I am far from the target market for this high-priced Danger Girl special. I've never been enamored of James Bond-type espionage adventure, and not even spoofs of that genre -- like Danger Girl -- are of much interest to me. On top of that, the creators don't really seem to offer much in the way of new material here... save for Phil Noto's deliciously soft, retro artwork. Die-hard Danger Girl fans looking for a new fix will likely enjoy this book, but few others, I would imagine.
After a harrowing and chilly mission in the mountains of Italy, the Danger Girl crew -- Abbey Chase, Sydney Savage and Johnny Barracuda -- decide it's time for a change in scenary and some much deserved recreation and relaxation. They head to bask in the Hawaiian sunshine, but they're soon drawn into a diabolical plot masterminded by an eccentric Hawaiian billionaire who has developed an unusual business plan that will make his new amusement park the most popular in the entire country.
Phil Noto's artwork stands out as the book's greatest strength. His sleek lines are in keeping with the characters and the property's sex appeal, but it's not nearly so over the top. Noto manages to keep what is inherently a T&A book from looking like a T&A book. The soft pastels and muted colors cast an almost magical glow over the whole book. The backgrounds are a bit lacking, but that's part of the charm of Noto's artwork. The reader's attention is drawn inward, and the lovely colors provide a backdrop of fantasy.
The strength of the Danger Girl concept is that it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It knows it's inherently silly, and it embraces that oddball nature. It makes for obvious reading and for some awkward pacing. Valerie and Deuce turn up in the middle of the story more as plot devices than characters, which is unfortunately, because Valerie is really the most interesting of the Danger Girls, if you ask me.
I think the biggest problem here is the fact that Campbell and Hartnell really don't seem to have anything new to say with these characters. We've seen this spy satire stuff already, and the characters don't grow or even do much more than fight and look pretty. The plot and dialogue isn't terribly clever either, and for a property that's published as sporadically as this one, I'm surprised that I'm already getting a "same old-same old" sense from it.
