Danger Girl #6 - Image Comics

DANGER GIRL #6, December 1999

Teeming with enough dastardly, jack-booted fascists to rival even those numbers seen in Steven Spielberg’s 1981 American action-adventure movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell’s narrative for Issue Six of “Danger Girl” must surely have enthralled its 102,341 readers in October 1999 with its fascinating flashback to the creation of the despicable criminal organisation Hammer. True, the rise of the High Fuhrer’s dastardly army from the burnt “remnants of the Nazi Empire” is understandably both a little unsettling and word-heavy, but that doesn’t stop the extensive summary of a lone German officer’s decades long search for “the majestic continent of Atlantis” and its ancient artefacts from being any less engrossing.

Indeed, despite the now pitiable “evil… in a can” consisting of little more than a geriatric head atop an eagle-emblemed, torpedo-shaped breathing apparatus, the sheer sense-shattering ceremony surrounding the man’s attainment of his three “powerful heirlooms” is impressively pencilled by Campbell, especially when the tiny figure is seemingly surrounded by literally hundreds of his fanatically-loyal troops; “It might be tricky, Syd. I’ve counted at least a dozen of these goons. Give or take a few thousand.”

Luckily, bringing some much needed light to the dankly dark party is the news that Deuce managed to survive being “ambushed by a Hammer Hydronaut Team”, despite the former British spy losing the Danger Yacht, “my ponytail”, and the Atlantean shield. His near deadly-betrayal by former team-mate Natalia Kassle, along with an urgent need to rescue Sydney Savage and Johnny Barracuda from the clutches of Kharnov von Kripplor, seems to be just the incentive Abbey Chase needs in order to quell her fears about letting her friends down, and resultantly she puts on a seriously determined ‘game face’ for the relic hunter's nervy infiltration of Hammer Island from the sea.

Impressively for just a twenty-two page periodical, the creative collaborators also even manage to provide some additional mystery to the background of Agent Zero within his comic, by depicting the “ninja and... acquaintance of Deuce” facing off against the equally as enigmatic Assassin X. Both apparently taught by the same Sensei, as well as sworn to study their dead mentor’s teachings, it is clear that the two ‘old friends’ went down completely different paths after the Hammer operative killed their master and “disposed of such futile visions.”

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