Quantum Teens Are GO #1
Writer: Magdelene Visaggio
Artist: Eryk Donovan
Colorist: Claudia Aguirre
Letterer: Zakk Saam
Publisher: Black Mask Studios
A review by Adrian Hodgkiss
An action packed, humorous and unique jump into teenage life, set in a wonderful world of junkyard tech and mad science. Quantum Teens Are GO is like nothing else I have ever read, it is quirky and different and completely unapologetic about it. It almost seems to personify the teenage sensibilities of it’s titular heroes.
Sumesh and Natalie are young lovers at high school who just also happen to be building a mysterious machine by breaking into super laboratories and scavenging tech. Battling rival crews and security robots in a hope of finishing their contraption and being accepted into the mad science gang “Odyssey”.
Magdalene Visaggio has received plaudits recently for her debut book Kim & Kim which just recently won her a nomination for a GLAAD award. Her work here is just as accomplished. As I said earlier, Quantum Teens Are GO seems to have a personality all it’s own, a great combination of writing, art, colour and lettering make this book and its characters really stand out from the crowd.
Nat and Sumesh are teen sweethearts, best friends, and partners in crime. Each of these nuanced relationships is explored and covered in just this one issue. None of that seems rushed or contrived, it just feels natural and genuine, which is perfect. While the book is set in a world quite different from our own with mad science as an underground LA scene, the characters feel true and face exactly the kind of issues and pressures as any high-school kid today. Only they do all of this while being totally kick-ass and ultra smart. There are LGBTQ+ characters here too and like with Kim & Kim, Visaggio is able to call upon her own personal experiences while not making these issues the main focus of Quantum Teens Are GO. Nat is a transgender teenage girl but she also builds time machines, fights robots, and rides skateboards, what is not to like about that?
The art by Eryk Donovan is a great fit, this book needs a kinetic dynamism to the action scenes and a detailed griminess to the junkyards. The universe our teens occupy is wonderfully drawn and colored throughout. It’s bright and colorful when it needs to be and it is paint splattered and rusty when it doesn’t. The attention to detail on some pages is a real joy and I particularly enjoyed Nat’s teenage bedroom which looked exactly as I expected it to. I’m excited to see what happens with the art once our teens really do go “quantum”. There should be plenty of room for Donovan to spread his artistic wings once the adventure kicks off in earnest.
The Verdict
Buy It! Black Mask have done the comic reading community a real service by publishing Quantum Teens Are GO. I mean, who doesn’t love diverse, exciting, and interesting material from new and exciting voices in the comic book community?! Quantum Teens Are Go is not only an awesome title for a book, but it’s formidable with character depth, a good sci-fi concept, and the art to back it all up. Buy this!
