Junk Rabbit #1 // Review
It was a live feed. Someone off beyond the domes of Southern California. He was taking footage of the massive landfill that the area beyond the domes had become. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Then he lost his head. Literally. Someone attacked him wearing a high-tech-looking helmet modeled to look like a rabbit’s head. This is the year 2198. This is writer/artist Jimmie Robinson’s Junk Rabbit #1. It’s a potentially interesting post-apocalyptic cyberpunk sci-fi story brought to the comics rack courtesy of Shadowline and Image Comics. The idea is fun enough, but it’s going to have to find a bit more of a novel pulse if it’s going to last.
The wealthy have gone off-world to nice places. The earth is a giant landfill but for a few giant domed cities. There’s a hero who is haunting the world outside those domes. The hero wears a rabbit-looking helmet. The murder of the media celebrity outside the domes needs to be investigated. Detective Chela Omina is on the case. She’s solved six murders already. The seventh should be easy, but that’s not her name on the cover of the book, and this IS Jimmie Robinson, who also created Bomb Queen. This guy likes working with anti-heroes. Things are bound to get ugly.
Robinson’s story is not without its charm. He’s contrasting the gleaming cities of the relatively wealthy against the darkness of the vast human-occupied landfill that surrounds them. It’s an interesting contrast, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done with dystopian fiction in comics before. The religion of the residents of the landfill does seem like kind of an intriguing novelty, though...the worship of the rabbit and the open embrace of junk and junk culture could really end up being an interesting metaphor if Robinson chases it into the right warren.
There’s a charming visual humor to Robinson’s dystopia. The world of junk seems to be a more sophisticated articulation of contemporary cultural anxieties than Robinson managed with a similar world in the Bomb Queen series. There’s something profoundly fascinating about a cane-toting detective in top hat and tails accompanied by masked, faceless police wearing sponsorship logos from NBC, Pepsi, Google Chrome, and YouTube. The lives of those outside the domes are given a powerful sense of drama that didn’t quite hit the page in Robinson’s Bomb Queen issues.
Junk Rabbit is a relentless, slow-moving affair that feels like it might be headed somewhere. Robinson is recycling old post-apocalyptic tropes that have been around for the better part of a century now. To really make an impact on the page, he’s going to need to go down the rabbit hole of contemporary cultural anxiety. Otherwise, it’s going to feel like a perfectly forgettable rummage through the trash of previous pop cultural works of dystopian fiction. Robinson has clearly laid the groundwork for an interesting series. Time will tell if he manages to make something of it.
