Two issues into the new Image series Rocket Girl, and two things are certain – Amy Reeder is a fantastic artist, and everybody loves a jetpack.
DaYoung Johansson opened the first issue by saying “I’m 15 years old and a cop from the future.” The future may be 2013, but it ain’t the one we know now, because New York has a Teen Police Department, including hilarious little spud Commissioner Gomez, who looks like a kid cosplaying as Commissioner Gordon, complete with wispy teenage mustache. She had to jump back in time to 1986, to prevent a future created by something called a Q-Engine in a “crime against time,” which includes the corporation Quantum Mechanics “cooking the history books” for profit. Unfortunately, as soon as she arrived, she passed out in front of the very confused scientists of 1986. When she’s up and about, waiting for the time to be right to stop the Q-Engine, she kills time by assisting the police with her snazzy jetpack, making her seem like a superhero. Yes, they start calling her Rocket Girl.
In Rocket Girl #2, she continues to be a never-ending dynamo of energy, making flapjacks and fighting all kinds of crime while her befuddled new caretakers – a couple of ladies named Annie and Ryder, Quantum Mechanics Employees of 1986 working for a guy named Professor Sharma. They’re trying to get a handle on all this, treating her like a bratty teenager, while DaYoung (ugh, that’s an awful name. I’m just going to call her Rocket Girl from now on) seems weirdly matter-of-fact about everything and can out-tech them by a country mile. Here, we see that Rocket Girl is apparently planning to stay in 1986, because she’s trying to alter the future so it never happens, and therefore she’s got no ‘home’ to return to… and she’s insistent about that. She doesn’t seem remotely broken up about it. All in a day’s work, maybe?
Maybe, but in flashbacks, we see that Rocket Girl is one of those brash, do-it-all-myself kinds of cops, ignoring protocol and her partner LeShawn O’Patrick to head out on this job herself – especially after she hears that the Quantum Mechanics of 2013 is actually going to be shipping their own device to the past, as some sort of time loop madness to ensure their corrupt existence (which not everybody sees as corrupt). Also, 2013 is apparently a world where grown-ups can’t be trusted for some reason (maybe just because they’re grown-ups), which is why there’s a Teen Police Force. Writer Brandon Montclare is very fast and loose with the action, and he doesn’t spend a lot of time on story details – and that may be for the best when you’re dealing with time travel. There’s a very strong “just go with it” sense, because he’s just going full-steam ahead, and catch up if you want to, but he’s got shit to do – a lot like Rocket Girl herself.
Then there’s Amy Reeder, who was able to step in for a few issues on J.H. Williams III’s stunning Batwoman without any kind of drop in artistic quality. That alone is a feat that should grab your attention. In Rocket Girl, her work is just as kinetic and dynamic as Montclare’s story needs it to be, but once in a while, she’ll stop and punch you in the chest with an amazing image, like Rocket Girl looking through your soul and finding you wanting – like she does when she dismisses O’Patrick’s help by saying “you’ll only slow me down.” Reeder is just amazing.
Rocket Girl is a very fun, energetic ride, about a girl who’s perfectly happy with jumping back in time, setting up shop, and fighting crime with her jetpack while rolling her eyes at adults trying to figure her out. Montclare and Reeder don’t seem to be in any rush to slow things down with an origin story. Instead, they’ve jumped right into the fun and said “let’s just watch a teenage girl who means business chump the world for a while, shall we?”
Yes, we shall.
