Danger Street #8: A Deal With The Devil

Danger Street #8 picks up all of the dangling plot threads of the previous issue and makes sure some of them stay dangling by the end. If you’ve made it this far in the Danger Street saga, you’ll likely feel accustomed to the nature of the story telling, where by the end of each issue, you are dying to pick up the next one, only to look distantly at the following month with anxiety. Only the creative minds of Tom King and Jorge Fornes can replicate such drama as they did with Rorschach previously, using a single issue to seemingly tell so little, but at the same time revealing all. In summary, that is the case with Danger Street #8.

Tom King’s pacing has been immaculate throughout this series with Danger Street #8 being no exception. With much of this issue revolving around conversations between characters and not too much action going on, one could easily dismiss this issue as filler. But those fans who stick around, do their homework, and are familiar with King’s storytelling style will know that an issue like this is just the calm before the storm. This series has been told with the exposition in the style of an old knight’s tale, almost like chess pieces on game night. Well if this was a chess game then Danger Street #8 is when the winning player has finally set all of his pieces in motion for delivering a grand finale of devastating moves that the other player hasn’t seen coming. King does an excellent job reiterating how all of the main players have gotten to where they are, and is setting up for the major showdown. The main context here is the revelations from many of the characters in which a lot of origins are revealed. This simultaneous storytelling allows the plot to more forward as the build up continues, but it also allows the readers to connect to these players in more meaningful ways.

This story has been a representational microcosm for the universe ending events up on the Fourth World, using the characters on earth as pawns for the greater machinations at hand. This excellent distillation of the Heavens falling apart is on full display in Danger Street #8, with the storylines featuring the Green Team and The Outsiders slowly converging with the narrative featuring The Dingbats, Warlord, and Starman. Mirroring what is going on up above, this squabble between The Green Team and The Outsiders is existing and rivaling the Dingbats attempts to bring their friend back to life. With neither of these groups knowing what’s going on in the other’s narratives, the importance of everything is thrown into question. This is representative of the actions in the Fourth World since none of the characters are aware of that either. These actions with grand cosmic importance go on simultaneously highlighting humanity’s nature to put self importance on our own issues rather than looking for the bigger picture.

Art wise, Jorge Fornes and Dave Stewart continue to stun with the amount of detail even put into mundane conversations. The meeting between Jack Ryder and Lady Cop, for example, is emblematic of how much these creators can make a simple conversation read like a film. Fornes puts so much detail into the tiny facial features of Lady Cop, highlighting the way she is convincing Ryder to get drunk without ever outright saying it. By the end of their conversation, Ryder spills a bunch of details that he never should have brought up, yet, it is still never explicitly stated that Lady Cop was using his drinking to her advantage. In this case, the motivations are all in the art, with Fornes and Stewart selling this in a wonderful manner.

Rounding off the creative team is Clayton Cowles, whose job in this issue is wildly important considering the amount of page real estate devoted to conversations. This is a very wordy issue, yet Cowles is able to lay things out in a way that not only makes it read coherently, but also in an exciting way. This makes the revelations shocking not only in the art but also in the execution for how things are presented, and where on the page the reader’s eyes are naturally drawn too.