Review: Secret Six: The Reptile Brain trade paperback (DC Comics)

I'm skeptical of one claim bandied about in the run-up to the DC Comics relaunch, that the relaunch would clear the decks of years of continuity choking off writers creativity. Letting alone that I believe continuity to be essentially inescapable, Gail Simone's Secret Six: The Reptile Brain is a perfect example of how the long history of a shared universe can be strikingly, immensely powerful. Some of what Simone uses (or re-uses) here is her own, something I found distracting in Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle, but works considerably well here; others of what she uses borrows from the edges of the DC Universe's wide tapestry in very effective ways.

[Contains spoilers. Not much more I can say without spoiling elements of this book]

The first few pages of Reptile Brain, despite that they star the "replacement" Secret Six and not our favorite anti-heroes, are one of those perfect comics sequences, self-contained, that appear to be going one direction and then twist in another for a perfect punchline. Such is the case when the Six's "routine" shakedown on a yacht is suddenly interrupted by none other than Simone's Spy Smasher Katarina Armstrong, late of Birds of Prey.

Someone unfamiliar with Simone's previous work might just see the Six surrounded by US officials, but for fans of Birds (and Checkmate, for that matter), the trajectory of Reptile Brain becomes suddenly wonderfully clear -- Armstrong's Six on one side versus Mockingbird Amanda Waller's Six on the other. The chill of understanding that the reader receives when Armstrong makes the scene only comes by being a dedicated reader -- only comes through the virtues of continuity -- and I daresay a comics universe without those instances (if such were even possible) would be poorer indeed.

(Aside: I'm writing this just as the new DC Relaunch/Amanda Waller controversy is breaking. Reptile Brain contains some fantastic Amanda Waller scenes, and I can't help but read this book as something of a farewell to this iteration, at least, of one of the great characters original to the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, pre-Flashpoint era. I do not think the "thinning down" of Waller for the new DC Universe necessarily represents a greater racism or sexism than what otherwise underlines society insomuch as I think this is another attempt by DC to reflect the greater media depictions of their characters; that does not mean, however, that it's a change rather poorly thought-out and executed.

Further, there is considerable comedy to a scene in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies in which a Kryptonite-addled Lex Luthor grabs up artist Ed McGuinness's significantly rotund Waller in a passionate kiss that just wouldn't be as absurd with the new younger, slimmer Waller nor would be as funny without knowing the decades-long individual and shared histories of these characters. Here, once again, is the power of continuity, not so easily dismissed. End aside.)

To add continuity on top of continuity, Simone then takes both Six teams and drops them unceremoniously in a dinosaur-infested jungle, expertly revealing little by little that they're in fact in Skartaris, the magical alternate DC dimension of Warlord fame. And this is not just Skartaris-as-background, as its often the case when DC characters make a visit. Simone actually drops the Sixers right at the end of Warlord creator Mike Grell's most recent 2009 series, which ran for sixteen issues but so far under the radar that DC never even released a collection of it -- and Simone makes that series' final events key to what happens in Reptile Brain. A turn off to some, maybe, but I love that Simone cares enough about DC Comics continuity to make use of it (in an accessible way), reader familiarity be damned.

What emerges is Secret Six at its best -- two groups of villains, neither quite right or wrong, debating the finer points of colonialism and their own friendship with one another as they battle over whether the United States will annex Skartaris. It is bloody and morally gray, and in the end both teams decide to abandon their mission completely rather than keep fighting -- a peaceful ending that's perfectly against type. That Simone grounds the underlying conflict in political and interpersonal issues helps to balance the swords and sorcery setting that otherwise wouldn't serve Secret Six. From when Simone reintroduces Spy Smasher in the beginning to where she tidies up elements of her All-New Atom run in the end, the "Reptile Brain" storyline is riveting from start to finish.

I picked up Reptile Brain, however, most specifically because it crosses over with Paul Cornell's Superman: The Black Ring, volume one of which I absolutely adored. Unfortunately, as good as a Lex Luthor/Secret Six Simone/Cornell crossover sounds, I found these issues markedly dull. Luthor hires the Six to be his hidden bodyguards in an encounter with Vandal Savage; the Six are almost immediately revealed, and spend most of the rest of two issues standing around while Luthor and Savage bicker about blowing up the building they're occupying. Savage comes off whiny here and the perceived danger to the characters is near nonexistent; even despite that Sixer Scandal Savage confronts her dad and we delve further into Scandal's origins, these issues lack the pep of "Reptile Brain" before them, and they were less than I expected.

Still, four good issues balance out two lesser ones, and Secret Six: The Reptile Brain is ultimately a prime example of the Secret Six series we've grown to love. Unfortunate doesn't even begin to describe that the next book coming down the pike will be Secret Six's last; more on that when it arrives.

[Incluides original covers.]

Reptile Brain crosses over with the second volume of Superman: The Black Ring, and coming up is our review of that book. See you then!

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Review: Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle trade paperback (DC Comics)

The Secret Six is back to wonderful mayhem with writer Gail Simone's Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle. I continue to believe, unfortunately, that the title is not as strong as at the beginning of the series, but Cats in the Cradle is a marked improvement over the last volume, Danse Macabre. Still, Cats has some moments that are as taut as anything we've seen so far in Secret Six, both shockingly violent and startlingly non-violent, and fans will be riveted nonetheless.

[Contains spoilers]

When the Secret Six is routinely hip-deep in blood, it's hard to keep track of whose killing the most. While it would be hard to characterize Catman Thomas Blake as the team's conscience, however, we can recognize that Blake's misgivings -- if not about killing, than at least about what killing does to him as a person -- have been present from the beginning. In Secret Six: Unhinged, Blake worries to Sixer Deadshot that he's "lost the horizon" -- that Blake no longer knows if the bad things he does are evil, or if his sensibilities have just changed so far that he simply has a different perspective than regular people on his actions that might be perceived as evil.

Simone doesn't give Blake resolution on this question so swiftly. Indeed as recently as Danse Macabre Blake is schooling a bereaved father on the finer points of torturing a criminal, though Blake does pause later to wonder what effect the situation had on young Black Alice, bearing witness. But at the beginning of the second chapter of Cats, Blake tenuous hold on morality seems to disappear in an instant, over a few brief pages that draw the reader closer and closer into Blake's feral green eyes. I worried in Danse that the Six had lost their backstabbing aesthetic, but it's back in force as Blake seriously contemplates killing his teammates in exchange for the life of his kidnapped son. The moment is electrifying -- classic Secret Six.

We learn later that Blake's new madness is not so sudden or unprecedented as it might previously have seemed. In flashback, Simone shows that Blake is the child of an abusive father, who goaded Blake into killing his mother before Blake also later killed his father. (The similarities to Green Arrow's revised origins in Green Arrow: Into the Woods, especially as relates to lions and safaris, are interesting.) Despite that Blake's child came from his being manipulated by the villain Cheshire, who's later betrayed Blake and the Six more than once, Blake's anguish over his own parents is enough to set him on a vengeful path when his son is endangered. Blake does not ultimately attack the Six, but he leaves a trail of carnage as he attacks his son's kidnappers; even Deadshot notes that Blake's torture of one criminal is "&^%$ed up" even by Deadshot's standards.

The kidnapper turns out to be a Mr. MacQuarrie, a self-styled "hero" with no superheroic powers other than to be very, very rich -- kidnapping Blake's son turns out not to be for vengeance on Blake, but on Cheshire for murdering his family when she blew up Qurac. "I am a new kind of hero," MacQuarrie tells Blake. "I right wrongs. My family is dead, yet yours lives. Is that fair? Forget good and evil, I ask you, is it right?" MacQuarrie suggests that Blake tell Cheshire their son died even though he lived, and with some hesitation Blake complies.

Through MacQuarrie, Simone presents the epitome of what Blake has feared to become -- someone without morals, only their instinctual sense of right and wrong; strangely, it seems what Catman fears to become is entirely animalistic. In carrying out MacQuarrie's vengeance against Cheshire -- irrespective of, or perhaps especially because Blake kills MacQuarrie right after -- Blake's transformation in this way is complete. The "rest in peace" that Blake speaks at the end of the "Cats in the Cradle" storyline, seemingly directed at his son, could as much be his own soul or conscience. It will be interesting to see, in the next book, how losing Blake's more level perspective may then affect the Six as a whole.

All of this contains the elements I've grown to love in Secret Six stories -- moral ambiguity, mystery villains, and the team divided against itself. Cats is mostly Thomas Blake's story, but Simone provides a wonderful moment where Scandal Savage leaves the team to find Blake and her self-appointed guardian Bane forbids it -- we have wondered all along when Scandal and Bane's relationship would reach a crisis point, believing it would happen with much bloodshed, and instead they part ways with silence and a kiss on the cheek. Here, Simone reminds us that the Six don't fight for what we think they should, they fight for what they think they should, and could as often as not solve their difficulties without bloodshed when necessary. This works all the more to make the Six characters seem, like Paul Cornell wrote in his introduction to Unhinged, like real people, bound to act in unexpected ways.

I am not entirely sold on Cats, I would mention. The characters are as lively and humorous as ever, but while the story focuses mostly on Blake, the B-plot has Black Alice picking a childish fight with Scandal over petty perceived slights. "This ain't," as Deadshot delicately puts it, "showers after gym class," and Alice's tantrum indeed comes off as a tantrum, something I don't think the Six would tolerate letting alone that I as the reader don't care much about it. Every character here has a personal tragedy, but that Black Alice tried to cure her father's asthma and gave him cancer (something one imagines Zatanna could fix pretty quick) pales in comparison to Jeanette's epic description of her own decapitation in Secret Six: Depths. Simone and Secret Six are funny, but bits like "the Demon Estrogen" were groaners; there just wasn't a lot to Cats outside Catman.

Following "Cats in the Cradle" are two single issues, the first written by John Ostrander of Suicide Squad fame. Ostrander has certainly earned his reputation time and again on Squad, Spectre, and more, but "Predators" here has similar problems to Ostrander's guest-written stories on Danse Macabre. It's nice to read a Secret Six story away from "Cats"'s drama, where the team battles a common enemy, but the plot is far too generic. The characters involved could have been the Secret Six, or the Suicide Squad, or the Titans for Hire or the Teen Titans. Jeannette is super-strong, Scandal flips around, and so on -- the story really fails to illuminate the Six in any sort of specific way. Glad to see Ostrander's name here, but "Predators" seems a slow point after the events of "Cats."

Cats in the Cradle ends with a great, bizarre single issue by Simone that posits the Six as characters in the Old West; the drifter Deadshot comes to town and helps Scandal and her deputy Bane fight a villain resembling Junior and her henchman Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson. Aside from a frame that suggests the story is a mere Punch and Judy puppet show fantasy, and words of ally Thomas Blake in the end, there's overt explanation given for why we're visiting the Six in the past. It doesn't matter -- the Six as gunslingers is a load of fun, and I'd just as soon see them as World War II spies and 1920s mobsters next.

Blake utters, as Junior kills him in the end, "Thought we might be heroes," and Junior replies, "Not in this lifetime." The implications are fascinating -- are there numerous time-separated instances of the Six, like there are the Suicide Squad and Shadowpact? Does Simone mean to suggest iterations of the Six have tried to be heroes time and again, and that maybe our group will finally succeed -- or that every Six is doomed to fail? I am just as eager to see this book's next volume take up the plight of the Old West Six as I am to see it never mentioned again -- a strange aberration interpreted for better or worse depending on how the Six is doing that day.

And one other thought: I have not liked Secret Six as much, these past few volumes, as I did when the book started. The Old West tale, "Unforgivable," is essentially a re-telling of my favorite Secret Six trade, Unhinged. Does the use of Junior, Aaron and Tig, and others suggest a return to that best era of Secret Six post-Cats in the Cradle? I don't know, but this book has done it again -- I'm done with one volume and immediately eager for the next.

[Contains full covers]

More reviews on the way. Thanks for reading!

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Review: Secret Six: Danse Macabre trade paperback (DC Comics)

I consider the first volume of the ongoing Secret Six series, Unhinged, about as close to perfect as any trade paperback (and well-deserving a hardcover omnibus collection); the follow up, Depths, is nearly as good. As such, this series was bound to take a tumble, and Secret Six: Danse Macbre is that tumble. Blame it on any number of factors -- a Blackest Night crossover that just gets in the way, a new character less interesting than the one she replaces, an art team change that robs the book of some of its dynamism. Either way, Danse Macabre isn't the series's finest volume.

[Contains spoilers]

Danse Macabre pits the Secret Six against the Suicide Squad of the present, and then the two teams against the resurrected Suicide Squad of the past, with beloved Squad writer John Ostrander assisting Six writer Gail Simone. This would seem a recipe not just for a great Six story, but also for some key nostalgic moments among the Squad, especially given that this story crossed over into the Blackest Night "resurrected issue" Suicide Squad #67.

As was true of a number of other Blackest Night crossovers (Blackest Night: Batman immediately comes to mind), however, the enjoyment of a horde of resurrected characters on the screen is lost in the lack of space to do anything with them. The Black Lanterns seem something of an afterthought -- they don't really become a threat until the last chapter -- and their emotional conflicts with the Squad factor almost not at all. By my count, the only Black Lantern identified by their superhero name is Atom Adam Cray, and this only warrants a panel.

The Six themselves have no emotional ties to the Black Lanterns, and further, the living characters are aware throughout the story that the dead characters are Black Lantern derivatives of their hosts and not the hosts themselves. We wouldn't expect the Six nor the Squad to hesitate to kill an attacking former friend, but it was the sense that the identities of the Black Lanterns didn't really matter that made this feel like a missed opportunity. The Black Lanterns, to second-guess, might've been Scandal Savage's former lover Knockout, or Deadshot's brother, or Bane's parents, or the people Catman wishes he hadn't killed; instead, the Six emerge from Danse Macabre relatively unscathed, which after the betrayals in Unhinged and Depths seems like something of a letdown.

As well, Black Alice is a Gail Simone staple, and I liked seeing her here just as I did Yasemin Soze, late of Birds of Prey, and Artemis as tied to Simone's Wonder Woman series. With the lone exception of the fact that Alice finds Ragdoll attractive -- which is hilarious every time it comes up -- I just couldn't get excited about having Alice on the team. She replaces Scandal, which is intended to be a letdown, but I find Scandal's dysfunctional relationship with Bane far more interesting on the screen than Alice's brattiness.

Much as Alice herself might protest, it's obvious she doesn't have the bloodthirstiness of the Six, and as such that makes her like a sidekick, someone who's going to pull the Six away from the brink rather than over it (unlike, for instance, new-er member Jeannette). My annoyance with Black Alice is similar to my annoyance with Misfit in Birds of Prey; I would rather see the heroes undone through their own failings or the machinations of their enemies than due to the predictable inexperience of their junior member.

Danse Macabre marks the departure of artist Nicola Scott from Secret Six, and the arrival of J. Calafiore. I rather liked Calafiore's work on Batman: Gotham Underground, and otherwise I would have said Calafiore's rather angular art would be appropriate for a villains' tale, associating it as I do with the gangs of Gotham. It almost goes without saying, however, that Calafiore's pencils lack Scott's realism, and while the scene of a bereaved father about to torture his daughter's killer was certainly shocking, I felt it lacked some of the impact of Scott's depiction of Bane biting through a henchman's neck in Unhinged, for instance. Under other circumstances, Danse Macabre might be another welcome Six tale -- including a detailed spotlight on Deadshot and the always-welcome inclusion of Amanda Waller -- but all told it lacked the specific punch of the previous volumes.

Again, whereas the two previous Secret Six volumes left the reader concerned whether the Six could continue together after the book's events, Secret Six: Danse Macabre contains no such shocks. The best moment is really the last page, in which we learn Waller is the team's new Mockingbird. It's not clear to me how the team perceives Mockingbird -- I believe they know the former Mockingbird was Lex Luthor, without their best interests at heart, and yet they've followed this Mockingbird on two missions with no real misgivings.

That Waller is Mockingbird suggests she sent the Six on their mission in Depths specifically to free the Amazons and destroy the prison island (or maybe so Waller could take control of it), a reinterpretation of Depths I'm eager to see explored. This shock, however, comes at the end, and to an extent I do believe it's too little, too late.

[Includes original covers]

Ragdoll is as much fun as always here, to be sure, and Scandal's girlfriend Liana faces a wonderfully awkward pre-date grilling from the paternal Bane, but this volume of Secret Six didn't challenge me as much as the books that preceded it did. Hopefully the series gets its stride back with the next volume, Cats in the Cradle. And speaking of which, a review of Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle and more ... coming up from Collected Editions.

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Review: Secret Six: Depths trade paperback (DC Comics)

[This review comes from Derek Roper]

I really, really like that Secret Six has always been a book with a great amount of action, sick humor, and easy-on-the-eyes-characters. Secret Six: Depths (collecting issues #8-14) has to be their quintessential story arc and takes the chains off of the characters. Unhinged was great, no doubt about it, in Depths, they actually come out lower than when they went in.

The book starts out with two issues that break from the larger story arc. The stripper from Scandal’s birthday in Unhinged pursues her for a "Double Date" (a nice nod to Simone’s Justice League Unlimited episode) with the Six’s newest member Jeanette and Deadshot. The four embark on a night of fighting and beating people to a pulp.

There is a treat for religious Simone followers: Simone connected friend Amanda Gould to DC after Simone saw Gould’s drawings of the Six in the style of Tiny Titans. This lead to a disturbingly cute back-up story, "Ragdoll Dreams," which follows the twisted and air-deprived mind of Peter Merkel.

The second self-contained issue ties in to Batman: Battle for the Cowl and finds Catman, Ragdoll, and Bane in the midst of Batman’s disappearance. It seems that Catman and Bane feel it is their duty to take care of Gotham (any way they please). They fail miserably (with Ragdoll hilariously in the role of Robin) and in an interesting conversation, Bane and Catman discuss how much they have in common with the Bat. It is interesting to see these two Batman villains behave this way and not try to burn the city or start a massive gang war.

The best part, however, is the "Depths" story itself, which has to be the bloodiest of all the Secret Six stories and shows new sides to the characters. As the saying goes, "You think you know, but you have no idea." Apparently Villains United’s Mockingbird is back and uses a wealthy man, Smyth, to hire the Six to watch over slaves that are building a massive prison on Devil’s Island. Automatically, the Six are in turmoil because half of them agree with the job and half think they should refuse it. The slaves, it turns out, are Amazons held captive after the events of Amazons Attack, bringing the Six not only in conflict with Wonder Woman character Artemis, but also Wonder Woman herself.

It’s at this point the characters cut loose, and we learn more about them as they do. Jeannette has appeared to be proper and elitist, but the reader learns she’s a banshee with power on par with Bane, having died by a tortuous beheading in the Victorian era (those familiar with John Byrne’s Silver Banshee will appreciate Jeannette’s transformation). We learn more about Scandal’s childhood, presented in flashbacks, and how she received the Lamentation Blades that she uses, in the present, to decapitate and rip the guards apart. (In another horrific scene, Ragdoll bashes in the man’s skull in with a monkey wrench. One of the things about Ragdoll is that he is always there for comedic relief and people can’t wait to see what he says next, but he is the most unstable of the group.)

As well, Catman has another in a string of changes of heart and decides to free the captive Amazons; he becomes more heroic every time he is given a choice. He only screws up when he is with the Six, leading me to believe that when he chooses his side, there will be great drama involved. As much as I like Catman, I’m starting to wonder how long before he and Deadshot actually try to kill one another; their bro-mance is funny, but I notice that they never stay on the same side for long.

The story aside, I appreciated all the background and allusions to classic literature that Simone includes. Smyth’s vision for the universal gulag is that of the nine circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno, and those familiar with it will see that Simone puts the characters through all the rings, from the slaves in the first circle to the Six betraying their employer in the ninth. The devil in the ninth circle turns out to be a version of Beowulf’s Grendel, whom Simone also used (in different form) in Wonder Woman: Ends of the Earth.

Artist Nicola Scott, as usual, provides great art and draws sexy characters (except Ragdoll—he’s just creepy). Simone’s writing requires the characters to have detailed facial expression, as when one of the slave drivers says "You can’t kill every criminal, we lack that will these days," and the wordless dialogue that follows is just Scandal looking at Jeanette, and Jeanette raising one eyebrow (Sounds like Kevin Maguire on early Justice League International -- ed.). As well, Scott does a great job on a page where Wonder Woman and the Six are juxtaposed to show both the Six’s weapons and Wonder Woman’s defense.

Finally, Daniel Luvisi is the cover artist for Secret Six, and for someone who apparently never went to art school, he seems a prodigy. His renditions of the Six on the cover of the graphic novel look like real life actors. His covers are included with the book and the cover for issue #13 features Catman looking a whole lot like Brody Jenner. His realistic style gives the book a different and gritty appearance.

The ending of Secret Six: Depths is a major cliff hanger; one of the members is pushed off the team by another of the Six. This makes me wish that Danse Macabre, the next Secret Six trade, would be released that much sooner.

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Review: Showcase Presents: House of Secrets Vol. 1 trade paperback (DC Comics)

[This review comes from Collected Editions contributor Derek Roper]

There is this house, see, and it has had its fair share of occupants; a drifter and more recently a group of six mercenaries. But before them, there was a man named Abel and his “imaginary friend” Goldie, they spent many nights alone in this house. Although old and rickety it held many strange tales hidden within its walls. This house--The House of Secrets--is back with its strange and gruesome tales in Showcase Presents: The House of Secrets Volume 1. Scream!

I have to play realtor for a minute. The house was built by Kentucky Sen. Sandsfield. As the tales goes; he built it by hand. Every inch of the place is made with 100 percent Kentuckian material. He claimed that if the house wasn’t built with pieces of Kentucky, it wasn’t a real Kentucky home. It should be noted that the senator’s wife went mad in the house--yup, mad as a hatter.

After that, the house went through four owners who weren’t pure Kentuckian and so the house set dormant for a little while until a man by the name of Mr. Barkus purchased it and decided to have it hauled away on a trailer. But he too did not last long, as it was told; the house detached itself and knocked Barkus off a cliff where he met a gruesome death. The next owner, Abel, who was a pitiful man, was talked into looking at a house by a creepy realtor who disappeared and filled Abel with the entire house’s tales. Next up was a girl--a drifter--by the name of Rain Harper. She moved in (in the Vertigo series) and found that a closet held the Juris, a group of spirits who judged people whether they liked it or not. Eventually, the house was said to be demolished after the girl left. The last guests to move into the house before the events of Infinite Crisis were a group of six mercenaries who called themselves the Secret Six.

Now that you have the history, the collection in question boasts over 500 pages of horror and suspense tales, and collects The House of Secrets #81-98 and even some stories from its sister book The House of Mystery.

Each issue has stand-alone stories but also an underlying arc featuring the narrator Abel (think Rod Serling) who gets acclimated with the house. He is very timid at first but after his spooky introduction via the realtor he learns the ropes of the house and becomes just as creepy as the stories that are hidden within the halls. He is frequently visited by his brother Cain who lives across the way at the House of Mystery. The two frequently fight over who has the scarier stories.

Being that this was written in the 1970s, don’t look for modern dialogue; it is very proper and uses slang from that era. It is easy to read but if one has come into comics in the 1980s on, words like “shnook” don’t really pack much of a punch.

For fans of horror literature, most of the surprises in the stories can be seen from a mile away. It is kind of disappointing because they seem like a rehash of stories from the Twilight Zone and The Dark Side. Nostalgia is the only thing that can get one through these stories, and they’re in black in white to boot.

The black and white pages are cheaper economically but sometimes detract from the story. In the stories that have a dark setting, the mood doesn’t come across as strong. In the story “The Little Old Winemaker,” the ending effect of the red wine was supposed to resemble blood, but given that it is black it doesn’t do much for the story. Lighting and the creatures in subsequent stories also need color and not just zebra colored pages. I’ve had the honor of seeing the color pages and they have a sort of color to them that is reminiscent of the old Scooby-Doo cartoons. Plus, art by Alex Toth, Neal Adams, and Jim Aparo deserves to have its artwork in color.

Still, plenty of highlights stand out in this book. “Trick or Treat,” featuring a theif who meets an unfortunate end, is downright scary. An early version of the modern Swamp Thing also appears in issue #92, 
with story and art by Len Wein and Bernie Wrighton respectively.

In between the stories are “Able’s Fables,” which are like a spooky version of Tony Millionaire’s Makkies. They feature eccentric and sometimes downright dangerous situations like a little boy on the other side of a “Peep Show” stand blowing a dart through a straw towards the cornea of a business man wanting a thrill.

The tales from the House are the perfect collection to read to the kiddies or ones suffering from horror nostalgia, but for horror aficionados, this is better left on the shelf.

The next volume, Showcase Presents: House of Secrets Vol. 2 will feature issues #99-119 and also promises 500 pages of on-the-edge-of-your-seat-tales.

Happy Halloween from Collected Editions!

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Review: Secret Six: Unhinged trade paperback (DC Comics)

[This review comes from Collected Editions contributor Derek Roper]

When we last left the Six, they were in tatters in Birds of Prey. Knockout had been killed in the events leading up to Final Crisis, Harley Quinn left because it got too dangerous, and the rest were imprisoned on a planet in Salvation Run. What was a group of mercenaries to do? Get an ongoing series, that’s what.

Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, and Ragdoll return to the House of Secrets in Secret Six: Unhinged (collects issues #1-7). But they are not alone: a certain A-List Batman villain, Bane, and a wealthy casino owner, Jeanette, join the group as they try to deliver a package that has every villain in the DC Universe -- and some heroes -- scrambling after them.

Simone once said that the plan was to have a Secret Six and Catman revolving miniseries but in the end the monthly is what we got. This gives her plenty of room to flesh out the characters and give them the long story arcs that are set up in this trade.
 The plot begins when brothers Aaron and Tig escort a very nervous man down to a basement in a gay bar called the Bear Trap. The man has lost something that belongs to the mysterious crime boss Junior. Junior sits in the basement in a trunk with nothing but a rotary phone and a notepad, and with that little apparently runs all the West Coast action and gives direction to the 100 and Intergang.

I must detour for a moment and say how scary this “Junior” is. The only glimpse we see are two black hands with long fingers. There is something about an unseen villain that strikes fear in characters and readers alike. The buildup is very horror movie-ish, reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, where one can just imagine how horrible it is going to be when the creature is unmasked. But unlike the buildup of The Village, Unhinged does not disappoint. The reveal on page 120 is so startling that it makes one wish someone would have prepared them.

OK, back to the plot. The Six are hired by a mysterious client (that pays in advance cash smelling of herring) to bust Tarantula Catalina Flores (of Nightwing fame) out of Alcatraz prison and escort her across the country to the eastern seaboard city of Gotham; along with Ms. Flores they have to stop and get a small card that was very precious to Junior. That is where the mayhem breaks out and the blood starts flying.
 A group of villains led by Cheshire and Lady Vic go after the item in question and manage to create some horrific moments. The best was a nod to the classic horror movies when the group goes to the house where the card is located and get surprised by Cheetah, who has such a serial killer presence it makes one glad that Bane is on the team—even if he does get smashed into a wall.


It was nice to see that the Origins and Omens story was included. It was rumored the upcoming volume DC Universe: Origins was going to house that material but it is nice to see them being collected with their respected story arcs. This O-and-O story was essential to the plot of the book because it gives background on who hired the Six.

Simone has a proclivity for character dialogue and each rogue has a unique voice, from Deadshot's colloquial “Go on, Killer. But do me a solid,” to Jeanette’s elitist “You look a proper shock.” Equally, Simone’s humor is dark and twisted. After the fight-fest on the Gotham Bridge, Jeanette had broken the top and bottom of King Shark’s mouth. She then proceeds to tell him “Why not send the silly little fish-man to swim about and find her?” To which the bandaged and wounded shark replies “Hmmf! Eye Ainff Noo Fiffmanff! Eye a Fark!” It is there that Simone shows how well she can poke fun at some of the most absurd characters of the DC Universe.

The art in Unhinged is superb. Nicola Scott’s introduction to the Six began during her tenure on the now cancelled Birds of Prey. Scott has a very good grasp on characters’ emotions. In the Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation trade, the art by Brad Walker wasn’t so clean. A lot of the lines that made up a characters' faces ran together and it was hard to tell if it was a wound or a frown line. The background art in this trade is so clean and crisp. The Gotham City skyline in issue two was absolutely breathtaking and shows that Scott has an eye for depth and scale.

However, I do have a quibble with one of the plot points in the story. Since the Six had to go to Alcatraz, they knew they had to keep the world’s greatest detective at bay. Catman confronts Batman to not only occupy him but to let him know that he is a force to be reckoned with. They fight each other and Catman manages to get a good shot. Batman has trained with Lady Shiva and trained Nightwing and Barbara Gordon and yet Catman gets a good shot at Batman? It makes sense that he has the gusto to fight the Bat, but Catman ought not stand a chance.

I also felt the ending was a bit of a bust in that characters that deserved some longevity were seemingly killed. Hopefully, since DC is a fan of characters coming back from the dead, said characters shouldn’t have too much of a wait. One of the Six walks away with Junior’s item and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in future collections.

Secret Six has always been a wild ride, from their days in Villains United to now. One never knows who is going to live and who is going to die, but they will be promised the three F’s; Filth, Fun, and Fiends.

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