Plot: When the team comes to Las Vulgar, Shiny Happy Aquazon takes on an endorsement opportunity for a product called “Oxy-Gen” which turns out to serve a dark purpose. Super-Bat and the others are bored with the latest excesses they've been introduced to and decide to seek out Doc Dread, a supervillain that lives in the area.

Comments: The issue opens in similar fashion to the first, with Hanover showing the Super Young Team their new digs, this time being a penthouse suite in Las Vulgar. This seems to be another tactic for Itami and his backers to distract the team and the rest of the world from the truth about post-Crisis Japan, but the protagonists seem to slowly be catching on to the fact that they're being kept in the dark.

To me, Most Excellent Super-Bat and Shiny Happy Aquazon are best characterized in this issue. The team is generally becoming discontent with their current lifestyle, but Super-Bat shows this more strongly. I got the impression that he's picking up a little more maturity, but still seems pretty cocky after the team's stumbling victory at the end. Even so, I think he might be taking Ultimon's advice to stand for something greater into more serious consideration. He decides taking on Doc Dread might be a good start to breaking out of their own complacency. Dread turns out to be a decent guy after their battle and is written as being able to relate to the team in their desire to make their way out of obscurity and make something of themselves.

On the Aquazon front, she's quick to jump at the chance to sell out by doing the Oxy-Gen endorsement, but I got the feeling that this might be a cry for attention, going by her somewhat anguished expression in one panel on page 3. Obviously going off on her own wasn't such a good idea when she witnesses that Oxy-Gen has an effect similar to Anti-Life over its users, putting them under the control of the Brain Drain, at the heart of which is a single-celled megalomaniac.

I gave the book a 3 and a half bullets, but that's not because I didn't enjoy it. I'm just a little disappointed that the series is only two issues in and already needed artists to fill-in for Chriscross and that neither Coelho nor Pansica even penciled the whole thing. The art still has the same high energy the series is going for, but the pencilers' styles don't seem totally distinctive. Coelho's style kind of reminds me of Joe Madureira, but without the massive breasts on female characters, and Pansica's pencils seem imitative of Carlos Pacheco.

Final Word: The book follows the same basic formula as the first issue, which should make it accessible to anyone that missed #1. So far this mini is full of the kind of social commentary on globalization and commercialism I've come to expect from Joe Casey since reading his runs on WildCATs, so if you're a fan of comics, especially superhero books, with a social consciousness, I recommend picking Dance up.

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