2 out of 5

Well-intentioned but executed with a poor understanding of comic book flow…

Jupiter Jet starts off with a fun bang of action, as jet-packed Jacky recounts a (possibly made up) story of aerial robbery dering-do, with visual panache from artist Ben Matsuya – blending a bit of Scott Wegener expressiveness with a dash more linework and restraint.  Jorge Corona is a close aesthetic relative, so it’s fitting that he shows up in a back up story.

Jet’s world is lightly steam-punky, and there’re good slapstick style gags scattered o’er the book, but the rest of the peppy, light-hearted vibe sort of exists between the pages, not quite making it to the reader.  Writer Jason Inman and Ashley Victoria Robinson are two cut and paste with their scenes and characters to properly establish the cheeky rapport they’ve assumed, leaving the narrative – an absent father; an inherited debt; a mysterious jetpack power source – a dangle of threads, none of which catch, and a similar puddle of characters with whom we don’t get the chance to form an attachment.  A good birds-eye example: when Jacky and her brother Chucky would like to know what happened to their father, their Uncle relents that it’s time he told them…  …And then offers a completely useless, vague sentence in explanation.  This seems satisfactory to the kids.  This conceptual disconnect is Jupiter Jet: even those fresh opening pages are tarnished by a backpedal joke a page later that doesn’t help us to really understand who we’re dealing with or why, as though this #1 issue is a followup to something we should’ve already read…

The book looks good and has its heart in the right place, it just doesn’t actually read that well.