Minor Threats vol. 2: The Fastest Way Down

After taking care of the Insomniac and helping sweep his fate under the rug for the Continuum, Frankie “Playtime” Follis is now the new queenpin of Redport.  Working with partner-in-crime (and love) Scalpel and new henchman Backdrop, she’s turning what used to be the worst slum in Twilight City into a place its residents can be happy to live in.  Of course, there are still bad actors who want to maintain their supervillain ways that Frankie has to deal with, along with keeping the secret that got her this power under wraps.  So when a group of young heroes calling themselves The Action decide they’re going to find out said secret in order to take her down, well, Playtime is going to have to turn into Slaytime.

Well, not really.  Co-writers Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum treat Frankie’s struggles with more class than that cheap pun as they put in the work to make the threats facing this complicated woman, and her reaction to them, feel credible.  “The Fastest Way Down” never feels like its creators are phoning it in here, which is why it’s so disappointing that they never do anything new with the kind of story they’re telling here.  You know the one.  Where the (criminal) protagonist builds things up in the first act, only to be unable to keep it all under control in the second.  While the readers read on with the sinking feeling as they realize that they know exactly where things are going and how they’ll end.

 I didn’t hate this volume, it’s too well put together for that.  Oswalt and Blum have created some memorable characters here, some worthy new ones in this volume, and build on the events of vol. 1 in some neat ways.  Artist Scott Hepburn continues to do stellar work here, giving even the most minor of villains memorable visual designs while portraying the action in inventive ways.  It’s just that this is all in the service of a wholly predictable story that seems bent on showing that its main character just isn’t clever enough to have it all.  Maybe that will change in the (hopefully inevitable) vol. 3, but until then I’ll be waiting to see if the people doing the spinoffs – Starks & Browne, and Fraction & Allred, to name a couple – can deliver a story of Twilight City that’s worthy of the first volume.