Jetta Raye Adventures is a purposely loving homage to some Archie comics and some of the wilder ideas that have been explored outside of the basic 1950’s style high school humor and drama of the core story. Mix in a heaping helping of a Jetson’s like World of Tomorrow setting and you have the setting for Jetta Raye.
The stories here do everything you’d want them to in a retro comic influenced by such a long running inspiration. You have your rivalries between leading female characters, some problem ridden boyfriends, a couple of quirky friends. The fun comes in taking all these old tropes and ideas, like the entitled rich girl, and putting the sci-fi spin on them. Its a formula that has worked for a very long time of taking the familiar and viewing it through another lens. If you look at things like The Flinstones, The Jetsons, and Dinosaurs there were all sitcoms removed from our setting. The issues and the characters however were all things that were easily recognizable and identified with.
The writers hold to this tradition providing us with exaggerated tales of teen angst and social drama lathered with cartoonish humor that really sells the joke being displayed in the tale. For long time consumers of pop culture there are plenty of references to enjoy. I particularly liked the idea of the Ghosted Zone, a nod to the Phantom Zone in the lore of Superman. This however uses a modern bit a slang to describe a situation others can find themselves in when dating someone who is apparently out of their league. Its clever, its funny and the ending is just perfectly satisfying.
The first story Ray Guns Akimbo does a good job of introducing the characters and the world which allows the follow up pieces to just get on with it without having the burden of establishing the world. Instead this story does that bit of heavy lifting and gives us insights and expectations of both the setting and the characters at play. Though there are some moments where I wondered about certain resolutions of scenes (where did the attacking cyborg go after Arky attempted to rescue Gizmo).
This could have been a purposeful take on the writing style of early comics which could be very light on explaining events within ther pages. There is a strong reference to that mode of storytelling in this book and I found myself chuckling at the dreadful enemy of the Bored. Great reference and of course a teenagers worst nightmare.
ART
The artists do a superb job of recreating the flavor of the Archie art style. The retro is in full effect with flat colors that could only have been made more authentic by doing an artificial dot matrix coloring style that was the standard look for deceased of printing technology.
The Kennedy Brothers produce non complex art focusing more on characters than background details. The characters in question are very expressive and there are lots of great bits of storytelling done in the art through this, body language and placement. Again I find myself wondering if some perceived flaws in the work are meant to be there to reflect the art styles of yesteryear.There are times when characters or objects don’t feel anchored to the setting but I have to hand it too the trio for handling many characters and putting them into some really nice compositions.
Schultz’s Ghosted art reallycaptured the old Archie aesthetic without being a complete copy cat. His characters and staging are picture perfect and the inking on this story enhances that Archie feel to the max while the inking on Ray Guns perfectly exemplifies that 1960’s sci-fi comic feel. In short the art is pretty much perfect for what its trying to achieve.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This is a lovely bit of nostalgia given a fun little twist which leads to a new way to tell these particular kinds of stories. Good art and and an enjoyable read for older comic fans and new ones as well.
SCORE: 4 out of 5
WRITERS: Tony Digerolamo, Craig Boldman
ARTISTS: The Kennedy Brothers, Jeff Shultz
INKERS: Mark Sinnott, Jimmy T Tournas
SPECIAL THANKS: Rich Maurizio
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