Rocket Girl Blasts through Time in “Times Squared”

This sounds a lot like something a hot head character played by Tom Cruise in an 80s action flick would say. But this isn’t movies, it’s comics and it isn’t the 80s, it’s 2018. Or is it? 

In Rocket Girl Volume 1: Times Squared, the present is 1986 and a group of scientists are about to invent time travel. In 2013, New York is a different place, a highly future tech environment. Adults can’t be trusted with the public safety so the the police are now run by teenagers. Dayoung Johansson is a detective of the NY Teen PD and her latest case involves corruption and meddling with history inside the city’s biggest company, Quintum Mechanics. Tipped off by an insider, Johansson has to travel back in time to stop the scientists from successfully completing their invention. 

 After going back to 1986 and interrupting the scientists, she faints. But as soon as she is up again, she is putting herself out there. Picking up the local police radio she literally jumps into action to arrest an armed and dangerous criminal. She does it again when later in the story a grocery store she is in happens to get robbed. Dayoung never thinks twice and always goes in head over heals. But her talent, her skills and the fact that she never doubts herself for a second always gives her the upper hand. 

When the action pauses for a minute, Rocket Girl doesn’t try to go deep or explain the science behind time travel. Then the panels are full of witty banter, heated discussions–or a bit of fun. Like Dayoung making pancakes.

The protagonist aside, you get a good mix of stereotypes (clumsy street officers, shady corporate board members) and multilayered side characters. Dayoung’s future cop partner, Leshawn O’Patrick, is four years older and despite helping her he’s less reckless and more reflective of the world. It’s quite interesting how we follow his path in the future while Dayoung is in the past, giving the reader a differentiated look at what’s going on. Meanwhile, Dayoung has befriended one of the scientists, Annie Mendez. The pink haired physicist is a delightful blend of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call‘s Holtzmann and Stranger Things‘ Barb with her heart in the right place. 

The complementary element to Brandon Montclare’s writing is Amy Reeder’s tremendous artwork. The comic wouldn’t work without it. Reeder’s linework manages to trigger those 80s and 90s cartoon feel but adds to that a fresh and personal touch. The depiction of her characters have just the right level of detail to engage you and give them life without overplaying it and exhausting the reader. Their dramatic facial expressions perfectly convey the current moods and you can really see and feel what’s going on in people’s minds. The funnier bits in particular make you laugh out loud just by looking at Dayoung’s or Annie’s faces.

Once the actions starts, the reader is in for a visual treat. Dayoung’s fast, versatile and acrobatic movements are a pleasure to look at. It’s highly captivating to see Dayoung doing all those leaps, flips, jumps and flying with her eponymous jetpack. And these movements always maintain a certain level of plausibility that keeps you going. Whereas some artists tend to focus on the motion and characters alone, Reeder puts equal effort in the backgrounds in exquisite detail, again without cramming the page and without losing focus. 

Sewing story and art together neatly is the panel structure and grid. Rocket Girl feels very much in motion due to the flawless direction of the readers eye. Panels vary according to what’s going on. Take for example the scene, where Dayoung arrests the first criminal in a gaming arcade. We have a wide straight rectangular panel of Dayoung sliding in. Following are three rather square panels, with one being slim, reflecting Dayoung’s narrowed field of vision. The final panel in which her line of thinking and concentration is interrupted and the tension is broken is tilted. In addition, with Dayoung’s supposed look of surprise it transfers the sudden action happening perfectly onto the reader. 

All of Reeder’s talent and skill culminate in her splash pages. More than once the reader sits with their eyes and mouth wide open, just taking in the magnificence of it all. 

Talking about time and time travel in stories is never easy. In Rocket Girl, it can be a bit confusing at the beginning, too. The text boxes indicating which year we’re currently in might help a bit. However, by stating “1986 The Present” and “2013 The Past” it gets all mixed up again. Paralleling the two timelines via juxtaposition of panels showing both 1986 and 2013 shows that time in “Rocket Girl” is, indeed, complicated. 

The comic starts in 1986 with Dayoung disrupting the experiment. But the events showing how she got here are shown later although happening in the story’s future. While initially this would work as an explanation to the reader and Dayoung’s friends how she pulled it off, the story in 2013 continues without her. Relating how Dayoung’s partner O’Patrick and her boss Commissioner Gomez go against Quintum Mechanics might be the only bad choice Montclare made for the script.

It unnecessarily distracts the reader from the main plot and doesn’t add much to the whole story. The reader already knows that Gomez and O’Patrick are on the good side by seeing them help Dayoung before. The plot shift also happens while Dayoung is chased by two bad guys on armed flying jetskis. So switching the scene to 2013 brings a harsh sudden stop to the action. At this point, the reader wants to know if and how Dayoung is able to escape. Showing the two guys arguing about the rightness of their course of action kills the scene. 

However, there are some hints. Dayoung repeatedly states that if she succeeds in stopping the invention of a time travel device, her future will be undone. That suggests that time in the comic is seen as a line. With the right tools, you can go back to any point of the line.

If you then happen to alter the reality of that point in time significantly, you could erase the reality from which you started and redirect the time line in a different way. Think of it along the lines of how Doc Brown explains time travel to Marty in Back to the Future Part 2. This is a rather simple way of looking at how time works. Other scientific approaches suggested a more complicated theory in which you wouldn’t erase one reality but open up a new one, running parallel to the already existing one.

At the end of Volume 1 of Rocket Girl, the reader doesn’t now if Dayoung is totally successful. Although she and Annie end up preventing the time machine from being completed by blowing it up, there are hints of something more going on. One of the shady board members of Quintum Mechanics seems to have followed his own plan. Maybe he used Dayoung for something bigger, something worse. There is definitely something happening in the end in the 2013 timeline. But that’s something the reader has to discover in Volume 2. Maybe the concept of time and time traveled is altered or extended, too.

What Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder have done with Rocket Girl Volume 1: Times Squared is successfully create a comic that combines 80s film extravaganza, 90s cartoon lightness and modern day topics into ageless fun. It’s an action packed time travel story with a promise of “everything is possible from here on” at the end.

We will see, how that works out for Dayoung Johansson.