Rocket Girl

Rocket Girl is brought to us by comic book legend, Brandon Montclare.

He has worked on DC Comics Batman; Frank Miller’s Batman and Robin; Batman: City of Crime and Batman: Dark Moon Rising.  Recently he’s been working on Legends of the Dark Knight; Eerie and of course Rocket Girl.

His storytelling is only further brought to life by renowned comic book artist Amy Reeder.

Amy’s work can be recognized in comics like Fool’s Gold, Madame Xanadu, Batwoman and now, Rocket Girl.

The story of Rocket Girl is as follows:

In the future (2006) NYPD is made up of teenagers because, for an unknown reason, adults can’t be trusted.  One of the officers, a young girl named Deyoung, goes back in time to 1986 to stop the largest quantum mechanics company in the world from doing something that drastically altered the future.  She does so knowing that if she stops them she will be destroying the current future and everyone in it.

Only you don’t really know what she’s trying to stop exactly or why.

Now before we go on, I feel the need to clarify something I touched on above.  While 2006 is indeed the future, in the comic you will see it referred to as ‘the past’ and 1986 as ‘the present’ which does make perfect sense when you sit think about it, but in the moment while you’re reading the story, it just feels off.

The idea behind Rocket Girl feels pretty solid, but the execution of that idea? Not so much.  I found myself bored with the story pretty much from the start, mainly because of all the gaping story holes which are just blatantly ignored, like the potholes on the road outside my house.

I had so many questions that were just left hanging in the air pretty much from page 1 up until the last page of the TP (issue 1-5) when I just gave up on ever knowing.

Why can’t adults be trusted?

What is so horrible about ‘the future’?

What happened in the past that was so terrible?

Why does only Deyoung care enough about it to want to sacrifice everything to change it?

Just so many questions… No answers in sight…

That’s also not the only part of the comic that I felt didn’t get the attention it deserved, the characters themselves are more often that not ignored too.  I’m usually very easy to please when it comes to characters because I can form emotional bonds when I read very easily, for Rocket Girl that just wasn’t the case.

I put down the TP feeling exactly how I did when I picked it up: I knew nothing really about Deyoung or the rest of the supporting cast… and I also don’t really care that I don’t.

Now don’t get me wrong, the art is very pretty but it’s not pretty enough to vale over the thinly spread story.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend Rocket Girl to anyone and I wasn’t exactly sitting on the edge of my seat needing to know more, but I will probably pick up the second TP when it comes out, just to make sure that I didn’t like it, because as with the story I put the comic down just not knowing anything for sure.