Rocket Girl, by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder

I think the story of this comic is that a teen NYPD cop from 2014, Dayoung Johansson needs to go back in time to the 1986 to sabotage/prevent a scientific breakthrough at Quintum Mechanics. If she's successful, her technologically advanced future world will cease to exist because the tech that the world is based upon will never have been invented. It should never have been invented. 2014 shouldn't look like it does. She doesn't seem massively fazed by her task of destroying everything she's ever known in life, but maybe that will come later.

A bit of a fish out of water, Dayoung needs to do some serious damage to Quintum Mechanics' R&D and avoid getting arrested by the 1986 police. There might even be time for a spot of damsel-in-distress rescuing and some superheroics. I loved the end couple of pages where Dayoung gets her 1980s outfit on and really digs in to life in the virtual stone age.

The style of the book is incredibly kinetic and the artists have created the movements of Rocket Girl's jetpack beautifully, the lights of New York (both overground, underground, present and future) whizzing by in a blur- but I found the pace and the movement kind of made the story hard to follow. In places the panels kind of jump around all over the place, all different shapes, sizes and orders and I had to go back in several places and re-read parts.

I found myself too noticing more and more the amount of open mouths in the artwork- and the more I noticed, the more I looked for, and the more I found, the more it irritated me. Totally irrationally, of course. Other than that, the artwork is gorgeous- moody blues and purples and I loved the contrast between 1986 and 2014 New York. Though 27 years have dramatically changed the appearance of the city, all its technology doesn't seem to have gone far to solving its social problems.

If I'm honest I don't think the story or the concept really grabbed me- I get that it's a vol 1, so things are only just getting started, but I'm not sure if I'd go looking for vol 2. I didn't really understand Dayoung as a character, so I struggled to warm to her really. A beautiful looking book, but I can't sat it's one of my favourites.