Written by Roel Toress and drawn by Scott Arnold, for Hypsersmash Studios, this 52-page comic is a classic one-shot tale of a burgeoning romance between two 19-year-old college students. Marcus and Jodie meet-cute while playing a friendly game of touch football on campus with some mutual friends. They go out on a date, hit it off, and quickly become a couple. They do things like go bowling, and try ballroom dancing together, and things generally go well despite their having some differences. Friction arises when Jodie’s ex-boyfriend Lance coincidentally moves to town, claiming he just wants to be “friends” with Jodie, but Marcus swears he’s not jealous. Then things get worse she plans a great dinner for him to celebrate their half-year anniversary, which he bails on to hang with his friends, leading to a big fight and possible breakup, despite the fact that they both clearly still care about each other. Can the two young lovebirds patch things up and make it work, or were they just not meant to be? READ THE BOOK TO FIND OUT.

While this storyline may sound like a typical tale you’d see on a CW drama, I can’t forget the big plot twist: Marcus and Jodie are both superheroes!

Jodie is Lightning Girl, she can fly and shoot bolts of electricity from her hands. Marcus is Rocket Boy, he can fly, with the help of a jetpack, and create a forcefield. After meeting in their civilian ID’s playing football, they happen to bump into each out that night while both are patrolling the city looking for crime in their superhero ID’s. So over the course of the issue, in addition to seeing the two of them go out on dates, we see them rescuing people from a fire, and confronting the supervillain Dr. Straightjacket who has a squadron of evil robots at his command.

Also, Lance is Captain Jupiter, a member of The Liberty Patrol, the premier superhero team in this world, who announce that they’re considering the two of them as new recruits. This was before Marcus found out about Jodie’s history with Lance.

This is an intriguing and fun book, describes as “a romantic comedy with superheroes.” It feels like something from classic teen Comics of the 1980s (my era), like Teen Titans or New Mutants. The world is fleshed out well with supporting characters, like Marcus’ dorm roommate Owen, and Jodie’s roommate Kim. Storywise, my only complaint was the book didn’t bother getting into the origin of Marcus or Jodie, so we don’t know how either got their powers, we only know that they’re both relatively new to the superhero business. But that’s a minor nitpick.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this book a perfect 5-star rating is that it’s in black and white. And while I like many black-and-white comics, I really feel like this story, and Scott Arnold’s great artwork could have benefited from being published in color. Still, I highly recommend this book with a Chacebook rating of FOUR STARS

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