Review by Booklist Review
Romance comics had their heyday before the superhero boom of the 1960s, with anthologies bolstering familiar archetypes. The expressive strokes of Charretier's art here have nostalgic warmth, but they're more connected to the retro-modern cartooning of, say, Batman Adventures than actual art from any of those doe-eyed comics of yesteryear. This feels like then, but it's deeply rooted in now, which makes it the ideal aesthetic for this meta take. Readers are introduced to the pining Joan, who, in one disconnected story after another, is plagued by impossible memories of previous stories. She's being pursued by a dark force which--like love--we'll never completely understand. King's interest, as it's often been, is deconstruction, and the narrative necessarily takes some repetition to achieve it. However, certain chapters function as gripping romances on their own merits, even as they advance toward a conceptual, distressing, but ultimately compelling culmination. Those romantic archetypes can exert a terrible hold on us, but a lady's got to make a claim on her own destiny, even under the barrel of a gun.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Romance comics meet Quantum Leap in this quirky odyssey through time, space, and the heart from Eisner winner King (the Mister Miracle series) and Charretier (November). In the first foray, young secretary Joan Peterson finds passion with her boss. In the next tale, a 1960s folk singer is in love with rich girl Joan Peterson. In fact, all of the tales star an increasingly bewildered Joan Peterson, who bounces from life to life, now a frontier girl, next a Victorian-era maid, forever romanced. These sequential lives become more confusing and dangerous as memories of her past stories creep into her subconscious and lead to unexpected bloody endings. King energizes the familiar romance genre with twists and turns that fuse each of Joan's trysts into an intricate puzzle. Suspecting sinister machinations behind this merry-go-round, Joan vows to hunt down the truth. Charretier's thick-line cartoony character design, reminiscent of Darwyn Cooke, perfectly depicts this genre crossover, and Matt Hollingsworth's colors capture the eeriness, avoiding primary colors with suitably subdued secondary palettes for each chapter. This series launch piles on the thrills and leaves tantalizing questions open. Readers will be eager to see the next volume. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Sometime in the 1950s, Joan Peterson moves from Indiana to New York City and falls in love with her best friend's boyfriend, George. Actually, it's the 1960s, and Joan Peterson rebels against her domineering father by exploring Greenwich Village, where she falls in love with a freewheeling folk musician. No, actually Joan is at the center of a love triangle in the old west. Maybe she's a maid in the Abbey, pining for the Lord of the Manor--or maybe Joan Peterson is being shunted between realities, forced to live through an apparently endless series of melodramatic love affairs. But who would have the power to put her in such a situation, and why would they do such a thing? Also, there's a gun-toting masked man apparently chasing her through time and space. This edition collects the first story arc in an ongoing series originally published on Substack. VERDICT King (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow) and Charretier's (Department of Truth, Vol. 3) gripping mystery subverts the romance-comic genre but still delivers genuine romantic melodrama. An uncommonly compelling first volume.
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