This school seems a bit more fun then the one she ran away from. No sooner has she arrived than she’s infomrmed that she’s some sort of chosen one, recruited by the ruling council of talking cats that oversee PYRAMID (The Pharaoh Yasiro’s Research And Miitary Initiative of Defense) to help them beat back the galactic hordes of space conqueror Xaius Octavian. There they discover a hidden door and a “magic” tablet that shoots her to an alien planet in the far-flung future. She escapes by drugging her tutor’s tea, and then she and her pal Gozi play hookie, playing with their slingshots in some old ruins. She’s being pursued by cute aliens that resemble a cross between Ewoks and Stitch (as in Lilo & Stitch), but makes a daring escape by jumping on to her flying space bike shaped like the Great Sphinx of Giza, complete with a sidecar for her taking cat companion, and flies off.įrom there, we flash back to Cleopatra’s home time period, where she is suffering through a boring algebra lesson on the day of her 15th birthday. Maihack’s debut graphic novel opens in medias res with youg Cleo, looking like one might imagine an ancient Egyptian teenage girl to look from the neck up, but wearing a short red, Star Trek-esque dress and clutching a laser pistol and a metal cube covered in glowing circuitry patterns.

It’s oft-fictionalized historical figure Cleopatra as you’ve never seen her! Not only does cartoonist Mike Maihack focus on the character when she’s a tomboy-ish 15-year-old girl more interested in slingshots that royal duties, and still a long way off from the seductive presence once portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor or the Ancient World romantic entanglements that have helped define her pop culture presence, he also removes her pretty far from Ancient Egypt, as the “In Space” part of the title no doubt clued you in (And if that didn’t, surely the alien, ray guns and spaceships on the cover did).

Cleopatra in space target practice