Based on the cover alone, I thought this comic was going to be about aliens. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

Do you see that alien-looking dude at the bottom? I was like “Sweet! Aliens!” But that guy is human, and the pallid green coloring of his skin on the cover is (hopefully) an unintentional tease.

Rift Raiders (Mark Sable and Julian Totino Tedesco): Three XL sized Mars Bars

Let’s talk about the art first, because it is simply phenomenal. Every panel jumped right off the page, grabbed me by the shirt, and shook me until I started sobbing and scanning every page for wallpaper use. (Not to be confused with Batwoman artwork, which reduces me to a blubbering mess if I am unprepared and it pops up without warning on my dashboard.) Take a look at this beauty:

I kind of let out a soft little sigh when I got to this spread as I was “reading” the comic. I say “reading” because at some point I was only half-heartedly glancing at the dialogue (I’ll get to why soon) and just focusing on the art. I was really pleasantly surprised by the vivid aliveness of each panel - definitely decreases the time between now and the next time I pick the book up again.

The story, however, and the dialogue in particular wasn’t on the same level as the art. Basically, these kids’ parents are all time-travelers and there’s an evil guy who used to be their friend trying to take over the world by stealing weapons from the past. I had my favorite characters (Sikes and Layla), but they were my favorites simply because they had the most personality. I know it’s difficult to infuse a sense of individuality in a shorter comic book story like this one, but some of the characterization just felt a little wooden to me. Like I get that Dodger is reminiscent of the Artful Dodger and The Fence is pretty much a watered down Fagin sending these kids out to commit theft for him, but that’s just it - they’re watered down. Dodger seems less like a “Dodger” and more like a “Harry”, if you know what I mean. And all of these kids’ parents just seemed like total assholes to me - and never really redeemed themselves by the end.

Bonus: At one point Dodger’s parents are found in King Arthur’s Court and Dodger’s Mom has been calling herself “Morgaine”. Dodger comes back to rescue them near the end and then this happened:

Um, hold up. Did King Arthur just imply that he was fooling around with Dodger’s Mom? I mean there wasn’t much of a romantic plot-line in the book, but…seriously? Where did that even come from? I’m going to confess that I laughed when I saw this panel - but in my defense…actually, no I don’t really have an excuse for that.