Written by: Andy Hartnell
Art by: Stephen Molnar & John Rauch
Publisher: IDW
Danger Girl is about a woman called Abbey Chase who used to be a member of The Danger Girls, a group of ace super spy celebrities. The Danger Girls group is no more though and Abbey is now an archeologist a la Indiana Jones and works alongside an old contact called Dalla, who for some reason had no idea that the group had dissolved.
Outside of this information the book provides no more insight into the direction of the plot or the characters involved, except briefly seeing Abbey’s antagonist, Asia (who looks like she used to work for Commander Cobra) and an overly lengthy scene showing a part Abbey’s childhood that somehow manages to last about half the book yet still give us no insight into what she’s like as a person. Honestly I’m finding it hard to find things to say about this book, it just does so little with what space it has and what it manages to fit in is disgustingly boring. There’s a scene where Abbey and Asia (also even if that’s a code name it’s unimaginative) have a negotiation over a waterfall about Abbey handing over some artifact. The scene is very reminiscent of the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Ark of the Covenant and the dialogue between the two seems like it’s supposed to be kind of funny as Abbey deflects off Asia’s demand but it all just falls flat awkwardly and you can’t help compare it against scene in the film which was hundreds of times better.
The first half of the book is taken up by a scene from Abbey’s childhood, twelve years ago, where she is hunted down by street thugs and professional hitmen in Egypt to be used as leverage against her father, who is a superspy. Fortunately Abbey is cared for by David, an associate of her father and he sacrifices himself for Abbey to be able to escape. This entire section is twice as long as it need be as about six pages are spent with Abbey fending off street thugs, if this space had been used for anything else, say show the relationship with David better, I would be happier as it immediately goes into another action sequence after this that is much faster paced, better handled and actually has significance.
The art throughout the book is ok, but not good enough to save the book, if it holds up throughout the series then there won’t really be anything to complain about and it’ll be the writing that is the limiting factor. The only problem is that EVERY female character in this (except for child Abbey) wears a crop top, a bikini or a leather one piece suit not dissimilar to Black Widow’s. It’s that this is done without a single shred of irony or self-reflection plus the covers for the issue really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Danger Girl#1 may be the worst first issue I have seen, spending most of it’s time on boring action sequences and leaving meaningful character introductions or plot set up as an after thought. I, for one, am not looking forward to any future releases of this series and suggest you to maybe give it a miss if you don’t have to get it.
