Grindhouse never cops out when the heat’s all about.
Creative Staff:
Story and Letters: Alex de Campi
Art: Mulele Jarvis
Colorist: Marissa Louise
What They Say:
It had to happen! Grindhouse goes blaxploitation! When the US has trouble overseas, it sends the Bureau of Organized Terrorism Intervention’s top agent: Lady Danger. But when the Bulletproof Bae falls afoul of a Thai drug lord with ties to the CIA, of course the established US security agencies will help the upstart, mostly black BOOTI defend itself, right? Right?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
“When Americans are in danger abroad—the president no longer sends an army. He sends one black girl.”
That black girl is Lady Danger, a bulletproof super-agent of BOOTI (the Bureau of Organized Terrorism Intervention), a top-secret US counterterrorism agency. In this case the terrorist is an ex Chinese Special Forces General turned warlord named Fong Ah-Chan, who has set up his own little opium kingdom in Thailand. In the months since his arrival, children in nearby villages began dying of mysterious diseases. The Red Cross sent a group of doctors to investigate, but they were captured by Fong. BOOTI sends Lady Danger to free them.
If you’ve read previous issues, then you’ll know that Grindhouse typically skips over exposition in favor of action, throwing readers into the story and daring them to keep up. Lady Danger takes this to a whole new level. In two pages, we meet Lady Danger’s civilian identity, see her get the call from BOOTI (I love writing that), and fly to Thailand. In four pages we see her meet Fong Ah-Chan (sitting for no discernable reason on a flatbed truck stacked with stereo speakers, bikini girls, and enough automatic weapons to field a small army). From there the story explodes into Blaxploitation, kung-fu awesomeness.
And that’s just the “A” story. Two other storylines run through this issue. In the “B” story, we learn that Lady Danger’s other name is Rachelle, and she works at a convenience store, selling overpriced cigarettes to surly old ladies. One of her regular customers is Kevin, a shy, nice young man carrying the mother of all torches for Rachelle. Unfortunately, Kevin lacks the confidence to do anything about it. It doesn’t help that his friend, Paco, gives him terrible relationship advice.
The “C” story picks up about halfway through and it centers on the conflict between BOOTI commander Angela and the head of the CIA, Dick. The director believes that BOOTI underutilizes its main resource—Lady Danger—and hamstrings itself with its “no kill” policy. He offers to fold BOOTI into the CIA and when that doesn’t work, indirectly threatens its funding.
These three storylines come together at the end, but I won’t say how in order to keep from spoiling some plot twists. What I will say is that Grindhouse is quickly becoming a bastion of anti-decompression. In some ways it makes me think of the recent “Ozploitation” movie, Mad Max: Fury Road. That movie almost literally hit the ground running and trusted the audience to pick up on backstory and theme via dialogue, set design, costumes, and character action. It wove those elements into the story, allowing it to keep its incredible pace.
While “Lady Danger: Agent of BOOTI,” doesn’t quite possess the same pace as Fury Road, it doesn’t let up or slow down. In some ways this serves as the story’s (and the series’) strength and weakness. Readers unfamiliar with Grindhouse cinema or those who just don’t pay attention may feel like the story is too frenetic and that it misses key plot and character elements. The elements are present, but readers need to know how to look for them. This is a title that trusts its audience and never holds its hand.
It certainly helps that Mulele Jarvis is very good. Jarvis employs a rather elastic, cartoon-y style that I tend to prefer in comics, and uses it to good effect here in both the excellent fight scenes and in the smaller character moments. I love the body language of the character Cece when she takes over for Rachelle at the register, and General Fong Ah-Chan looks suitably gross and skeevy.
The question now becomes how well does this stack up to the Blaxploitation genre? I’m sure that it will surprise no one to learn that I’m a pretty big fan of the genre (despite the fact that I’m a white boy from southeastern Kentucky). I love Dolemite, Superfly, The Hammer, Black Caesar, and, of course, Cleopatra Jones and Coffy. I love their style, their swagger (or swag, as my students tell me it’s now called), and their messages of empowerment, so for me, “Lady Danger” hits all the right marks. It’s big and fun and it plays to all the standard tropes without becoming cliché.
Before going into the summary, I wanted to mention that one of my favorite little throwaway parts of Grindhouse is back in this issue: the fake movie posters. It could be that the digital copies I’ve been receiving just haven’t included them, but whatever the case, there are two here and they are pretty great. The first is “The Dangerous Mission of Svetlana Snow” and the flavor text reads, “She’s cold as a Russian winter…and hot as a nuclear meltdown!” and “From the frozen, irradiated wastes of Chernobyl to the mean streets of Hollywood, USA!” The second poster is for the “Dead in the Ground” (from the director of Sexcastle). The flavor text for that reads, “They put her in danger so she put them DEAD IN THE GROUND.”
I know the fake movie posters are just a little part of the comic, but it’s one that I consistently love, so I’m glad to see them back.
In Summary:
As the tagline for the next issue says, “Terrorists, watch your terror-ass!” so without further ado, let’s get to the Grindhouse totals: No dead bodies. Two beasts. No breasts (but a bevy of machine-gun toting bikini ladies). Cash register fu. Bullet proof fu. Shaolin Shock Troops fu. Big-weird-spiked-bells-used-as-weapons-fu. Heads roll. Toupees roll. Dentures roll. Gratuitous hassling by “the Man.” Professor Josh gives this an:
Grade: A
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Dark Horse
Release Date: May 27th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99