Review: Danger Club #8

Last week, Danger Club #8 came out ... twice ... ending this great mini-series, written by Landry Walker with art by Eric Jones. Now I have sung the praises of this book on the blog before so, no big surprise, I really love this finale. 

As I have said before, this is a complex book which can be read on so many levels. You can enjoy the surface story, seeing these sidekicks suddenly thrust alone into a Crisis-style disaster and scrambling to save the universe. And, on that level, with a brilliant Kid Vigilante, a miniaturized Tokyo, a mad Captain America analog rewriting time, it completely works.

But for me, the more fascinating layer has been looking at this book as a discussion on comic book continuity in general. How universal rewrites can warp the intent of characters, leading to disastrous interpretations, and eventually overall instability. From the golden/silver age opening pages to the Image-esque splash page to the near unrecognizable brutality of the current line, this book has walked us through comic history. Brilliant.

This issue is a mostly a big-scale brawl against the villain Chronos but it ends with another universal rewrite. That reminded me of Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 in which the bulk of that issue was a fight with the Anti-Monitor but ended with the DCU being finally streamlined.

One of my favorite parts of this whole series has been these opening retro-pages. These have been reflections of prior times in comics but also echoes of the prior timelines in this Danger Club universe. This is the way things used to be before the American Spirit/Chronos wrote and rewrote and rewrote the timelines.

This issue looks like a Lee/Kirby era book. The heroes poses, the title 'Lo, the end is Nigh!', the Romita-style Jack Fearless in the lower half feels like an old school Marvel book.

But it still shows us the big event of the story ... the older heroes being betrayed and disappearing leaving the sidekicks to try to survive.

 Last issue was the third issue in a row in which the universe winked out of existence and seemed to be reformed. Kid Vigilante is in Olympus begging for the elder gods to lend their power.  The Magician, existing outside of time, finally cast the Apocatastasis spell, looking at all the timelines and choosing one.

Most interesting, the Magician picked the main timeline of this book, the brutal era we have seen these sidekicks exist in. But it is his timeline, his home.

And Chronos is suddenly back on the timeline he destroyed two issues back.

With little time, a dying Jack Fearless, Ladybug, and the rest of the team on Earth engage.

Meanwhile, back in Olympus, Kid Vigilante continues to plead his case. The Gods know what Chronos means, what will happen if Chronos succeeds. He needs their power ... even rival Apollo's.

There is something very classic about this, the Greek pantheon fighting Chronos. And I love Jones' interpretation of Artemis, Hermes, Hephaestus, Ares, Aphrodite, and Athena.

On Earth, all the pieces of Kid Vigilante's plan start to come together.

Jack Fearless, his power at critical levels, activates a flying fortress powered by the Omphalos stone, a weapon mentioned in a prior flashback page and known to be effective against the gods. He teleports Ladybug to safety flies towards Chronos.

Meanwhile, the Magician begins downloading Kid Vigilante's memories into the body of his twin brother. Vigilante is only able to talk to the gods because he is dead, his brains shot out a few issues ago. He needs a place to come back to.

And finally, he does, animating his brother's body, fueled by the essence of the gods.

Talk about a crazy plan!

The risks are incredible ....

Fearless does his job, going on a suicide run with the Omphalos-ship, skewering Chronos with its power.

And then, right behind, is Vigilante, flying with the avatars of the gods, and flying through Chronos and killing the mad titan.

Dying, all the divine creative energy that Chronos had stolen is released into the universe. The stars realign. There is rebirth to this world.

Now throughout this title, we have had homages and callbacks to key events and eras in comics.

There is no doubt that this page of the older generation of heroes returning is a take on Kingdom Come. Brilliant!

Many of us know that Kingdom Come was a warning to comics about the direction comics were going in that time, of things getting more brutal and insane. Instead of recognizing it as a warning, DC looked at it as a recipe to make things even grimmer.

So what will happen here.

Now think of what Kid Vigilante has just done.

Recognized the universal threat. Concocted a plan to defeat him. A plan that hinged on his getting killed and convincing divine beings to resurrect him and empower him. A plan that involved killing a mad god. And then had to have the dying mad god's energy lead to a cosmic rebirth.

So what does his suddenly alive father, the 'Batman' of this universe say to him?

'Acceptable.' And then he walks away!

Kid Vigilante, dripping blood, looking like a revenant, looks floored.

I was floored.

This is comics these days. 'Batman' so aloof and infallible that this miracle is only 'acceptable'. This was a gut punch, the ending that I deserve as a reader who has been a willing participant in the slow devolution of many comics and characters.

The new universe is the old universe, the blood soaked reality seen in the first issue.

These sidekicks can never be children again.

This should be a glorious victory, one that makes the characters (and me) exhilarated and happy.

But I am far from it.

But wait ... there's more!

Walker and Jones knew this book was too big to be saddled with just one ending.

And so they came out with a second ending, a second Danger Club #8, with a similar but more tattered appearing cover. This is what my comics used to look like before I slavishly bagged and boarded them, creased, rolled, and readable anywhere.

The bulk of the story mirrors the other issue. Except now, the death of Chronos leads to his temporal energy being released and recreating all the universes, all the timelines that the American Spirit had destroyed.

Now we get a much more Silver Age ending, Vigilante gets thanked as he should. This time he is told that he did a good job. And he is called 'son'. They shake hands. Suddenly, there is a world where these characters can be heroes again.

Look at the smiling Kid Vigilante here. His mask isn't one from his own blood streaming from his eyes.

Now there is once again a multiverse where everyone can live.

I needed this second ending. But I deserve the first.

I really love this book. It pains me to think that it was lost on the shelves, harmed by a delay in the middle. Because it is such a meaty read. It is brilliant.

I can only hope that a trade comes out with the entire series. And I would love some foreword or back matter by the team explaining their hopes and ideas of the series. We need books like this out there, commentary on comics.

So which ending did you prefer??

Overall grade: A

Review: Danger Club #7

Danger Club #7 came out this week and floored me. I have sung the praises of this book before but with each issue, the scope of this book grows and my appreciation continues.

Writer Landry Walker and Eric Jones have been telling a Crisis-style story in this book, of universal threats, of heroes banding together, of timelines being rewritten. And they have been letting us peek into the past each issue, showing us some snippet of lost timelines. We have seen the Danger Club working outside the expanses of reality as they plan their strategy. And we have seen the world disappear and reappear numerous times.

But it finally hit me this issue. This isn't just a compelling super-hero story. This is a look at the history of comics.

Walker and Jones have been giving us the opening pages which add to the current story. But they also have clearly been representative of some age in comics. Most have had a Silver Age vibe. But The American Spirit one from Danger Club #5 feels like the Golden Age. Last issue's opening page was clearly a Kirby/New Gods riff, evocative of early Bronze Age. And throughout this story we have had glimpses of these characters and how they have evolved over 'time' or timelines.

And then it really hit me. Danger Club .... D.C. Maybe Walker and Jones are giving us a view of the History of the D.C. Universe, either this one, or the other DCU.

Last issue we saw the titan Chronos revealed as the universe killing entity corrupting the American Spirit. We also saw, for the second issue in a row, a member of the Danger Club yelling 'Apocatostasis', some incantation which Kid Vigilante states will save everything.

But did it work?

Because now rather than looking into the past, the opening page shows what the Danger Club has become after yet another universal rewrite. We have been brought into the 90's. Does anything say 1990's like this Liefeld-esque group? From Jack Fearless' half-robot face and huge gun arm, to the endless pouches on Kid Vigilante, to the miniscule waists and near nudity of Ladybug, to the grit teeth on all the characters ... this screams of the early days of Image, a time when heroes began careening towards a darker path.

The Earth has once more been rebuilt. But it hardly looks like Earth. This is more like some alien landscape filled with the spirits/souls of those the American Spirit has once again recreated.

The Danger Club are there, in the form of those 90s Image costumes. The Magician is providing us with the narration and even he recognizes that in these forms, the Club are a 'sick parody' of what they were. They have become 'monsters, demons, servants of a dark force.'

And that sums up much of what I feel about comic heroes and characters now, what they started to become in the 90's. They are almost unrecognizable at times. As I read Forever Evil, as I see heroes deconstructed and made into killers, as one 'event' comic after another comes out and tries to top the last with more and more gruesome acts, I wonder where the inspirational heroes have gone.

Way back in issue #5, we saw The Magician inoculate himself with Apollo's blood and enter a sort of hypertime, looking into globes of energy revealing different time lines.

Here we see just what that means. We see him holding three different versions of the Danger Club. The top looks like a Golden Age version, based solely on the look of Robot 9. The bottom looks like the team we are used to seeing. And there is that gritty grim 90s team in the center.

Finally after all the universal reboots by the American Spirit, the current world is the perfect world for Chronos, a place where everyone worships him, a place where he can consume everything.

Since I know think this series is some commentary on comics, I keep wondering if this scene means something more. Is Walker trying to say that comics are eating themselves alive by becoming more and more vicious? Becoming a purely hellish environment?

The American Spirit finally become possessed by or morphs into or becomes consumed by Chronos.

What a great design! Nothing but a giant mouth, a gaping maw just consuming  everything.

Frightening! But just the perfect image to convey this universe-eating dark god.

But the Magician ... that is the one we have been reading in the beginning of this book, the one who was in hypertime ... takes over the Image-esque Magician's body. The threads of each incarnation are somehow linked to each rewrite. And so this version overwhelms the 90's version and gains control.

The Magician then once again shouts 'apocatastasis', exploding in energy.

I have said that my thinking is that the spell is some mix of apocalypse, catastrophe, and stasis. So what are these adjunct spells or synonyms.

Ekpyrosis? Some type of rebirth by fire?
Palingenesis? Some creation after destruction?

As we saw at the end of Danger Club #5, and #6, Danger Club #7  the universe winking out of existence and being recreated. So what is this new Earth like?

Will it be recreated as the Earth we saw in the first issues of the book, as planned for by Kid Vigilante and The Magician? Or is this a completely different timeline now? And if we have seen the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Modern Age, what age is this book set in? The current age? Some other time?

This book has been an incredible. It could be read as a superhero story unto itself, a book about heroes fighting cosmic villains. But it wasn't until 2 issues ago that I first glimpsed what was happening here, how those initial flashback pages were prior timelines, simpler times. And now I am thinking this is a comic about comics, about how characters can be mutated and corrupted over time.

I love that the Magician talks about how the core of the characters remain intact despite the rewrites and perversions. I have said it before about Supergirl ... you can try to write a warped version of her but the true version always reasserts itself.

So what will this new world be?
How will this all end?

What type of super-hero book is Danger Club? All the types?

I am still trying to devour all of this. But I know I love it.

Overall grade: A

Review: Danger Club #6

Danger Club #6 came out last Wednesday, almost a year and a half after the prior issue had been released. This book, by Landry Walker and Eric Jones ... the creative team who brought us Supergirl:Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade, has been a treat for me. So much of a treat that I covered it earlier on the site here.

There is nothing I like more than an intricate book, a complex book, one that I have to think about long after reading. And Danger Club is just that sort of challenge. We are 6 issues in and I don't know if I could easily categorize this book. I don't think I could tell someone what it is about in a couple of sentences. It seems as if Walker and Jones want to explore all sorts of super-hero genres. Is it a post-apocalyptic Hunger Games? Is it a younger generation of hero vs a now-evil older generation of hero? Is it a time travel story, with the villain writing and rewriting history to his evil ends? Is it a Crisis event? All of these?

This issue takes us to yet another genre, a cosmic event with Kirby-esque overtones. But it seems to go deeper than that as the mystery of Apocatastasis continues to swirl in the background. How is this going to end? I wonder if we are facing a sort of Philip K. Dick 'what is reality' ending ...

As always, the issue starts with a Silver Age style opening. Here, the Greek Gods, apparently aliens from another world, must flee some threat by traveling into the future. They certainly look like Kirby style characters. And using something called the Omphalos Stone? That sounds like a New Gods/Eternals magic item.

Now I only know the omphalos root from medical terms about the umbilicus ... omphalocele, omphalitis. But a universal belly button? A stone to get to the origins of life maybe? Fascinating.

My thinking now is that these pages actually have happened, in some other time, not rewritten by the American Spirit hero-turned-villain. There are kernels of truth in all these. But what are they running from in the past? These time ripples.

The main character is Kid Vigilante, a Robin-archetype who was killed last issue, shot in the head. In this issue, he ends up in Tartarus, making his way to Olympus to fight his old foe Apollo one last time but also to talk to these elder gods.

During this trek, we see flashbacks of Vigilante and his mentor Red Vengeance. In prior issues, we saw Kid Victory, brain damaged and in a medical tube. But it turns out that Red Vengeance is truly a Batman analogue having figured out the crisis facing this universe.

Victory was the key to some strategy. But he is damaged and Vigilante isn't felt to be strong enough. I have felt all along that the Batman/Robin relationship could border on abusive. Here we see just how devastated Vigilante is, how ashamed he is that his mentor doesn't feel he is up to snuff.

It is insane to think that Vigilante is treated this way given how incredible his prowess has been throughout the series.

Vengeance has deduced that the universe is unstable. The Weisinger Theorem (a nice tip of the hat to DC Silver Age editor Mort Weisinger) states there should be multiple universes. But instead there is only one universe with Earth in incredible flux. The world has been rewritten over and over and it is weakened.

We knew the American Spirit was manipulating things. But how drastic and dramatic have the changes been? Well, looking at the early pages, those Silver Age homages ... pretty drastically.

In another nice nod, the world has been rewritten at least 51 times ... one more and the universe will end. (I suppose that is a jab at the New 52.

Here is the crux of the matter. The older heroes will die fighting the menace. And four months later the universe will end.

But there is so much to like. Vengeance is so matter of fact about his death. But it is devastating to Vigilante, despite the horrible treatment earlier. This is so obviously a dysfunctional relationship just from the snippets we have seen.

Jones art is really stunning here. I love this page, showing us Tartarus, the sigils and statues of the pantheon high above the ridges. These gods can sense something in Vigilante, something they need to see.

But this is beautiful.

At last we learn Vengeance's plan.

He had cloned his son's brains to be receptive to the temporal energy of all these rewrites, to see everything.

Vigilante's mind might not be able to deal with all the info.

And we see it happen ... all of reality ... all of realities ... downloaded into Vigilante's brain. Painfully.

Hmmmmmmmmmm....

More on this later.

And then we see just what Vigilante saw. The destruction of the universe, ultimate entropy. But it's Chronos!

Is this just how the Gods view destruction? Or is this an actual threat? Are we moving away from Crisis on Infinite Earths and moving towards Ragnarok? Are we leaving science fiction and moving to mythology/fantasy?

And you can't tell me that this monster isn't influenced by Kirby.

So is this yet another genre we are exploring in this book?

The universe is ending. And Vigilante needs the powers of the gods to save everyone. Once again he screams Apocatastasis ... just as everything goes white.

Apocatastasis. Apocalypse. Catastrophe. Statis. Holding back armageddon?

But what is going on with Vigilante here. I suppose, being dead and all, he could be changed. But glowing eyes? And now we know he has ultimate knowledge.

What is he trying to do hear? Recreate the multiverse? Bring back the old histories? Recreate it in his image?

Remember, someone else said they had seen all the worlds and all the times too. The American Spirit! Is Vigilante actually Spirit, cast back in time? Or is Spirit some Vigilante from another timeline, gone mad with power?

Or even crazier, since Vigilante's mind has been damaged by the time-transfer, is there a chance none of these things are happening. That this is the deranged nightmares of a shattered mind. Could this be some sort of Philip K. Dick 'what is reality, if anything' sort of ending?

I don't know. My mind has gone around in circles trying to figure out where this is going and where it will end. And that is the highest compliment I can give a book!

Overall grade: A

Danger Club - Series Review

It was over a year ago that I wrote a bullet review for Danger Club #1, the Image mini-series by Supergirl Cosmic Adventures creative team of writer Landry Walker and artist Eric Jones. At that time I praised the gritty nature of the series, the interesting hook that it had of a world's sidekicks dealing with the annihilation of their mentors at the hand of some unknown menace.

Unfortunately due to some delays and emergencies, Danger Club #5 just came out this month, about half a year after Danger Club #4 was put on the shelves. It had been months since I picked an issue of the book and without much thought I read Danger Club #5 cold. Something clicked in that issue ... something brilliant and glossed over the first time I read the earlier issues ... something that made me re-think everything that I had thought about the book. Instead of bagging the issue and throwing it into the long box, I instead grabbed the other issues of the title and read them all in one sitting, including rereading the fifth issue.

What initially seemed like a grimmer and more violent look at sidekick archetypes (Kid Vigilante for Robin, Apollo for Superboy, Jack Fearless as Bucky) has become something more complex, deeper. This isn't just a Teen Titan version of Straczynski's Supreme Power.

With the book turned on its head a bit, with some fantastic character revelations revealed, with a great cliffhanger ending reminiscent of a classic mini-series, I decided it would be worth bullet reviewing the entire series hoping I will convince some of you to find the issues and partake of the goodness. As this is a review of the first five issues, this is a long post. Since I don't post on Sundays, you'll have 2 days to read this. Sorry for my wordiness.

One of the charms of the series has been these retro-opening pages, drawn and colored like they are ripped from the Silver Age. Each page adds something to the story, giving slight insight into some crucial part of the story. For instance, in this one from the first issue we learn that Apollo is vulnerable to moon metal.

But as I would read these, I wondered exactly why Walker and Jones would choose to use this style as a way to clue us in to the plot points. Why Silver Age style pages? And did these stories happen in the past? How could these stories happen in the blood-soaked world we are otherwise being shown?

And it is a blood-drenched and dark world. The heroes of the world have all perished in some cosmic brawl leaving the sidekicks in charge. In something like a super-powered Lord of the Flies, most of the young heroes fall in line behind the extremely powerful and narcissistic Apollo.There is even a sort of Hunger Games arena set up, games for Apollo to witness.

Kid Vigilante is truly the Robin/Batman character of the book. The self-proclaimed smartest boy on the planet decides he needs to take matters into his own hands. Flanked by the other members of the Danger Club and armed with moon metal knuckles, he bashes Apollo to a pulp. It just has that "Kryptonite Ring" feel to it.

In dramatic fashion, Vigilante tells the other sidekicks. that the danger from space is coming. The sidekicks who followed Apollo can help, stay out of the way, or get taken out.

At the time, I thought this was a great premise for a book. What happens when the sidekicks become the upper echelon? What lines will be crossed?

But then the second issue happens. And we suddenly see that the plot isn't going to be that easy. It isn't just going to be Kid Vigilante whipping the frothing young heroes in line to face off against Galactus.

The book opens up with a flash forward of Jack Fearless shooting Vigilante in the head at close range, a shower of brain and blood exploding from Vigilante's skull. That seems so out of place for your standard Crisis story. But before you can process it, we flip back in time to the end of issue #1 again. We get to see what Vigilante is planning.

In a great scene, we see some cracks in the emotional armor of Kid Vigilante. Almost everywhere in the book he is the steely immutable hero. But here, his ex-super-villain girlfriend with him, he returns to the 'Bat-Cave' equivalent. But in this world, it isn't costumes in tubes to help commemorate fallen heroes. It is the actual heroes. Vigilante's brother, Kid Victory, weakened by a neurological disorder, is alive in stasis in a tube. This isn't a heroic death or an assassination by a super-villain. It's just life that has taken him out.

With the world on the brink, Vigilante pulls the plug on his brother and breaks down. This is the only time you see just how much being the cold-hearted hero must weigh on someone.

But as I said, things aren't always what they seem. And I suppose the opening to Danger Club #2 should have told me that this wasn't going to be a straightforward narrative.

We learn at the end of the second issue what Red Vengeance (Kid Vigilante's mentor) saw right before he died. It is implied that it wasn't some cosmic threat.

And then in Danger Club #3 we learn just who the villain is. The President of the United States, the former Captain America-like American Spirit, shows his true colors. A sidekick named Moonlight shows up to inform him about Kid Vigilante's plans. Spirit kills Moonlight, cackling about it was he, the American Spirit, who killed the heroes ... not some cosmic entity. So now we know that ... and we assume Vigilante knows it too!

Now that revelation is a nice twist and would probably be a good enough left turn plot-wise to jkeep me happy as a reader.

But what bothers me is that on first reading I sort of blew right by this line. The Spirit remembers everything that has ever happened and everything that no longer happened. There is something even more about this plot than simply a good hero turned bad.

Maybe it didn't sink in because Walker and Jones continue to show me just how depressing and dark this world is. Remember, these heroes are basically kids.

Jack Fearless takes some of the 'Danger Club Reserves' on a side mission to investigate a super-villain lair. There, they are psionically attacked, forced to face their inner most fears. This school age hero, Gravity Girl, is so overwhelmed by her reality and the attack that she kills herself.

It once again shows us how horrific this place has become, a stark contrast to this almost-sweet retro opening pages. That dichotomy (along with the Spirit's words) should have bothered me more, should have made me think more about what is happening here.

So in three issues we have had three very good plot twists - dead heroes to main hero being killed in the future to the heroic President being the villain.

But we still aren't done.

Not so much a plot twist but more like a mysterious pause happens in Danger Club #4. Armed with the knowledge that the American Spirit is behind everything, Kid Vigilante develops an intricate and possibly deadly plan to set things right. We aren't told what the specifics are but the inherent danger is felt.

Last issue, we saw Kid Vigilante return to Apollo, still weakened but regenerating, and grabs some of Apollo's blood. Even here, Apollo says 'no matter how many times you kill me, you can't escape Hades'. Is Apollo just talking about these two beatings? Or has this scene replayed itself? Is Apollo aware of time repeating itself?

The Magician inoculates himself with the blood and enters some sort of spell world, flying through 'bubbles' which show again scenes we have seen from the earlier issues as well as some scenes we haven't seen yet. Crawling through the memories, the Magician finally finds one of the heroes just prior to their deaths and seems to absorb them into his wand. He then mutters the word Apocatostasis.

So what is that all about? I have some ideas below.

Finally, the latest issue came out last week.

The cover is a brilliant use of negative space showing Jack Fearless' eye patch alone near a blood streak. You know something bad is about to happen.

Now Fearless is interesting in that his character has evolved over the book. At first I thought he was a sort of Kid Nick Fury, with eye patch and cigar. In the second issue, we see him equipped with robot arms and we see him listening to the President right before killing Kid Vigilante. So then I thought he was a sort of Bucky equivalent. Then we saw the eyepatch actually covers a robot eye. And now in this issue, we see even more evolution to his character.

But finally, finally the light switch turned on in my head. This issue's retro page shows the American Spirit fighting a villain humorously named Dr. Tik-Tok. The Spirit fought someone with a time machine! Suddenly remembering 'everything that has happened and hasn't happened' makes much more sense. The Spirit has been abusing time, changing things, keeping himself in power while changing history.

Suddenly everything takes on a different light.

Maybe these retro pages did 'happen'. Maybe this simpler life was the reality on that planet until the Spirit changed things. Maybe everything that we have seen has happened before innumerable times but with subtle changes. These no longer become interesting opening pages to help move the plot ... they become apocrypha for a time that never was.

And it makes the Magician's trip through memories and time even more important. Was he gathering moments in time to save them, remove them from the timeline, make them 'permanent'?

Last issue we saw Kid Vigilante reveal his plan to Jack Fearless. And we saw Fearless, shaken by the suicide of Gravity Girl, question the sanity of the world, the feasibility of the plan. Fearless seems to betray the Danger Club, bringing in Kid Vigilante.

And then, before the world, we see Fearless shoot Vigilante ... the scene we were shown 3 issues ago. Time, such a key part of this book, has caught up.

Somehow I get the feeling that this murder of Vigilante is actually part of his plan.

Because shortly after that killing, Fearless attacks his old mentor. I love how the Spirit says he knows the truth about Fearless, a truth we learn throughout the battle. Despite appearing weak, the President easily defeats Fearless, ripping off his arms and then showing us that Fearless is, in fact, a brain and single eye in a robot body, a truth hinted at in this issue's retro page.

Fearless has completely evolved ... or de-evolved ... over the course of the book. He isn't at all what I thought he was physically in the first issue. He has gone from Nick Fury to Bucky to Robotman! Can you be a 'teen sidekick' if you are a brain encased in a robot? Can the brain of someone who was a kid in the 40s fighting Nazis still be a 'teen'?

And finally the President reveals his plot. The time machine from Dr. Tik-Tok is the ultimate weapon allowing the Spirit to change the world over and over to favor his rise to power, his immortality.

I probably should have sussed this out earlier. But when I am surprised, or when surprises are slowly hinted at before the big reveal, it thrills me as a seasoned reader.

But what of Vigilante's plan? What about the Magician and 'apocatostasis'?

Well, the Spirit engages the machine again, this time to create a 'new beginning'. The end of this issue reminded me immediately of the last issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths #4, a slow erosion and whiteout of the panels as things are erased completely, the destruction of the universe.

Except the Danger Club members remember what 'he' (I assume Vigilante) told them to do. They all say 'apocatostasis' while the universe unravels. I have to figure that somehow that word seals them off from the universal changes, a stasis state during the apocalypse, a way to still be around to try to fight the Spirit again.

But more than that, I have to go back to the Magician absorbing the older heroes while in the time stream. Those heroes have to return again, brought back to fight the Spirit at the beginning of time maybe? Could it be that they all fight and die in a battle against the Spirit, somehow fulfilling the phony story of them dying while staving off a cosmic threat? Will the world return to that Silver Age simplicity but with these rugged and damaged sidekicks still around, remembering the trauma of their world while living in Pleasantville? Is Vigilante dead, a sacrifice made to keep his plans on track? How many times have these scenes replayed themselves as a new history unfolds?

And does the fact that time can be so fluidly changed make the events of the earlier issues sort of moot? Why do I feel I need to reread the issues again? And isn't that the mark of a great book ... the desire to reread??

It seems as if Walker and Jones have created a much more intricate tapestry of a story than simply bloody fights between sidekicks. And here is the kicker ... there are three more issues! There have been insane twists and turns here and we are just over the halfway mark!

This is a far cry from Supergirl:Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade. But it is tremendous. Sincere kudos to the creative team. These issues are well worth finding, buying, reading, and re-reading. The first issue is available digitally for free here.

Overall grade: A

Bullet Review: Danger Club #1

Danger Club #1 came out this week, the latest work of Cosmic Adventures of Supergirl creative team Landry Walker and Eric Jones. I don't think I need to linger on the fact that I loved Cosmic and subsequently the duo's work on Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

So there was no doubt I would be on board for Danger Club. I've been looking forward to it since it's announcement. The premise sounded a bit darker than those other books. The Earth's adult heroes have all died leaving the sidekicks in charge. Can super-powered teens keep things in order?

There is no doubt things are darker right from the cover. The title name is blood spattered. The city behind the heroes is a ruined mess. And the light is shining on spiked knuckles on a clenched fist.

 And yet the opening page is something of a throwback, looking like the first page in a comic from the 70's.

The page is a great opener. It introduces us, at least in name, to the Danger Club. The "titanic teen trio' is made up of Kid Vigilante, Fearless, and The Magician. It shows us Apollo, a key character in the issue and even hints at his weakness. And we see Kid Monstro and The Princess, characters we learn very quickly have been taken out by Apollo.

But most of all, it works because of its innocent feel. This looks like Silver Age material. But the following pages are all brutal and dark. The world is in danger. The majority of sidekicks appear out of control. They are fighting amongst themselves in an arena, all for the amusement and approval of Apollo who has set himself up as a messiah. So this opening page lets us know that things were simpler and better at one point. Things have changed.

Luckily, the Danger Club has kept its moral compass and knows it needs to shut Apollo down. An unbelievably savage battle between Kid Vigilante and Apollo. Vigilante comes across as a Tim Drake sort of Robin-like character, always one step ahead. The pages explode off the page and are truly pulse-pounding!

We also see the rest of the team in action. Fearless seems to be a Bucky style brawler. The Magician is a spellcaster. Robot 9 is a mecha piloted by technophile young girl named Yoshimi. I even like the look of Apollo who just reeks of Kirby-ness.

Well, that moral compass is strained here as tough times lead to hard decisions.

Good first issues need a hook to keep me coming back and this one did it with this declaration by the Kid. Whatever killed the heroes is still coming to Earth. There is a threat here that needs to be prepared for, that needs to be fought. There isn't time to waste on nonsense like this. And Danger Club is preparing for it ... hopeful that others will join.

This would have been a great last panel. I was hooked here. But Walker and Jones have a couple of more pages to show us, making it clear that the Danger Club won't let anything stand in their way of defending Earth and it's people, will cross some ethical lines if they have to.

Well, all I can say is 'wow'. This book was just fantastic, introducing us to the characters, setting up the premise while delivering unreal action, some of the most blood-soaked fight scenes I have read recently. And it left me wanting more. That is what a first issue is supposed to do.

This isn't Cosmic. But it is great. I highly recommend it!

Overall grade: A