Danger Girl #5 - Image Comics

DANGER GIRL #5, July 1999

The third best-selling comic book in September 1998, at least according to “Diamond Comic Distributors”, Andy Hartnell and J. Scott Campbell’s rollercoaster of a ride for Issue Five of “Danger Girl” probably had its 117,668 readers crying out loud in anguish at some of the sense-shattering shenanigans the collaborative creative crammed into the twenty-two page periodical. For whether it be Deuce desperately battling against a sinisterly costumed Hammer frogman boarding party on board the Danger Yacht, Doctor Kharnov von Kripplor's bizarre biological experiments upon Sydney Savage and Johnny Barracuda, or the submerged Sea Turtle exploring an old Nazi submarine wreck for an ancient sword, every situation seems about to result in one of this book’s leading cast members coming to a grim end.

Mercifully, none of these dire consequences seem to have simply been penned just for a momentary effect, yet rather provide this publication’s plot with plenty of heart-stopping pathos as it despairingly plummets towards the top secret covert female force’s disastrous demise. Indeed, having been butted behind the ear by one of Major Maxim’s shock troops and left for dead upon his exploding sea vessel, the leader of the Danger Girl team’s untimely 'death' is poignantly portrayed as being just the first in a series of calamities to befall Abbey Chase’s ever decreasing world; “You all can finish this one without me. I can’t bear to lose any more of my friends on account of my inexperience.”

Quite possibly this comic’s most disconcerting sequence though has to be the terrifying treatment Agent Falcon experiences at the hands of Doctor von Kripplor. Hammer’s mad scientist is absolutely dripping in malevolence, and his promise to “very inappropriately” touch a chair-bound Savage “about ze chest and backside” after causing the recent captured Carter’s head to literally explode, is chillingly delivered.

However, perhaps this book’s most ‘stand-out’ moment has to be Agent Zero and Chase’s battle against a pair of Hammer Hydronauts some leagues beneath the North Atlantic Sea. Capturing all the claustrophobic action and excitement of the underwater scenes seen in “Eon Productions” 1981 James Bond spy film “For Your Eyes Only”, this grim fight for survival is both tremendously well drawn by Campbell, as well as marvellously inked and coloured by Alex Garner and Justin Ponsor. In fact, the battle becomes so tense, once some enraged giant eels decide to join the confrontation, that many bibliophiles probably found themselves holding their breath in anticipation of the cliff-hanger conclusion to come.

Story: Andy Hartnell & J. Scott Campbell, Script: Andy Hartnell, and Drawings: J. Scott Campbell