Juvenile Pastiche: Danger Club #1 Review

The concept of teenaged superheroes going out of control without adult supervision is hardly a new one – off the top of my head, we’ve got Terra in The New Teen Titans, Kid Miracleman, the unrepentant incestuous relationship between Zan and Jayna, and a little-known book called Kingdom Come… wait, one of those doesn’t sound right… although I’m betting somewhere, as we speak, Alan Moore’s writing, “Form of… a donkey!” Regardless, it’s too early for me to be getting off track here.

My point is, a story about teen heroes running amok isn’t a new thing under the sun, so writer Landry Q. Walker’s and artist Eric Jones’s Danger Club isn’t exactly breaking any new ground. A story about teen sidekicks and what they get up to after all their mentors leave Earth to battle some cosmic villain and never return, it has shades reminiscent of both Kid Miracleman’s rampage and the rolling destructive battles of the first couple of issue of Kingdom Come. So make so mistake: what we’re seeing in this first issue isn’t new.

But then again, neither is baseball, and that’s still fun to watch… as is Danger Club #1. And if this issue is any indication, Walker and Jones are taking admittedly well-used old story tropes and using them to swing for the fences.

With that said, let’s address all of the elephants in the room at once: there is not, so far, a really original character in this book. We have our trio of responsible teen heroes, fighting to bring the chaos other sidekicks who are running amok: Batman, Zatanna and Nick Fury – whoops! I means Kid Vigilante, The Magician and Fearless. Yes, I know that Fearless sounds more like a Daredevil pastiche, but Daredevil doesn’t wear an eyepatch, a blue leotard and carry a laser pistol and a cigar… and the sad thing is, I know that there are some people out there who read that said said, “My God, how irresponsible! A child… carrying a cigar?” But I’m digressing again.

These three, along with Yoshimi – think The Wasp with an Iron Man suit – are battling Kid Apollo, who is the most powerful sidekick of all, with super strength powered by the sun. So, digression about tobacco spastics aside, what we’re dealing with here are a team of pastiches. There isn’t an original character type, or even stereotype, to be found in this book. Which in a lot of cases would be a decided negative. However, Walker uses his broad and identifiable character types to eschew a bunch of characterization up front – after all, if you can identify someone as basically Batman right out of the gate, you have all the information you really need to set aside the exposition and get right to the action.

And plot and action are where this book finds its gooey center of fun. This comic doesn’t waste any time at all. We learn that Kid Apollo is rounding up sidekicks as “worshippers” and laying waste to some city (And in the best comics tradition, we learn about the destruction purely visually. It’s never referenced in the dialogue, but Jones shows widespread destruction with every step through the city – “show don’t tell” indeed) in about eight pages, and then we get right to the action.

And that action amounts to Kid Vigilante fighting Kid Apollo… which means that on page ten of issue one, we see the equivalent of Superman vs. Batman. Think about that for a second: Superman vs. Batman is the climax of almost any other comic book in human history – it’s the last issue of both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. And considering how heavily Walker is relying on well-trod superhero shorthand to drive this book in lieu of characterization, it is impossible for a long-time comic fan to not take the fact that a battle of this magnitude is happening first as shorthand that Walker has much, much bigger things planned for this comic. Frontloading what would normally be the climax builds anticipation of what’s in store later, which means that Walker should never be allowed anywhere near a porn set, but it is damned effective here.

Jones’s art is generally effective for a book of this type. His stuff’s a bit cartoony, particularly when it comes to facial expressions – think a mix of a fine-lined Michael Avon Oeming and manga faces. The effect, at least for me, was to force a bit of reminiscence of the Teen Titans cartoon, which is a good effect for a book about teenaged sidekicks. His figures, however, tend more toward realism than his faces would lead you to believe, which give more weight to the action.

The biggest problem I had with Jones’s art was with how he drew Yoshimi – for a large portion of the book, she’s drawn alone, which means there were very few visual clues that she was Wasp-sized and wearing a human-sized armored suit. The clues were there, but subtle, which meant I had to stop and flip back and forth a couple of times to figure it out. It was less clear than it could have been, which made it a distraction of the kind that no comic needs. With that said: the man draws bloody, visceral superhero violence that makes each fight seem like it has weight and consequences behind it. Overall it works, and if he can pay a little more attention to little distractions like perspective, it’s going to be a good match to what we’re reading.

Look: this book isn’t gonna win a Macarthur Genius grant; it’s an old story idea that’s been done over and over again, starring characters that are only as unique as the archetypes they’re imitating. But when it comes to action, and what amounts to a writer using the most famous superhero battle in history to say, “See this? I’m opening with this. I’ve got better,” it’s got ambition, and it made we want to add it to my pull list to see what he has – or at least what he thinks he has – in store. Bottom line? It was fun.

Time will tell if Walker’s called shot actually goes over the wall. But if it doesn’t? Watch this space for my upcoming Livejournal announcement. I’ve just had a killer idea for some Wonder Twins slashfic.