Half Past Danger #1
Created, Written, and Drawn by Stephen Mooney
Reviewed by Joey Braccino
Stephen Mooney pulls triple duty for IDW’s newest adventure, Half Past Danger. The action starts in the South Pacific Theatre of World War II with Sgt. Flynn and the 132nd. While comics starts with a bit of Band-of-Brothers banter, the fantasy quickly escalates as displaced Panzer divisions, dinosaurs, and superhuman Brits enter the fray. Half Past Danger channels the pre-Code high fantasy comics of yore, producing an old school, Romantic pulp noir.
The characters drink, the soldiers cuss, the sole femme character is especially fatale, and War lingers in the background. Reminiscent of post-modern throwbacks like The Rocketeer, Half Past Danger promises supernatural adventure on that Good-Versus-Evil scale that is missing from the more cynical modern stories in comics today. Sgt. Flynn exude Indiana Jones swagger as he throws wild haymakers and drowns his post-traumatic-stress. Mooney hits all the right beats in this debut issue, from characterization to fantasy elements to the Steranko-esque linework.
Verdict
Buy. Stephen Mooney’s Half Past Danger hearkens back to the diversionary Golden Age of Romance comics. And I don’t mean all that mushy, gushy, little-“r” romance stuff; I mean gunfights and heroes and Nazis and rugged individualism and running-from-the-past Romance. Sgt. Flynn has already gotten himself into some crazy misadventures in this debut issue alone; I can’t wait to see where Mooney takes us next.
