Review by Ian Keogh

It’s field trip time, but this being Super Hero High the arrangements for field trips are a little more complex than your ordinary school trip. The school bus is able to head back through time, and as long as everyone stays on the bus there should be no problems back in the dinosaur era. What kind of a story would that be? A primary rule of time travel is that you don’t do anything that could have the effect of changing the future, like, perhaps stealing a pterodactyl egg. When the kids return to the future, Superhero High is not as they know it, and the problem becomes how to get back to the past and fix things.

Shea Fontana includes a fair variety of the cast, and drops in several obscurities of the DC universe to add some flavour. With time travel an option, she doesn’t just restrict the journeys to the past, although there are several of those. As ever, there are messages of positive character reinforcement, but they’re more subtle than they have been in early DC Super Hero Girls stories. This time the core is that Batgirl and Harley Quinn have to put aside their differences to work for the greater good, and the Bumblebee of the alternate future has to overcome her inferiority complex. There’s also an introduction to inspiring women from history.

Unusually, the talented Yancey Labat only draws the first chapter, after which Agnes Garbowska handles more of the art than anyone else, many of her earlier pages laid out by Carl Potts. She has the same open, clear and appealing style that’s characterised the series to date, and when Marcelo DiChiara fills in, that also applies to his work.

After a shaky start, Fontana seems to be getting the balance between plot and preaching down to manageable levels, and younger readers should enjoy an entertaining romp through time.