Rocket Robinson and the Pharaoh's Fortune

May 15, 2018
In his first week in Cairo, 12-year-old Ronald "Rocket" Robinson finds careering adventure.It is 1933. Rocket's father is an American diplomat. Rocket is not happy about leaving Madrid for Cairo, which the narrator describes as "a teeming hive of excitement, intrigue, and danger." On the train, Rocket, accompanied by his pet monkey, Screech, decides to look for suspicious people. They notice a man with an eye patch, who was introduced in the prologue as a murderer. As the man storms off, he drops a paper covered in what appear to be hieroglyphics. Rocket picks it up and begins a quest to discover its significance. Rocket's bag is stolen in the market, but when he catches the thief, she apologizes, explaining that she hasn't eaten in two days. Left by her mother with "a small band of gypsies," Nuri lives in the Cairo underground. She becomes the only person Rocket can rely on as he goes from escapade to escapade. O'Neill's clean-lined panels are superficially attractive, but both they and the text are littered with stereotypes. While brown-skinned Nuri has character, and preserving her community's way of life in the underground is a significant plot point, her depiction does little to dispel the assumptions about Romani that abound in children's books. The Egyptian villains, one a fumbling idiot and the other a massive brute, are constant evidence of Cairo's dangers, while positive depictions of Egyptians play minor roles. Rocket and his dad, unsurprisingly, are white.A wild adventure tainted by Orientalism. (Graphic adventure. 8-12)

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July 2, 2018
In the first of a comics series set in the 1930s, 12-year-old Rocket Robinson is the son of a diplomat and always on the move between far-flung world cities. He stumbles into trouble when his pet monkey, Screech, leaps onto villain Otto von Sturm during a train ride to Cairo. After von Sturm’s departure, Robinson discovers a coded letter that holds the key to finding Pharaoh Khufu’s hidden tomb. Left to his own devices while his father conducts business, Rocket makes a new friend, Nuri, an orphaned girl who steals to survive. Together, they must thwart von Sturm and his henchmen while attempting to track down the treasure before it is looted. With its boy hero and animal sidekick, international historical setting, and wild feats of adventure, this outing is strongly reminiscent of Tintin. O’Neill has a sound sense of graphic storytelling with a well-paced mixture of action, atmosphere, puzzle-solving, and dialogue, but several characters—including von Sturm, his Middle Eastern henchmen, and Nuri—lack originality and nuance, instead coming across, disappointingly, as familiar stereotypes. Ages 9–12.