First Impressions: Molly Brooks’ Sanity & Tallulah – Plucky Teen Girl Space Detectives #1

It does what it reads on the tin. Sanity (red jumper) and Tallulah (yellow jumper) are, in fact, plucky teen girls who–one a bit more than the other–fancy themselves detectives of a sort in the star-spangled, asteroid and refuse-populated bluey-blackness of space. Sanity is the more for-the-benefit-of-science-minded voice of sound reason, while Tallulah is the adventure-first-ask-questions-later-minded voice of other reasons. The cover perfectly captures their dynamic.

One of the things I like that Brooks does with this dynamic is that she doesn’t make Sanity rigid. When she decides to go along with Tallulah’s detours, she doesn’t do so in a huff, she’s more like, “yeah it will probably be cool, but if something goes wrong it’s probably going to be a big deal worse for you.” Something else I appreciate, and I don’t know if this was coincidental or intentional, but I’m glad that Sanity was not the one of the two presented in bare feet on the cover. Unfortunately, as comfortable and common as it may be, a little black girl in overalls and barefeet gives off a certain impression. And if it were on the cover, that would have made it iconic for the series. It is such a cute story that gives me a quirky-quaint feeling like 1960s space kitsch, so I’m glad it won’t be marred by something like that.

It’s not a DTO title and there’s only this one issue that was released in January, so I’ll have to wait a bit to see if the storytelling is episodic, but with an actual story arc like I Dream of Jeannie, because it kind of feels like that.

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