The Daily Comic Book Coffee, number 60: Rocket Girl #2, drawn & colored by Amy Reeder and written by Brandon Montclare, published by Image Comics in November 2013.
DaYoung Johansson, a fifteen year old police officer from the high tech future year of 2013, has traveled back in time to 1986. DaYoung is convinced that her miraculous world should not exist, that it was created when the monolithic corporate juggernaut Quintum Mechanics sent its own technology back in time 27 years to its founders to give them a vast advantage. DaYoung, armed with her jetpack and her teenage zeal, is determined to thwart this crime against time, even if it means erasing the very future from which she came.
Montclare & Reeder’s ten issue Rocket Girl series is a wibbly wobbly, timey wimey tale of temporal paradoxes, corporate intrigue and youthful idealism. The ending to Montclare’s story left me genuinely ambivalent, for a few different reasons.
What I was not ambivalent about was Reeder’s stunning artwork. She did a superb job drawing both the sci-fi New York City of 2013 and the historically accurate Big Apple of 1986. Her layouts for Rocket Girl were incredibly dynamic, and the amount of detail she put into her pages was astonishing.
As Reeder recounts in the text feature from issue #7…
“In Rocket Girl I am responsible for making two worlds; an 80s vision of the future, and actual 1980s New York. At first I expected the futuristic world would give me the worst trouble — I thought coming up with a city out of thin air would be a bit overwhelming. But I should have known better: I get carried away with accuracy, and the 1980s New York is heavily documented, often talked about, and well remembered by many. So bar none — 80’s NYC is the harder of the two worlds to draw. I just HAVE to get it right. And, honestly, it’s pretty fun to get it right. (Or close!)”
On this page from issue #2, the recently arrived DaYoung is bunking with Annie Mendez and Ryder Storm, two graduate students who work for Quintum Mechanics in 1986. Annie and Ryder awaken to find the hyperactive DaYoung has whipped up a huge stack of pancakes and brewed a pot of coffee, all the while pondering how to change the course of history.
#dailycomicbookcoffee
About Author
