In the latest Reason to Get Excited, a spotlight on awesome modern comics, we take a look at how Fred Van Lente's embrace of the absurdity of the very nature of the Ninjettes make the concept work so well in the new Ninjettes miniseries from Dynamite Comics.
The Ninjettes debuted over a decade ago in the pages of the original volume of Jennifer Blood (look for a special look at their debut later tonight), and they did not last long. They received a follow-up miniseries in 2012, but have been mostly absent until now, when Fred Van Lente, Joseph Cooper, Dearbhla Kelly and Jeff Eckleberry have revived the concept for a new series that succeeds, in great part, by ignoring what came before.
THE GLORIOUS POWER OF THE BLANK SLATE IN COMICS
One of the most famous "returns to glory" in the history of superhero comic books happened when Frank Miller took over writing and penciling Daredevil with 1980's Daredevil #168 (working with inker Klaus Janson). Daredevil had been teetering towards cancelation for a number of years when Miller took over art duties on the book with writer Roger McKenzie a year earlier. Miller's breakout art helped improve sales on the series, and things got even better when he took over writing the series, as well. The thing is, the fact that the book WAS so close to cancelation is what led it to Miller being able to have a lot of freedom to try out some drastically different things on the series. In other words, when a book isn't working, then you have a lot more freedom as a writer to mess with the basic concepts of the series. In Miller's case, it meant turning Daredevil into a bit of a ninja series.
Amusingly enough, then, Fred Van Lente was in a similar situation when he relaunched a different ninja series recently. The Ninjettes hadn't had a presence in comics in many years, so Van Lente had a blank slate to work with, which is particularly helpful when the main concept is as absurd as the Ninjettes were. The original Ninjettes were a group of college girls who traded sex into a reputation as assassins. They were then quickly dispatched by Jennifer Blood. Al Ewing then came up with the idea of the public failure of the Ninjettes setting up a new Ninjettes organization trading off of the publicity. None of that, though, is necessary to understand this new Ninjettes series, but it speaks to how open the concept is - there's really little more to the idea any more than simply the name, Ninjettes.
The name, in and of itself, is also absurd. It speaks to a sort of stereotypical feminization of a ninja, which is not a masculine term, and not only a feminization, but a sort of diminished take on the word.
HOW THE NINJETTES' OWN ABSURDITY HELPS IT WORK
The setup for the series is that schools give personality tests and students who answer it a certain way are judged as being future school shooters or something like that, so they are then captured and taken to a mysterious location where they learn that they are possibly going to be the new Ninjettes, as told via a ridiculous cartoon...
The cartoon is a great examination of the kind of nonsense that the Ninjettes name conveys, but when you hang a lampshade on it, it works more.
The protagonist of the book is one of the girls who insists that she's there by mistake, that she just filled in her personality test in a joking manner, and not that she was an actual killer...
Obviously, this is an absurd situation, and that's how Van Lente leans into the situation by getting even crazier, really having fun with the concept. For instance, there's a sequence where one of the girls finishes off one of the other girls who has been shot. She explains that she was doing her a favor because it's not like they were given any first aid kit. Then another girl notes, "There's a whole crate of first aid kits!" Hilarious.
Cooper and Kelly pair well on the art, with Kelly's bright colors contrast with Cooper's dark undertones really nicely. The combination ties into the aforementioned absurdity of the concept. These are over-the-top ideas that are tinged with darkness, as it is a bunch of killing going on, ya know?
Van Lente's pop culture references are fun, as we get some asides from the various possible Ninjettes talk about things, like the origins of ninjas. Again, the contrast works beautifully as we go from historical discussions to mayhem and back. It's jarring, but in a fun way.
An interesting thing is that while not all of the girls are firmly defined, characterization-wise, there is enough there that it still works for scenes where, for instance, one girl thinks that she is closer friends with another girl than the other girl actually feels, leading to a fight that, as one character notes, is harsher than the murder she committed earlier...
It's funny, as you'll see in my discussion with Fred later about the debut of the original Ninjettes, Fred's take is MUCH different than Ennis', but at the same time, there is somewhat of a similarity in the way that Ennis takes absurd ideas and then slightly humanizes them along the way, and that's basically what we're seeing in this fun series. It's a crazy concept, but it's done with just enough humanity involved that you care about the characters, despite the absurdity of it all.
Happy Fred Van Lente Day, everyone! This is our annual celebration of the work of comic book writer, Fred Van Lente. This is actually our SIXTEENTH annual Fred Van Lente Day! Click here to see more FVL Day celebrations.