Going Down Danger Street!

At first, I intended to give a no-holds barred issue by issue review of Danger Street. The limited series takes the often-forgotten heroes featured in the thirteen issues of First Issue Special, a Showcase-style series DC made use of in the Bronze Age. Not all of the heroes in the series were throwaways such as Warlord which went on to become a big hit for DC. The New Gods also have been revived time and again over the decades. Mainstays like The Creeper, Dr. Fate and Metamorpho find life now again in the pages of DC Comics. And even Manhunter has been used and to my mind somewhat abused over time. But others such as Atlas, The Green Team, The Outsiders (not the Batman version), Lady Cop, Starman (not the Earth II versions), and Codename: Assassin have been little used to say the least. 

But after reading the series, I don't want to spoil in anyway what proved to be a pretty compelling yarn. This is a stew for sure, disparate characters thrown into a cooker pressure and then left to simmer. One is often left to wonder if the result will taste any good at all. I can say this brew has a heady taste indeed. The best I can say is that Tom King has created a story which is the Brothers Grimm meet Quentin Tarantino. We have a Princess (Lady Cop) and three Princes (Warlord, Starman, and Metamorpho), four Young Lads (Dingbats of Danger Street), an Ogre (The Creeper), a Giant (Atlas), two Knights (Manhunter and Codename: Assassin), some Monsters (The Green Team), some Rogues (The Outsiders), and sundry Dragons (The New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips). 

The story is narrated by the Helmet of Fate, which it turns out plays a key part in the saga as well. Characters arrive from all over and tumble into one another's lives. Some are connected in ways we never imagined. Some seem destined to clash. Most are just trying to survive another day. To describe the interactions and fates of the various heroes and assorted characters would be the spoil some terrific surprises. But it is sufficient to say that not everyone gets out alive. 

Here are the sundry covers for this series.  

Highly Recommended. 

Rip Off

Mister Miracle!

This particular iteration of Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads I avoided on the stands and since it was very quickly a hit, I knew a trade would sooner or later present itself. It has done so and now I can confirm that I am far removed from the tastes of modern comic readers. 

To say that these are not the same heroes created by Jack "King" Kirby is putting it mildly. This is the very essence of what has become the norm for modern comics telling I guess -- stories in which very little happens. There's lots and lots and lots of talking but the visuals are generally quite static and designed to focus attention on the faces or the body language. There is decent humor in this protracted yarn, especially a peace treaty meeting led by Kalibak of all creatures, but mostly there's irony.

There's tons and tons of irony and social commentary as we see Scott and Barda deal with the deaths of friends and loved ones and confront the responsibilities of waging war on New Genesis and keeping up their upper-middle class family lifestyle here on Earth. This is a story about self-discovery and that's fine, but after a bit it gets tiresome.

Scott Free is a god with worries and frets about his personal mortality who actually kicks off this story by attempting suicide, and he's hardly the kind of fellow one would imagine filling out the costume of Mister Miracle. Orion and Lightray come in for some extremely rough handling -- one cold and villainous and the other a feckless yet still cruel toady. (I didn't detect the Forever People, but Funky Flashman and Metron are both on hand.) 

The bold and earthy forthright bravery of Kirby's original Fourth World stories is supplanted here by an attempt to make the heroes more like us instead of inspiring us to be more like them. Sad that really. 

Here the covers.

Rip Off

The Coming Of The Supermen!

Neal Adams was one of the greatest artists in the history of the comic book medium. But as a writer he was average on his best day. The Coming of the Supermen showcases the great, the good, and the blah that comes with an Adams written project. Now admittedly some of my confusion might be that I don't read the DC Universe with any regularity and so the changes made to the status of characters might be a little more confusing because of that, but not this much.

Adams has one trick with his writing, he wants to present the reader with a conundrum and then explain it. Sadly, the explanations are often bewildering. The approach reminds me of Silver Age DC covers which often grabbed the reader's attention with some absurdity on the cover which demanded a explanation inside. Adams seems to take this approach. The story begins with the arrival of three different looking "Supermen". And we are to wonder how that happened. 

 

We quickly learn that it involves Jack Kirby's Fourth World creations. The Supermen are battling Kalibak and his Parademons. The focus seems to be to capture a boy and his dog. Superman, both as Clark Kent and as the "Man of Tomorrow" takes the boy named Rafi in. Then it turns out that Lex Luthor is involved. 

The blood of these Supermen is seen as resource and Luthor is eager to harvest a tiny bit of it. Superman puts an end to that. And then Darkseid shows up. I'm not crazy about how Adams portrays Darkseid, as he seems enraged most of the time and not cold and calculating with little regard for anyone else. This is what made him scary. It's not that he can fire off an Infinity Beam out of his eyes to obliterate you that is the scariest part, it's that your existence or nonexistence means nothing to him. 

With Darkseid comes pretty much the whole gang from New Genesis and Apokolips. Orion plays a big role in the story and both Mister Miracle and Big Barda are on hand for some key moments. Metron is around but seems quite different from how I normally see him. In addition to Kalibak, both Granny Goodness and Steppenwolf are around, though I don't think the latter is every fully namechecked in the story. It's always fun to see the Fourth World gang, and Adams draws them well. He even makes a classic Kirby faux pax and renders Orion's mask wrong on one page. 

If you were to ask me what this saga is about, I'd be hard pressed to answer. It has something to do with New Krypton and creating a red sun so that Darkseid can gain a foothold. This series was published in 2016 and so anything in the continuity then is likely not the status quo today, so it matters little in regard. It's fun to see Darkseid and Luthor matching wits and each one trying to backstab the other. 

I found the finale clever, but a bit bloodless. In the end, it's hard to care too deeply about a story which is rather confusing though drawn with vigor and power. It proves what I knew already -- Adams was not a very good writer, but he was a damn good artist. That is unless I'm missing something. If so, please tell and I'll tackle this one again. 

 Rip Off