Danger Street #6 - "The Dingbats of Danger Street"

[laughing_tree]

I know it's hard to imagine billionaires with the whims of 14-year-olds. All of our billionaires are very adult and mature, so this is very fictional. -- Tom King

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

The Green Team was a stupid, silly, wish-fulfillment concept at best, and rightly got cancelled quickly in its initial run. It's been something of a joke for decades, even after the brief attempt to rework it as something more relevant and contemporary a decade ago.

It didn't need to be turned into a bleak, cynical, violent metaphor for actual real world billionaires sucking and being awful. Who would dare take something silly, and suck all the fun out of it just for political commentary? Who, I ask you, who?

Please, don't let Tom King get his hands on Prez.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm gonna be contrary on this one, as is sometimes my habit. I feel like Danger Street is weirdly kinda fun. I mean, surely shooting and escaping a Manhunter-as-Terminator has to register somewhere on the adrenaline scale, right? "What if Ebenezer Scrooge, only his humbling and possible redemption comes at the hands of robot-impersonating assassins or maybe actual robots, not sure?" It's definitely not feeling as bleak as King's Mister Miracle, Adam Strange, or The Visions (low bar, I know).

But then, it's not over yet.

Granted, I have zero connection to the Green Team, so I don't know or much care about what details might be getting fudged here (whereas I can get very, VERY protective of obscure-ish characters that I *do* know about--a Captain Carrot post may be in development). I saw them deconstructed in an issue of Ambush Bug before this, and that's about it...they didn't even make the original Who's Who, and that had roughly 850 entries. I used to read Richie Rich, though, and I'd still treat this sort of satire as gentle if it were aimed at ol' Richie today.

[beyondthefringe]

At least we haven't gotten a Richie Rich where he used his vast wealth to hunt poor people for sport on a private island... yet.

I just feel as though one of the defining qualities of the Green Team in their first run was adventure and joy, (however ridiculous) so to see them reduced to blackmail, corruption, betrayal and murder isn't so much "what a startling subversion of the characters" as "yawn, I can get this on CNN." Comic book billionaires are ALL evil. (or clown-punching vigilantes).

Then again, I've long felt that King sucks a lot of the -joy- from the characters and concepts he works with just as a byproduct of his writing style. Take the Outsiders, for instance. I find it interesting that in their one and only real appearance they were presented with an enthusiastic blend of zany energy and horror... and in this issue, they're rendered with a bored mundanity, their monstrous appearances contrasted with their banal environment. I really hope their part in the story yet to come picks up and we don't see them trudge through it with the same "meh" energy that everyone else seems to possess.

[laughing_tree]

‘I'm gonna be contrary on this one, as is sometimes my habit. I feel like Danger Street is weirdly kinda fun. I mean, surely shooting and escaping a Manhunter-as-Terminator has to register somewhere on the adrenaline scale, right? "What if Ebenezer Scrooge, only his humbling and possible redemption comes at the hands of robot-impersonating assassins or maybe actual robots, not sure?"’

I agree. There’s a sort of dry surreal humor that runs through King’s work that I feel a lot of people miss because the plots tend to be so grim. The whole “a demigod puttering around a kitchen looking for a misplaced spork” absurdity aesthetic.

[beyondthefringe]

Once you've seen Darkseid casually lounging in a recliner, waiting for his victims to come home, you've pretty much topped that level of banal absurdity. :)

I think I'd like the dry, surreal humor more if it had more -life- to it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate King's writing, save for Heroes in Crisis (may it be retconned in HELL), but I always find myself looking for the spark. I mean, Grayson was pretty fun, though I wonder how much of that I can attribute to Tim Seeley's co-writing.

Despite my perpetual sense of disconnect with King's writing, I find I often can't look away out of morbid curiosity or fascination... His recent Human Target series was interesting, and touched my noir-loving heart, though the characters sometimes felt a little off... I often feel like he's taking the characters and shaping them to fit the archetypes or mold of the story he wants to tell, whether or not they're the right pieces for the job. That's definitely a feeling which has carried over to Danger Street. I'm... morbidly curious, but mildly discontent, and it's weird that I even care about characters with literally one story to their names (and maybe some cameos.)

Perhaps it's because that one story was all they had to define them, the Dingbats and the Green Team and the Outsiders, so any deviation is going to feel jarring. They're not like Superman or Spider-Man with decades of stories and a whole spectrum of portrayals through which to consider them, or lesser but still frequently used characters who are allowed to have wilder deviation. And maybe they're just waiting for the RIGHT take to give them a push into the modern era.
(Much like Deadshot's transformation in Suicide Squad, or Squirrel Girl's depiction in Great Lake Avengers, which saw them changed from their earlier portrayals -and- locked them into their new roles. Or Catman in Secret Six, reinvented in a way which took.)

If you've made it this far, I'll reward you with this thought: Tom King has been successful in reinventing one obscure character in a way I genuinely like.
Kite Man. Hell yeah.

[wizardru]

HOLY SHIT. The Outsiders?

Now THAT is a deep cut.

[cygnia]

So, I'm assuming they're the original team with that name? Did Batman's crew ever meet up with them?

[beyondthefringe]

I don't think -anyone- ever met them.

They've been mentioned frequently in this series, since King is using pretty much every character that debuted/starred in the First Issue Special series, but this is their first on-screen appearance here...

...and maybe their first in a very long time, short of minor cameos and whatnot.

[scorntx]

Don't forget Lizard Guy's semi-starring role in Young Justice.

[beyondthefringe]

Holy shit, you're right. o.0

[wizardru]

For reasons I can't explain, I bought this issue as a kid. It's...a LOT. Someone recently described it as the X-Men as done by Sid and Marty Kroft and...that seems appropriate, really.

[wizardru]

Of course, I can also see the influence of Big Daddy Roth in this art. I'm not really sure what these guys were supposed to do as a team, though. They're basically the Dollar General version of the Doom Patrol.