YMMV / The Adventures of D & A

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Based on the entire SWSC getting distracted by a Malig-Not ruse in the Himalayas despite two Malig-Nots chasing Denise and Adam in Walden Oaks, the club failing to detain the Darkwyne Ogre despite knowing where she lives, the club's reliance on an extremely inaccurate chibi rendering of Kitora as part of an urgent warning message, the club's willingness to recruit two 12-year-olds to their ranks, the fact that said 12-year-olds keep showing more competence when dealing with longtime threats than the actual SWSC itself, the fact that two higher ranking officers in the club send said 12-year-olds to Tokyo with sophisticated gadgets and next-to-no training, and the fact that we never see Tim or Maria actually DO anything, it's pretty easy to interpret the SWSC as laughably incompetent.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Kitora. D&A barely fight him before luring him out of Tokyo with the music playing from Adam's Walkman.
• Broken Aesop: In the third story, Captain Tim tells D & A to call him for backup in case the situation with Kitora gets dangerous, saying, "The SWSC uses teamwork more than anything to solve a crisis." D & A promptly don't do this when they get to Tokyo and find that Kitora is a rampaging Kaiju. Though the duo do successfully manage to handle the situation by themselves, it's not brought up again at the end of the story.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Adam is a snarky guy with rocket boots and a plot-important Walkman, who fights aliens and monsters. Disney would have another character like this 16 years later with the MCU's version of Star-Lord.
  • The SWSC's uniforms look a lot like the uniforms later seen on Star Trek: Discovery.
• Inferred Holocaust: No mention is made of what happens to the Tokyo SWSC agents after Kitora destroys their base. From all appearances, Mecha-Moth is the only survivor.
• Narm:
  • The name of the organization, the Secret World Saving Club, doesn't flow very well nor sound very thought out. The ranks — Agent of Altruism, or Captain of Decency — are also kinda goofy.
  • One thing that Platypus Comix latched onto was Mike Duggan's preference for drawing every character with silly grins on their faces. At the end of the second story in particular, Captain Tim's grin looks absolutely deranged as he announces that he's promoting Denise and Adam to Agents of Altruism.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The third story spends its first seven pages on exposition, and then two on the battle with Kitora.
• So Okay, It's Average: Peter Paltridge's scathing dislike notwithstanding, the comic has an interesting premise, fun characters, and good artwork, but the stories themselves tend to fall flat due to Narmy plot elements and poor story pacing. It didn't help that Disney Adventures ran it concurrent with the reprints of Bone — the third D & A story ran in the same issue that reprinted Thorn and Fone's run from the Rat Creatures — which is a Tough Act to Follow in any case. It's possible that fleshing out the SWSC and villains would have helped it Grow the Beard, but we'll never know.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • D & A seems to be one for DA Casebusters, a recurring non-comic serial about two fictional Kid Detectives, which ran in Disney Adventures during the magazine's production in Burbank.
  • After D & A's cancellation, Disney Adventures would later try the "secret organization fighting aliens and monsters" thing again in 1999 with the Super Music Action Ready Team comics.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Instead of D & A babysitting the four Irving kids in the second story — all of whom were one-offs, and three of whom weren't even given names — they could've used Adam's brother Sam instead. The comic could have followed the same story, except it would have given Adam some Character Development as he rescues the very same brother he had a Sibling Rivalry with in the previous story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The pacing issues with the third story could have been easily solved by turning it into a two-parter. It could have ended the first part on a cliffhanger when Denise and Adam get to Tokyo and see that Kitora isn't anything like the picture, then spent the second part on an extended battle with Kitora as the duo works out how to stop him. The comic could've even had Captain Tim and Commander Maria show some badassery for once by jumping into the fray as backup.

---