Review - Zoë: Out of Time #1

"Jeez, these kids today think they're invincible."

Youth brings with it a sense of arrogance, that nothing will catch up to you and you're right about everything. That leads to some individuals of the younger persuasion to live life on the edge, jumping from one potential calamity to the next. Sometimes, luck runs out and throws you back in time though. Zoë: Out of Time #1 is a prime example.

The first issue is written by J. Michalski and Alexander Lagos, with art by Derlis Santacruz and colors by Oren Kramek.

It's 2050 and sixteen year old Zoë Black is obsessed with the one thing teenage girls are wont to be obsessed about: the lead singer of a band, Trent Darrow of the Rebel Lions. His untimely death made him a legend, which of course only makes his life that much more appealing to Zoë. This doesn't go over so well with her dad, who just so happens to be Dr. Corbin Black and a potential pioneer of time travel. Things get screwy for Zoë and her affinity for Trent Darrow.

Time travel stories have this tendency to be pretty heady at their core, so Michalski and Lagos making one about a teen inadvertently traveling through time and meeting a hero is interesting. The story flows well and makes sense, but some of the dialogue between Zoë and her father moves between antagonistic and loving. Of course, they do have a father-daughter relationship and Zoë is something of a wild card, but the conversation just feels stilted for some reason.

Illustrations by Santacruz work for the book. Dr. Black looks like a supervillain though and is even reminiscent of the doctor from Archer. Zoë is pretty convincing as a teenage rebel and the differences illustrated between 1990 and 2050 are stark enough where you can tell times have changed. The Kronos Traveller looks like it was ripped straight from the dashboard of a 1985 DeLorean.

Zoë is playing the role of anachronism, thrust into another world. Her motivation for traveling isn't really a motivation per se as it is a necessity of sorts. There's potential for her view of the past to change significantly and it'll be interesting to see how the writers play things out. It's possible that the past gets re-written, which might mature Zoë a bit.

Zoë: Out of Time #1 is available on Amazon now. Check out the Facebook page here.