THE SUMMER OF DANGER GIRL

In my DANGER GIRL/G.I. JOE review last year, I said:

"Danger Girl has been a bit of a guilty pleasure for me since it first appeared, back when I was in college. It was the only series from the Cliffhanger imprint that I picked up, and I guess I made the right choice because I seem to recall it was the only Cliffhanger series to reach its conclusion (even if it did take something like two years to get those seven issues). The series is not high art, though it has never pretended to be. It's simply the comic book equivalent of a big, dumb summer popcorn blockbuster, which is something you just want to read once in a while."

Now I'm about to put this assessment to the test. I'm going to spend ten consecutive Fridays looking at ten DANGER GIRL mini-series and one-shots, to decide if they're actually big and dumb, or if perhaps there's more there. The series I'll be reviewing are:

• DANGER GIRL (1998)
• DANGER GIRL SPECIAL (2000)
• DANGER GIRL: KAMIKAZE! (2001)
• DANGER GIRL: HAWAIIAN PUNCH (2003)
• DANGER GIRL: VIVA LAS DANGER (2004)
• DANGER GIRL: BACK IN BLACK (2006)
• DANGER GIRL: BODY SHOTS (2007)
• DANGER GIRL: REVOLVER (2012)
• DANGER GIRL: TRINITY (2013)
• DANGER GIRL: THE CHASE (2013)

My review copy for the original series will be the "Deluxe Edition" hardcover released by IDW in 2010. The SPECIAL, KAMIKAZE!, HAWAIIAN PUNCH, and VIVA LAS DANGER will all be reviewed via IDW's DESTINATION DANGER compilation trade paperback from 2011. The remaining mini-series will be reviewed via their first-run paperback editions, published by DC/Wildstorm and IDW, respectively.

Note that I am not reviewing the crossover material, BATMAN/DANGER GIRL and DANGER GIRL AND THE ARMY OF DARKNESS, for a few reasons. One, the Batman story is long out of print and expensive on the secondary market. Plus, it's drawn by Leinil Yu, an artist I like, but who doesn't seem to fit the Danger Girl style. The ARMY OF DARKNESS story is still easily procured, as it just came out in 2013 -- but I've never seen any of the EVIL DEAD movies, so I really have no interest.

But more than the above reasons is the fact that, after reading DANGER GIRL/G.I. JOE, I assume these crossovers will be more of the same -- a very fan-fictiony look at the Danger Girl characters teaming up with long-established properties -- and that just doesn't appeal to me. So this project will be pure, uncut Danger Girl, and nothing more.