that the subway system saw over 250 felonies committed every week. It was a dark and gritty time to live in this great city. So when you read a comic that is full of bright art work set to this gritty backdrop the contrast really stands out.

The past and future also play off each other within this series, Dayoung Johansson is a teen cop and when she lands in 1986 she meets a police petrol. She bosses them around like she would normally do in her 2014 reality but obviously gets a different response from these police officers. It is obvious to say that Rocket Girl is all about clashing; the vibrant colours against a gritty city, past and future, and the list goes on.

While this is a lot of fun to read sometimes I found that the series attempted to get too complex, which can often raise questions about the science. The artwork was too busy at times that you had to spend extra time on once panel just to absorb everything and make sense of it. This tended to throw the flow off but only remains a minor setback.

I would have liked to see more of an exploration into the moral issues of time travelling and alternate realities but I know this is only the beginning of the series and that there is still time for this. I’m not sure where this is going to go, I can imagine that Dayoung would want to return to her alternate reality but to what lengths would she go to make sure that reality will happen? Brandon Montclare has set up a good premise and teaming up with Amy Reeder for the art means we will continue to see vibrant colours in this strange little story.

This review originally appeared on my blog: http://literary-exploration.com/2014/10/05/rocket-girl-vol-1-time-squared-by-brandon-montclare/