Comic Book / Danny Phantom: A Glitch in Time

All spoilers for Danny Phantom, as well as The Ultimate Enemy and Phantom Planet may have been left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Danny Phantom: A Glitch in Time is a graphic novel based on the Nickelodeon animated series Danny Phantom. Written and illustrated by Gabriela Epstein, it was released on July 18th, 2023.

It's been two years since the events of Phantom Planet, and Danny has been enjoying the happy aftermath of that adventure. Or, at least, he was enjoying it. For a while now, his ghostly powers have been on the fritz, either not working at all or being pitifully weak when they do. And if that wasn't bad enough, he seems to be at the center of some pretty strange time distortions, walking around Amity Park one minute and standing in a medieval castle the next. While he has no idea what's going on with the first, it soon becomes clear what the deal is with the second when Vlad Plasmius makes a surprise return and reveals that his latest venture might have had the unfortunate side effect of releasing Dark Danny from his prison. With Danny's evil Bad Future counterpart not only wreaking havoc but also causing time itself to come undone thanks to forcibly merging with Clockwork, Team Phantom must work together with Vlad to find the ancient power needed to stop Dark Danny if any of them hopes to have a future.

A second graphic novel will be released in Fall 2025.

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Tropes appearing in this graphic novel:

• Adaptational Badass:
  • Because Dark Danny’s timeline was erased, he fuses with Clockwork to stabilize himself while also giving himself the power to stop and freeze time (and the side effect of creating “glitches” in time just by existing). But once Clockwork starts Fighting from the Inside, it hinders his ability to fight and he becomes weaker as Danny, Vlad and Team Phantom start attacking him.
  • Danny starts out very weak due to no longer having a purpose to fuel his powers after the events of Phantom Planet. But once he gains a new drive, his full power returns and he's ready to fight, being able to use his Ghostly Wail without depleting his energy.
  • Vlad undergoes a power boost himself when he comes to terms with his faults and finds a new resolve.
• The Atoner: Vlad seemingly wishes to make amends for his past misdeeds, especially after releasing Dark Danny by accident and messing up the timeline. At the end of the story, Clockwork gives Vlad a second chance to prove his commitment to this by making him the caretaker of a newly reincarnated Dark Danny, who now resides in one of Danny's clone bodies.
• Ambiguous Situation: After Dark Danny is defeated and Clockwork reincarnates him into one of Vlad's Danny clones, it is unclear if he retains his memories, or if Clockwork erased them so he can begin anew.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Played with. Dark Danny and Vlad each achieve one of their villainous goals, but only after they've undergone Heel Realizations and pledged themselves to become better. Even after being defeated, the former still succeeded in doing enough damage to the timeline that Danny is still forced to make a choice that would irrevocably ruin some facet of his present, regardless of what option he picks. Meanwhile, the latter gets to have Danny as a son, something he desired from much of the animated series, in the form of a reincarnated Dark Danny.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Dark Danny lampshades to Vlad that he is the embodiment of one of his greatest wishes; make Danny into the son he never had. When Vlad finds out that Dark Danny was his creation (or at least, the creation of an alternate version of him), he is understandably horrified by what he sees.
• Big Bad: Dark Danny once again serves as the primary antagonist, wreaking havoc in the past to destroy his good self's present.
• Bittersweet Ending: Even though Dark Danny is defeated again, he still succeeded in doing enough damage to the timeline that Danny needs to make a Sadistic Choice in order to repair it. He ultimately decides to choose the option that establishes a Cosmic Retcon wherein Danny's part in the Disasteroid event has been erased, meaning he is back to being a Hero with Bad Publicity, with his parents and the rest of the world no longer aware of his Secret Identity. On the plus side, Danny, Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and (unbeknownst to them) Valerie still have their memories of everything that has occurred, Danny and Sam are still a couple, and Vlad (who also remembers everything) may genuinely be on the path of atonement.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After not reappearing in the series, Dark Danny finally makes his return. Counts as a Long Bus Trip as he's been gone eighteen years in real time.
  • Ernesto Montez also returns, and has reclaimed his position as mayor after Tucker was fired.
• Call-Back: In The Ultimate Enemy, it was shown that if given a second chance, Vlad was capable of repenting for his actions as seen when his future self helped Danny return to the past to stop Dark Danny. Here, once Vlad realizes he has only himself to blame for losing everything he had, he genuinely does all he can to help Team Phantom stop Dark Danny.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: At the end of the novel, Clockwork mentions that his powers have become weaker, due to either his forced fusion with Dark Danny or the glitches in time. He warns that he won't be able to fix the timeline again if anything goes wrong as he still has to mend the new time stream, and leaves the fate of the future entirely on Danny, Vlad, and the others who've retained their memories.
• Continuation: Takes place after the events of the show's Grand Finale, Phantom Planet.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A skeptical Danny de-powers Vlad with the Specter Deflector again just like he did in the episode "Maternal Instincts" and also as Tucker did in "Kindred Spirits".
  • Jazz once more calls herself, Sam, and Tucker "Ghost Getters", which Sam and Tuck still find lame.
• Cosmic Retcon: Clockwork performs this upon Danny's request to help mend the damaged timeline, with the result essentially resetting the status quo to that of the second season, as Danny is no longer a global hero, being a Hero with Bad Publicity, while Vlad regains the wealth and status he once held, with no one remembering his ghostly status or that he tried to hold the world hostage during the Disasteroid incident.
• Emotional Powers: It's here that it's revealed that all ghosts are the physical manifestations of strong emotions from the people of Earth (hence why so many of his foes — Desiree, Spectra, Ember — are fueled by the intense feelings of others) and that Danny and Vlad's ghost powers are also fueled by their emotions.
• Enemy Mine: To stop Dark Danny, Team Phantom is forced to join forces with Vlad Plasmius.
• Evil Is Petty: What else can be said about Dark Danny traveling into the past and messing with it just to ruin Danny's happy life?
• Fighting from the Inside: While being fused with Dark Danny, Clockwork is fighting for his free will, which may also contribute to the time glitches. Danny and Vlad manage to work together to separate them.
• Fusion Dance: In order to gain more power, Dark Danny forcibly fuses with Clockwork, resulting in his appearance taking on some of Clockwork's features and causing several "glitches" in the time stream.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Downplayed, as Danny, at the end of the battle, admits he still hates Vlad for his past misdeeds. However, he at least thanks his archenemy for saving his life and accepting his own faults, implying he may one day forgive him if he keeps it up.
• Given Name Reveal: Dark Danny is merely referred to as "Phantom" by all the characters throughout the book (mostly to separate him from Danny).
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Due to Danny choosing to have Clockwork erase his part in stopping the Disasteroid in order to fix the timeline. As such, no one knows how the Earth was spared from its destruction, and Danny no longer has the fame and glory he originally received, returning to being hated by the majority of Amity Park.
• Happy Ending Override: Invoked by Dark Danny, who travels into the past to ruin the future for Danny and the others, just when Danny's life was going great. In the end, to undo the damage Dark Danny had done to the timeline, Danny asks Clockwork to erase his role in the show's Grand Finale.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Danny makes a non-lethal one. To fix the damage that Dark Danny caused to the time steam, Danny chooses to have Clockwork erase his role in the events of Phantom Planet along with everyone's memories of his Secret Identity.
• History Repeats: The last time Danny faced him, Dark Danny nearly succeeded in killing Danny's loved ones despite being captured, if not for Clockwork's intervention. Just like then, despite Dark Danny's defeat, his actions on the timeline were so severe that it required Clockwork's involvement to undo it, at the cost of all the events of Phantom Planet.
• Karmic Jackpot: Vlad ends becoming the father of a newly reincarnated Dark Danny, finally getting the "perfect son" he always wanted. This could also be Clockwork's way of telling Vlad if he truly wants to atone his past faults, this will be his chance to prove it. Also expanding upon this, the reason it all happened in the first place is because Bad Future Vlad did the right thing by ripping the medallion out of Danny instead of killing him to stop the Bad Future.
• Loose Canon: invoked The graphic novel had no input from the show's creator, Butch Hartman, who had very different ideas of how to continue the show than Gabriela Epstein. Whether one chooses to accept this as a true continuation of the show generally depends on their stance towards God Does Not Own This World.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Upon escaping, Dark Danny travels into the past to alter Team Phantom's present, requiring the heroes to pursue him through time.
• Must Make Amends: After finally accepting that it was his own fault he drove everyone away and lost everything he had, Vlad decides to atone for his selfish actions by assisting in stopping Dark Danny.
• Official Couple: Danny and Sam, who had underwent a Relationship Upgrade towards the end of Phantom Planet. Thankfully, it's one of things Danny still retains after he's forced to perform a Cosmic Retcon to undo Dark Danny's damage to the timeline.
• Open Sesame: In order to get into Vlad's lab through his private football field, Danny is forced to activate the voice command by saying "Packers Rule".
• Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Danny notices how weaker his powers have become since the Disasteroid incident, often short-circuiting in the most inconvenient of times. While exploring the Ghost Zone and finding The Source, he eventually realizes that it's because after receiving his Happily Ever After, he no longer held a true purpose to use them to their fullest extent. After finding a new drive, by becoming a "bridge" between the Ghost Zone and Earth, Danny's full power returns.
• Raise Him Right This Time: After Dark Danny is defeated, Clockwork reincarnates him into the body of a Danny clone as Vlad's son, with the implications that Vlad would raise him properly.
• Sadistic Choice: To properly restore the timeline to the way it was, Clockwork can only offer Danny one of two options: 1) retain his Happily Ever After, but will be Depowered permanently and live the rest of his life as a normal human. Or 2) retain his ghost powers, but his part in stopping the Disasteroid will be erased, and he'll return to being a Hero with Bad Publicity and no one on Earth (including his parents) will remember his Secret Identity. Danny ultimately chooses the second option, sacrificing his fame and glory to keep acting as the bridge between ghosts and humans.
• Sequel Episode: The long-awaited follow-up to The Ultimate Enemy.
• Sequel Hook: Danny getting a Happy Ending Override and having his involvement in Phantom Planet being erased leads to a lot of things to explore, namely what Vlad will do now that he's no longer Amity Park's mayor and has a reborn Dark Danny as a son, and Valerie still has Clockwork's time medallion and probably still retains her memories. There may be how Danny will reclaim what he had to sacrifice and Vlad will likely try to atone for his villainy, all of which implies this book is actually the first of an entire series.
• Shout-Out:
  • The concept of the hero being forced to erase the timeline where he finally had a happy life is similar to One More Day. Although, given Danny is asking Clockwork to do so while being unaffected by it echoes more to Spider-Man: No Way Home. The main difference being that Danny still manages to keep his friends, family, and Love Interest.
  • Characters resembling Luz and Amity can be seen in a couple of crowd shots.
  • Danny's not the first Nicktoon hero to see his powers weaken after he lost his drive and purpose — Prince Zuko went through the same thing. Adding to that, Danny taking up the role as a bridge between the Ghost Zone and Earth is also very similar to one of the roles of the Avatar ("the bridge between our world and the Spirit World").
• Snap Back: Thanks to Dark Danny's actions, everything that had transpired after the grand finale had to be erased, meaning Danny's parents don't know he's half-ghost and he's not a global hero.
• Status Quo Is God: The story erases everyone's knowledge of Danny's involvement in the Season 3 finale, returning Danny to being a Hero with Bad Publicity whose parents think his alter ego is a menace. The one difference is that Danny's Relationship Upgrade with Sam is still intact.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: While the ending of Phantom Planet, in which Tucker became Amity Park's mayor for his part in helping save the world from the Disasteroid was meant to be a humorous Throw the Dog a Bone moment, the realistic absurdity of a fifteen-year-old boy holding a political position shows itself here, as it's revealed that Tucker was only mayor for two days, due to some incident in which he accidentally dropped a baby.
• Take That!: Danny asking Clockwork to erase his involvement in Phantom Planet can be seen as an In-Universe Self-Deprecation towards the divisive Grand Finale of an already rather mediocre third season.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: When none of their weapons slow down Dark Danny, Jazz suggests to her parents that they try talking to him, reasoning that he must still be Danny deep down, only for Maddie to declare, "That's not my Danny."
• The Time of Myths: The gang discover that the realms of "Spirit" (the Ghost Zone) and Earth were one unified world before disharmony caused the two to separate into their current state. It's stated that this separation will continue to grow and both worlds will collapse into total entropy eventually, implying that it's Danny's destiny to reunite the two worlds.
• Time Skip: The comic takes place two years after the series finale.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Dash Baxter, who previously bullied Danny, is shown to be on better terms with him after the events of the finale, as he initially calls him "nerd" before correcting himself and calling him by his actual name. This is rendered moot now that Dash no longer knows Fenton and Phantom are the same person.
• Transformation Sequence: Jazz has one when she suits up in the Fenton Peeler, complete with ending on a pose very reminiscent of a Magical Girl.
• The Unmasqued World: While likely a dubious Loose Canon in relation to the main series, the book shows that Danny's secret as Danny Phantom was indeed revealed to the entire world. Unfortunately, it ends up being undone to reverse Dark Danny's actions.
• Understatement: Danny plays this straight to sum up the complication of him seeing Vlad again:
  Vlad: Listen, I know I'm probably the last person you want to see right now, but-
  Danny: Seeing the guy who's spent the last few years trying to destroy me, break up my parents, and who almost caused the destruction of the world?
• Untrusting Community: What the new Amity Park becomes after Danny chooses to erase his part in stopping the Disasteroid. Mayor Montez makes his town to be anti-ghost by creating an official branch of ghost hunters, as well as adding mandatory ghost fighting programs in public schools, and declaring Danny Phantom Public Ghost Enemy #1 again. Danny still chooses to be the hero to earn the town's trust again.
• Unreliable Narrator: When telling Danny and his friends about Dark Danny's escape, Vlad claims he put up a brave fight, but it's shown that he quickly hid and left Clockwork to face Dark Danny alone.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: After an uncomfortable horseback ride, Vlad turns green and vomits into a bush.
• Was Once a Man: It's revealed that all ghosts — even the Undead Abominations Danny's fought across the franchise — are the remnant manifestations of the emotions of living beings from Earth. They simply degraded into less-human forms over time.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Due to the events of Phantom Planet being erased (mostly people remembering Danny's involvement), it is unknown what happens to Vlad in the new timeline as the previous Vlad is taken by Clockwork to watch over Dark Danny.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: While Dark Danny was originally portrayed as a monster whose tragic circumstances led to the loss of his humanity, here it's revealed that his actions are motivated by the loss of his loved ones deep down. Learning of this, Vlad agrees to save Dark Danny from being erased by the timeline so that he can start over.
• Worf Had the Flu: Due to his powers malfunctioning, even the Box Ghost is able to get the drop on Danny.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: A minor one, but after the ending of Phantom Planet showed Tucker getting some respect by becoming Amity Park's new mayor, it's revealed that he only lasted two days due to an incident where he had dropped a baby.

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