Danger Street vol. 1

What does it take to join the Justice League?  Being a well-known superhero with powers that can take on global-scale threats is one way.  Being really rich, really smart, and having a really unshakeable moral code is another.  For others, it’s proving that they can take on giant threats when they come – or are summoned.  That’s the path Warlord, Mikaal “Starman” Tomas, and Metamorpho have chosen when they get their hands on a relic that will allow them to summon (and imprison) the most evil of New Gods, Darkseid.  Magic is a tricky thing, however, and when the summoning spell is cast, things almost immediately go wrong.  Now the remaining two heroes are going to have to figure out how to put things right.

That’s the main plot of this latest maxi-series written by Tom King, with his “Rorschach” *rolls eyes* and “Batman” collaborato Jorge Fornes providing the art.  The vibe here is very much “‘Magnolia’ But With Superheroes” as while the abortive attempt to join the Justice League is the main plot thread here, it’s not the only one.  Where “Human Target” was King having fun with the most 80’s version of the Justice League, this is him playing with a lot of the lesser-known heroes of DC from the 70’s.  Warlord, Starman, and Metamorpho are just the most well-known players here as this series also brings back Manhunter, the Creeper, Lady Cop, the Dingbats, the Green Team, and a version of the Outsiders that didn’t involve Batman.

I’ve read elsewhere that King doesn’t always write his stories around the characters featured in them.  So it’s hard to say that bringing back some of these really obscure characters (not all of them are superheroes) is him indulging his love of such, or just grabbing the ones best-suited for the story he’s telling.  Which isn’t quite clear at the moment.  While the central story thread speaks to the overreach of ambition and the feelings of redemption and revenge that it inspires, there’s a parallel story thread about how the information we consume is controlled by the moneyed elite.  That’s not directly tied into the main story, yet, so it reads like King is trying to give us two significant stories within one maxi-series.

Neither of which are bad, mind you.  King writes all of the characters, superpowered and not, in ways that ground their emotions in relatable, understandable terms.  You can understand why Warlord, Starman, and Metamorpho are willing to put their lives on for this insanely stupid plan by hearing them speak about how great the League is.  While the survivors show their moral integrity by trying to make right what went wrong.  Manhunter even gets some moments of tenderness with his father figure, while the Assassin who guards the Green Team is revealed to have ambitions of his own as well.

Even as it’s interesting to watch the various players in this story advance and intersect in different ways, it’s the way the writer presents the Green Team which represents the most interesting idea at play in this story.  Originally a group of kids whose only “power” was that they were really rich, they’re re-imagined here as a platonically evil version of corporate types who are only concerned with enriching themselves.  Except that the four of them are presented as teenagers here.

It doesn’t stop some of them from being murdered for what they represent, though.  Which is the part that got my attention, because killing children is generally frowned upon in society.  While bloody revenge against these corporate types has been in vogue for a while now (there’s even a new movie that features Jason Statham as the embodiment of it, “The Beekeeper,” in theaters right now) King looks to be trying to turn it on its head here by asking if it’s still okay even when the perpetrators are children.  It’s an interesting idea to consider, even as the writer undercuts the moral ambiguity present in it by having these characters come off as such unrepentantly vile little bastards.

That bastardry, among other emotions and actions, is communicated well on the page by Fornes.  Always one for eschewing flash in favor of telling the story, he continues that trend here by putting the focus squarely on the character.  While there are a few standout bits of superhero action, most of the story involves people talking to each other in order to advance the plot.  So it’s a good thing that Fornes knows how to frame these conversations and have his characters emote well enough to keep us interested.  His style also worse well with Dave Stewart’s muted coloring to give it a hazy, timeless feel, that has the story feeling like it came out of the 70’s even as the technology present here indicates we’re in modern times.

All this being said, “Danger Street” suffers more than “Human Target” for being split up into two volumes.  While that series is merely denying us the knowledge of what happens next, I’m still waiting to see how everything ties together here.  Or if it’s going to be more than just a redemption story for the two remaining Justice League aspirants.  It’s all very well executed, as you’d expect from pros like King and Fornes.  Yet, anyone not already on board with the stories they’ve told in the past may want to wait and either get both volumes in one go or just Watch This Space to see if vol. 2 delivers on everything set up here.