Danger Girl #7 - Image Comics

DANGER GIRL #7, February 2001

Weighing in with a hefty forty-nine pages, not including its utterly awesome wrap-a-round cover illustration, J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell’s story for Issue Seven of “Danger Girl” was arguably well worth the wait when the publication finally hit the spinner racks in October 2000. Indeed, pausing only long enough for Johnny Barracuda and Sydney Savage to enjoy a significantly long smooch, this comic’s pulse-pounding panels are relentless in their depiction of mayhem and violence, as Abbey Chase leads her friends on a final face-off against the monstrous machinations of the Hammer organisation; “Ahem. Um, just here to save your lives, but if I’m interrupting…”

Happily however, interspersed amongst all the gun-play, high-kicks, cracking whips and mystical mumbo jumbo, are plenty of enthralling plot points too, most noticeably that of Agent Zero and his ‘ninja-twin’, Assassin X. The pair’s sense-shattering display of martial arts and swordsmanship is as riveting as their razor-sharp weapons are lethal, yet despite the deadly duo’s remorseless close combat, their barbed verbal exchanges persistently reveal more detail about the two disciples of the Dragon, and their widely different paths in life.

Perhaps this book’s biggest surprise though, is just how “the remnants of the Nazi Empire” and their Hammer Fuhrer get their decidedly well-deserved comeuppance. Armed with the Sword of Sovereignty, the Helmet of Second Sight, and the Shield of Immunity, it genuinely looks as if the goose-stepping villains and their geriatric leader will become masters of the world at long last. But this comic’s collaborative creators then quite wonderfully turn the tables on the bad guys by having them all, including little Timmy Nelson of Youth Group 214, get roasted alive by the demonic “leader of the Atlantian Army in the days before Atlantis was destroyed”, who secretly resides within the “evil frickin armour.”

Such a cataclysmic conclusion really shows off Campbell’s imagination, with the Michigan-born artist pencilling some truly gobsmackingly good scenes, such as Major Maxim gunning down a horde of undead ghouls with a vehicle’s heavy machinegun, and then having his arm sliced clean off, courtesy of the Atlantean deity’s green-glowing sword. Chase and Natalia Kassle’s battle is also extremely well drawn, with the combatants featuring in some superbly detailed splash pages, as well as a super-exciting helicopter attack against Aticleas, which sees the ethereal entity once again drowned beneath a wall of ocean waves.

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