One of the problems of reviewing a comic book series issue by issue as they're coming out is that it's really hard to not talk about spoilers from the previous book. For instance in this review I have to talk about the ending of Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #1 because it plays a big part in the plot of this issue. Kinda like how critics in the '30s, '40s and '50s must've gone nuts trying to review each episode of the old movie serials since they'd have to reveal that the hero survived the cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode in order to talk about the current episode they were reviewing.
The second issue opens with Nancy and Frank explaining to Joe why Nancy isn't dead and why she faked her death. It all tracks back to the Syndicate, which Nancy, Frank and Joe took down the leaders of in the previous arc. Of course being that this is a mystery series, I kinda saw Nancy being alive and having faked her death coming from a mile away. After all I have been reading about these characters and their adventures for 25 years or more and I know that they weren't just going to kill off Nancy Drew and be done with it. Especially since she's the lead character on her own CW television series. As scary as that notion is.
The rest of this issue is just Frank, Joe, and Nancy trying to discover the identity of the person who tried to murder Nancy. I won't go into too much detail on that for the time being seen as how there's still three or four issues left to go in this series, but they talk to two of the Bobbsey Twins, Freddie and Flo. Oh and the Stratemeyer Syndicate (the original creators of all of these books) Universe has gotten bigger as there's one point where Frank references Tom Swift. It isn't specified if he's referring to the original Tom Swift, or Tom Swift Jr. The Tom Swift series was originally published from 1910 until 1941 and was one of the earliest book series to be published by Stratemeyer, long before Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were even thought up. The Tom Swift Jr. series, about Tom's son was published from 1954 until 1971 and was a continuation of the original series.
As I mentioned in my review of the previous issue, I've only ever read the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, but I'm familiar with Tom Swift because there were usually ads for his books on the back of the dust jacket for the reprint versions of the original text editions of the Hardy Boys books. So I've always been familiar with the name if not the character himself.
You can tell that this book's writer, Anthony Del Col, is a huge fan of these books, because he's using characters that maybe weren't as well known as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were. Or that time had forgotten while both Nancy Drew and the Hardy boys got movies and TV shows many times over the decades. While Tom Swift and the Bobbsey Twins are arguably the most well known characters created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate besides Nancy Drew and the Hardys, I bet if you talk to the current generation of kids and even my generation, chances are pretty good they'll remember Nancy Drew and/or the Hardy Boys before they remember Tom Swift and the Bobbsey Twins. And that's just because Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have been on TV and in movies and therefore have been in pop culture more than the Bobbsey Twins or Tom Swift have. So even if you'd never read the books, you knew who Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were.
Normally I'd hate the fact that Del Col has Frank and Joe at odds with each other. But, this isn't anything new for readers of The Hardy Boys. In fact it's actually been going on since 1987 when The Hardy Boys Casefiles started being published. Many of those books found Frank and Joe at odds with each other for one reason or another, so it isn't like this is a 2000s/ 2010s/2020s thing where characters have to be edgy by being turned against each other when they were originally close. This is basically just a natural progression from the Casefiles series. Which is kinda cool. Because, again, Del Col is a fan.
Joe Eisma's art is once again spectacular though it is weird seeing characters other than Archie and the gang drawn in his style. One of the easter eggs in this issue that I picked up on is the way Nancy's hair is. When we saw her in flashbacks in the first issue she was blond, as she has been for years. But when we see her here, her hair is more of a strawberry blond/orange colour. The reason this is an easter egg is because on both the original text version covers and the revised text version covers Nancy's hair is more of a strawberry blond/orange colour but became more blond with the Nancy Drew Digest books in the '70s and The Nancy Drew Files (the Nancy Drew equivalent to The Hardy Boys Casefiles) in 1986. And since then they haven't really gone back to that original hair colour since then. At least not on the book covers. In the many Nancy Drew movies and TV shows that have been around, Nancy has only been blond in the 2007 movie starring Emma Roberts, while everywhere else she's either had black hair (the 1995 Canadian TV series) or strawberry blond (Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys, the current CW series and probably the original movies from the '30s) or orange (the 2019 movie starring Sophia Lillis). So I thought that was neat to see a visual nod to the character's original design.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall issue #2 was pretty good. They were able to move the story along a lot better in this issue since they didn't have to go through all the background details to set up the story like they did in the first issue. The problem with it is that because there's still three or four issues to go, they can't really do too much or there won't be any story to tell for issues 3, 4, 5 and 6. I think it's 6 issues anyway, it might actually be five. Regardless there wouldn't be a story left to tell in the remaining issues if they tried to do too much in this one. However Del Col is good enough as a writer to keep the pacing consistent which is appreciated. I'm giving Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #2 9.9/10 stars because I'm a bit tired of the old cliche of a small town not being what it seems it is. Riverdale just kind of ruined that trope for me, and it's not really doing anything for me here either. It's still a good story though.
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