The Rocktfellers #0 // Review
The whole family went a few centuries into the past. In a light of everything that happened to them, it's easy to overlook the significance of that. They had some serious problems adapting to the more primitive culture of the 21st-century. The basic significance of an entire family traveling several hundreds of years into the past had been overshadowed by the whole matter of being hunted by other people from the future and all of the other problems that they’ve had to deal with. Their first days in our present are explored in The Rocktfellers #0. Writing Peter J.Tomasi and artist Francis Manapul go back to the beginning in a fun prequel chapter.
Rachel is upset. The woman who tried to kill her husband is cleaning the pool. She’s got serious amnesia about the whole thing. Meanwhile, two years into the past, they’re just arriving in 2024. The time pod is nice enough to let them know when they are. They’re going to have a hell of a time fitting-in, though. They’re in Olympia, Washington. It’s a beautiful wilderness, but If they’re going to be able to make it anywhere, they’re going to need a vehicle powered by internal combustion...
Tomasi has a great deal of backstory to get into over the course of the issue. He’s also developing new directions for peripheral characters...at least one of THEM is being introduced this issue. Given all of the mishmash between time travel, interpersonal drama and the origin of the series, it’s pretty surprising that the whole thing comes across as being anything other than a big, muddled mess. Tomasi directs the flow of traffic quite well in an issue that seems to linger on everything for just the right amount of time in order to bring across quite a few different plot elements without jumbling and jangling everything together.
Manapul mixes an interesting melange of different elements together on page and panel. A family from the future is given elicate and intricate emotional life on the page. The future tech looks suitably retro for a series that draws inspiration from old sci-fi. There’s even some of the beauty and grandeur of the Pacific Northwest coming into view on the page. It all feels so deliciously distinct. This is quite an accomplishment given the fact that so much of what Tomasi is presenting IS a gestalt formed by echoes and shadows of so much that’s come before in the long and winding history of ensemble-based sci-fi adventure.
Ghost Machine continues to show a great deal of cohesiveness in work that both embraces what’s come before while marching ahead in directions that might not have specifically found a home on the comics page. “The Unbelievables” universe feels like it’s got considerable momentum a couple of years into its existence. Time travel stories can get pretty convoluted, but Tomasi’s scripts suggest a deeply well-constructed world that has been planned-out with considerable care and cunning.
