Product Description: In December 1959, the Carson family meets explorer Mike Worley in South America to investigate an ancient spaceship that crashed in the Amazon jungle in the distant past. The ship's systems trap the four and expose them to a mysterious substance called "Gunk," intended to adapt the ship's original crew to the new environment. After brief exposure to the Gunk they escape, but it gives each of them superpowers that they use to fight for good as the original Danger Unlimited. But the story only begins there. Set in the futuristic 2061, flashbacks tell the story of what happened on Earth after the discovery of the Gunk, and how exposure to its powers causes the manifestation of super powers. The "new" Danger Unlimited super group seeks to uncover the fate of their predecessors while fighting to rid the Earth of the alien invaders that have overrun the planet! Also included in this collection are Babe #1-4 and Babe 2 #1-2, bringing all of John Byrne's Danger Unlimited action together for the first time ever!
An unfinished story and a mediocre one As publishers raid their backlists for new collections it's easy to be suckered into buying a collection like this.
Danger Unlimited was a 90s project by the usually reliable John Byrne that was a deliberate homage to the Fantastic Four. But he never finished it. Due to the collapse of the comic market it ends abructly with issue 4. The team on the cover never even appears. If I had known how unfinished the lead story was I would never have bought this.
The rest is filled with 6 issues of another Byrne project the aptly named 'Babe'. It's the cute story of a tall super strong redhead with no memory and a one word vocabulary. It's entertaining at times but really not that memorable. Maybe if it the book was only the Babe issues I would give it 3 stars.
On the good side Byrne's art is as good as ever, his faces, his character designs and his technology all look fantastic. Plus it had the funniest Spawn team-up ever.
But in all, it's not worth the money.
DANGER UNLIMITED, potential untapped, and my old fan fave BABE As John Byrne mentions in this trade's bitter-tinged foreword, Dark Horse Comics' Legend imprint was a failed experiment, its quick demise due to one (or several?) of the founding members' lack of timely contribution and the comic book depression which murdered so many independent comics in the mid-90s. The Legend imprint was supposed to be a shared world peopled by Byrne's Danger Unlimited, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, and Art Adams' Monkeyman & O'Brien. As it turns out, not much sharing actually went on, although Hellboy has a dialogue-less cameo in DANGER UNLIMITED.
The very cool thing with this trade is that not only does it reprint the four issues which made up the DANGER UNLIMITED series, but it also collects the four-issued BABE mini-series and the two-issued BABE 2 mini-series. Bonus stuff includes the original covers to all the issues, as well as the aforementioned John Byrne foreword. However, the Torch of Liberty stories backing up DANGER UNLIMITED are not included. Admittedly, DANGER UNLIMITED didn't make as much noise as others of Byrne's superhero groups, but then again NEXT MEN and Byrne's legendary stint at FANTASTIC FOUR went on for significantly longer runs. With only four issues, DANGER UNLIMITED manages to tweak your bump of curiousity. Byrne admits in the foreword that Danger Unlimited was patterned after the Fantastic Four, Marvel's first superhero family, about whom he missed writing. But DU quickly found its own voice, cutting back and forth between storytelling in the present and flashbacks to the past, with its catchy premise of a future Earth humbled by extraterrestrial control and no superheroes in sight. If only given enough issues, who knows where Byrne could've taken this series.
The flashbacks mostly deal with Danger Unlimited's origins and final battle. In 1959, Dr. Carson, his children Calvin and Connie, and explorer Mike Worley gain extraordinary abilites from exposure to alien gunk in a crashlanded spaceship. Dr. Carson (Doc Danger) has his intelligence immeasurably expanded; Calvin (Thermal) now can control his body temperature; Connie (Miss Mirage) becomes an illusion caster; and Mike Worley (Hunk) transforms into a superstrong, rock-skinned being. For many years they fought the good fight as Danger Unlimited, until the team's final battle with deadly enemy Umbra. We never do find out how that battle ends (much less who Umbra is). We do learn that Calvin incurs a grave injury and is put in some sort of cryogenic freeze by Doc Danger, and that Doc Danger in desperation then places a time lock on and seals off the Danger Unlimited headquarters.
The story really kicks off 75 years later, when the time lock expires and the DU complex is rendered accessible. From its interior, anomalous energy signatures suddenly crop up, leading to an investigation by a military containment unit. What the soldiers find is a resuscitated Calvin Carson, suffering from a loss of memory and thermal powers.
Calvin is in for even more disorienting times. It's the year 2060, and the alien race Xlerii (pronounced almost like "celery") now runs the planet, with the earth's humanity having effectively surrendered decades ago when all the superheroes mysteriously vanished back in 2011. Now in this future Calvin's awakening brings about the rebirth of earth's superpowered humans as Calvin finds himself a focal point in the fight to wrest the planet back from Xlerii occupation. The final issue closes with a new incarnation of Danger Unlimited vowing to do just this.
Except that we'll never know how this turns out.
John Byrne writes and draws the thing, all four issues of it. DANGER UNLIMITED is a portrait of untapped potential. Here, four issues aren't long enough to lend much character development, not when the cast of characters is this huge, and not when Byrne has to also lay groundwork for the multiple plot points and establish the world-building elements. Having said that, the most interesting character is probably new superhuman Belebet's folksy great-grandmother. The final issue leaves us with a jarred, frustrated feeling because it's so obvious that Byrne had intended to tell so much more of the story. Instead we're left with an intriguing premise, an outline of a revered superhero family, scanty superhero action, and the promise of a shared corner of a universe which never really came to be. Just enough to tantalize you and to make you believe that, if this series had only been given more of a chance, DANGER UNLIMITED could've been something awesome.
On the other hand, BABE's story is told on a breezier, more rollicking beat. In the first few pages John Byrne introduces Babe in such a way that you instantly get hooked into the mystery of her... who she is, what she is. Somewhere in the periphery there's an airplane crash, and that event is linked to the sudden appearance one dark stormy night of a tall, gorgeous, naked red-head. Who almost gets run over by sleazy Hollywood agent Ralph Rowan, one of those creeps you'd most of the time happily scrape off the bottom of your shoe. Except that I guess Rowan does hide a smidgen of gallant, because he does the right thing by the enigmatic girl, drops her off at the police station. But not before his calling her "Babe" had rubbed off, to the point that the girl now touts "Babe" as her name. Babe is something of a Tabula Rasa, an innocent blank slate. She doesn't talk much, her entire lexicon of words consisting of that same word "Babe...?" - with the appropriate inflection used to suit a variety of emotions. And as we soon learn, Babe is fantastically strong and durable.
I really like the lighthearted tone of this series. John Byrne injects a bit of slapstick, from the way she first demonstrates her great strength to an appearance on the David Letterman show (which turns her into an overnight media sensation) to her going up against icky green bulbous-domed aliens (who themselves smack of spoofy). And it's a good thing that the mood carries that serving of tongue-in-cheek because Babe's origin is pretty much an exercise in far-fetchedness and wouldn't have gone over well in a story that takes itself more seriously. However, Byrne's killer art does go a ways in lending weight to Babe's adventures. And, as he's already shown in his time with FANTASTIC FOUR and SHE-HULK, Byrne can draw gorgeous powerful ladies.
In BABE 2, Babe returns to action when cyborg alligators burst out of the New York City sewers (that's right, cyborg alligators!!!). Now, in the first mini-series, one of the characters featured is the super-heroine Blonde Bombshell (or the aged version of her, anyway), and since she appeared in the pages of DANGER UNLIMITED, this means that Babe officially shares continuity with DU (and, by extension, she resides in the Legend imprint universe). To place Babe even more firmly in that continuity, a certain Icthyo sapien from B.P.R.D. shows up in BABE 2, as well as a Monkeyman & O'Brien villain (the one who's pretty much a Mole Man ripoff). And then, if there's still any doubts, there's that last page in the second issue. Anyway, it's more fun with Babe, as she gets down and dirty and spectacularly muddy beneath the sewers of New York City, trying to prevent the destruction of Times Square. Unlike in the first mini-series, Babe has more dialogue here, the dychotomy being that she was more intriguing when she wasn't saying much.
I don't know that John Byrne will ever write new stories about Danger Unlimited or Babe; his time with the Legend imprint seems to have soured him some. This is probably all we'll get of these characters, which is too bad. I like DANGER UNLIMITED for its sci-fi premise and I really like BABE for the central character and for that sense of good-natured fun which infused her stories. If you haven't read these stories before, you're in for a time-capsule treat. Absorbing stories, characters with potential, and, as always, excellent art - all by John Byrne, long may his British-bred beard bristle.
Actually quite limited IDW has recently released 2 volumes collecting the entire 936 pages of John Byrne's Next Men in black & white for a total retail cost of $45, yet their 244-page DANGER UNLIMITED trade is priced at $20. To be fair, it IS printed in color, which adds a bit to the cost; however, the actual 4-issue Danger Unlimited series makes up less than ½ of this book's contents. The bulk of it features another of Byrne's Legend imprint characters, "Babe"; specifically, Babe #1 - 4 and Babe 2 #1 - 2. So why title this trade DANGER UNLIMITED? Well, there's a reason, but it's extremely weak.
Byrne's Danger Unlimited miniseries is a well-written nod to the Silver Age adventures of the Fantastic Four. In 1959, a quartet of explorers, investigating the ancient wreckage of a spacecraft in South America, is exposed to a substance that gives them amazing powers. They use these powers to fight evil, and during their final adventure in 1985, an injured team member is put into hibernation. Fast forward 75 years to an Earth under the control of the alien race that built the spacecraft. The revival of the team member, plus the appearance of some new heroes, leads to the formation of a new Danger Unlimited that stands up to the alien overlords. It was a great start to a promising series but was unfortunately canned during the industry collapse of the `90s. As for Babe, I recall reading the first couple of issues at the time, and they didn't impress me much; however, as this trade claims to bring together ALL of the DU stories for the first time, I figured I missed a DU storyline in later issues of Babe. Well, I got suckered: while Babe 2 #2 does tie into DU somewhat, it's ridiculous to use ONE panel of ONE issue as a justification for including the entire Babe storyline. In fact, that one panel is incongruous with the original DU storyline, so as a whole, this collection doesn't make sense. In conclusion, if you are solely a fan of Danger Unlimited, you'd be better served with the original series hardcover or trade from Dark Horse Comics, which also feature better printing quality than the IDW trade.
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