Rocket Girl Volume 1: Times Squared

"With a complex, engaging story and beautiful artwork, this superb throwback series is the perfect fit for teen fans of superhero comics, particularly girls eager for a realistic-looking hero." -- Booklist (Starred)

A teenage cop from a high-tech future is sent back in time to 1986 New York City. Dayoung Johansson is investigating the Quintum Mechanics megacorporation for crimes against time. As she pieces together the clues, she discovers the "future" she calls home - an alternate reality version of 2014 - shouldn't exist at all!

Dayoung Johansson is a 15-year-old with attitude-and a jet-pack-wearing cop from the future! When a team of physicists at a corporate research lab switch on their experimental time machine in 1986, Dayoung bursts through the chamber and demands they stop their research. Their discoveries, she claims, set off a domino effect that leads to a future ruled by dirty megacorporation Quintum Mechanics, a future so bleak that she's willing to totally dismantle it. But NYPD cops in 1986 don't take kindly to a punk kid in a jet pack, and Dayoung-affectionally dubbed Rocket Girl after she performs a handful of daring rescues-quickly finds herself on the wrong side of the law. Flashbacks to the future (surprisingly logical) reveal, however, that she may be just a pawn in Quintum Mechanics' decades-spanning power-grab. Reeder does a stellar job of packing the cantilevered panels with bursts of bright, punchy color and clearly depicted, cinematic action, and her characters are refreshingly diverse in race, gender, and body type. Dayoung herself is notably free of the pernicious oversexualization that plagues so many girl superheroes in contemporary comics. With a complex, engaging story and beautiful artwork, this superb throwback series is the perfect fit for teen fans of superhero comics, particularly girls eager for a realistic-looking hero.

- Sarah Hunter