Comic Book Review: Spy Ninjas: Virtual Reality Madness! written by Vannotes, illustrated by Mike Anderson
The Spy Ninjas, a team of brave Youtubers who battle evil hackers, investigate an abandoned base of their archenemies, Project Zorgo. No attempt has been made to clean up the damage from the battle here some time ago. Checking the armory, they find a few useless-looking experimental weapons…and what looks like two virtual reality headsets with Project Zorgo branding. These they bring back to the Spy Ninjas safehouse.
Daniel Gizmo, the Spy Ninjas’ gadget expert, surmises that these VR devices are used for accelerated training of the Zorgo minions. “Oh, like video games?” and ninja weapons expert Chad Wild Clay and lockpicker Vy Owaint immediately challenge each other, putting on the headsets. They are, of course, immediately trapped inside the game.
This is the first official graphic novel based on the Youtuber collective known as the Spy Ninjas. I had never heard of them before this, but apparently they’re popular enough with kids for Scholastic to risk printing this and a second graphic novel already out. Or at least they were in 2022; I can only hope they haven’t imploded in the years since.
Chad and Vy meet an evil cartoon kangaroo named Sly Marsupial who informs them they’re in Super Zorgoland. They must beat all the levels of this unfair game to escape; if they lose three lives their memories will be wiped and replaced with Project Zorgo programming.
In the real world, Daniel is trying to figure out a way to get his friends out of the VR headsets safely with little help from disguise expert Regina Ginera and buff guy Melvin PZ9. This effort is interrupted by a message from Project Zorgo revealing that they’ve found the Spy Ninjas’ HQ thanks to the tracking device concealed in the headsets. This was the real plan, as the Zorgo troops didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to actually put the headsets on.
Not that Project Zorgo has much to brag about on the smarts side. Even though PZ has attacked the Spy Ninjas safehouse before, they forgot to save the address and are hopeless at navigating meatspace without GPS. Still, they and Project Zorgomongus (a giant warrior of limited intelligence) are here now, and the three non-comatose Spy Ninjas must fight them while Chad and Vy try to win that video game.
Project Zorgo’s branding is masks modeled on those worn by Anonymous, which are the Guy Fawkes masks that were highly symbolic when Alan Moore used them in V for Vendetta but are kind of cliche now. But that kind of fits them being posers who aren’t actually effective and mainly exist to be punching bags for the heroes.
The art is okay, the characters look vaguely like the Youtubers they’re supposed to be, and there’s some interesting landscaping and character design in the virtual world.
The writing? Well, I think I might enjoy this a lot more if I were a huge fan of the videos the Spy Ninjas put out. (They do no actual Youtubing in this story.) It’s all well-trod ground and there’s little inventive or fresh-feeling here. On the other hand, for someone in the target age range of lower teens, this will probably hit harder and funnier due to less experience of similar stories.
Recommended primarily to fans of the Spy Ninjas, and young teen comic book fans.
