6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Secret Six - sick and probably not sanitary, but oh so satisfying, October 2, 2009
This review is from: Secret Six: Unhinged (Paperback)
Man, I am so friggin' on board the SECRET SIX bandwagon. Her Scribey Awesomeness, writer Gail Simone, takes a bunch of low rent supervillains and somehow turns them into people you root for, never mind that these cats are either homicidal, suicidal, amoral, really weird, or just plain rat crazy. They may even smell bad (I'm looking at you, Ragdoll). Odd thing is that, separately, none of these bad guys would normally draw me in. Together, though, they form this dynamic, absorbing character soup.
If you haven't yet cracked open
Villains United (Countdown to Infinite Crisis) or
Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation, then I say you're missing out on some entertaining chunks of comic book goodness. Familiarity with those two mini-series comes in handy with this "Unhinged" story arc, told in this trade collection. Gail Simone jumps right into those awesome character moments, without as much as a polite "What Has Gone On Before" segment. So if you don't know jack about the Secret Six (or the Secret Five, as this story begins), then you may be a little lost for half a mo. But it's worth it catching up. SECRET SIX: UNHINGED collects the first seven issues of the regular ongoing series and, really, if you haven't jumped onboard yet, why the wait? Life's short.
I'm about to SPOILER some stuff from issue #1.
The ominous opening sequence introduces the seriously twisted villain of the piece. But, first, check out this other dude, some nobody being bullied into a desolate room by two henchmen, and, I'm sorry, but this poor sap may as well have had "Dead Vic" etched on his forehead. In the room sits a wooden box and a voice from inside it offers the Dead Vic a choice - his own life or his family's. The scumbag opts to save his own skin, except that whatever is in the box then reaches out and drags him into the box. This is almost never a good thing.
We cut to the next scene, and the fun starts. Thomas Blake (a.k.a. Catman) and Floyd Lawton (a.k.a. Deadshot) are in their civvies and out on an ice cream run. They're in a convenience store, in the middle of a heart to heart, Pulp Fiction style, when they get interrupted by an armed robbery. The cool twisty thing is that they foil the robbery (all the while engaged in their conversation) and then Deadshot himself casually confiscates the loot, as well as an armful of smokes. This is pretty awesome to me and typifies the interesting dichotomy of these characters. Bent and corrupt and damaged inside, and yet somehow likable. What sort of "friends" or colleagues would try to cheer up their grieving teammate by hiring a stripper to dress up like the grieving teammate's just deceased love? Why, the Secret Six, that's who, muther&^%$#*s!
The team leader is Scandal Savage, daughter of the immortal Vandal Savage, and she may have vomit on her duds (she's the grieving teammate, and she's been in the cups), but she can still land a gig for her team. Now that's professionalism. The new job isn't a cinch. The Six have to break out some supervillainess called Tarantula out of Alcatraz and then transport her cross-country from Frisco to Gotham City. Tarantula possesses something which the Six's employer desperately covets. In the middle of Scandal's briefing, Catman's cellie rings and it's the Huntress tipping him off that maybe the Secret Six shouldn't take the job - because a ten million dollar bounty has been placed on EACH of their heads, and all kinds of metahuman villains are raring to collect. The call ends, and on Huntress's side of things, we see Batman blending into the background. Oh, it's on, brother!
SPOILERS sort of end.
So, it's not surprising that parts of this story arc unfold like the plot from Clint Eastwood's THE GAUNTLET. Our guys go thru a gauntlet of a LOT of bad guys. Except that instead of a reinforced bus, the Six's vehicle, for a leg of the journey, is an unintimidating ice cream truck (hint: never let Ragdoll procure your getaway car). It's worth noting that if the Secret Six are considered B- or C-list villains, then the scuzzbuckets who come out of the woodwork to ambush them rate even lower down the alphabet. I see Mammoth, and a version of Crazy Quilt, and I swear there's a big shark dude. Cheshire and the Cheetah do bring in solid street cred.
One thing that seems to happen quite a bit - and there's an almost whimsical quality to it now - is that the team is always losing its sixth member. We eventually meet the new sixth member, and her name is Jeanette. Jeanette is interesting and a bit mysterious and quite posh, and we learn eventually that she is not one aristocrat you'd want to cross. I hope Simone keeps her around for awhile. Then again, she IS the sixth member...
I think, hands down, SECRET SIX is the most fun, best written bad guy-centric comic book out there, and this is with due respect to IRREDEEMABLE and WANTED, two titles which I also happen to like. For sure, I like SECRET SIX better than THUNDERBOLTS or DARK AVENGERS or even SUICIDE SQUAD. I can't get enough of Nicola Scott's clean artwork. She consistently visually captures Deadpool's smirky essence, Catman's conflicted nobility, Ragdoll's sheer floppy almost spooky weirdness, and Scandal Savage's lean, almost ordinary looks which belie her ability to layeth a vicious beatdown.
Gail Simone continues to impress me as a writer in this field. The Secret Six comprise some of the most messed-up misfits around, and yet Simone convinces me to pull for them and she keeps me engaged in their crazy adventures. She knows better than to remake the core characters into good guys. The Six are still very much out for themselves, and that callousness is perhaps sometimes overlooked because they tend to unleash their brand of nasty on those well deserving of it. Whenever a Sixer does a good deed, it's usually motivated by sheer self-interest. Simone doesn't sugarcoat the violence, and there are brutal scenes in here, including one of the Six enduring torture at the hands of the story's Big Bad. Speaking of violence, Deadshot won't hesitate to murderize you and then make a snarky remark about it, and for some reason I like that about him. Simone dishes out heaps of dark psychological leanings, sudden homicidal urges, backstabbings, and other forms of extremely bad behavior. In fact, the introduction of the McGuffin - that is, that very valuable item of Tarantula's - proves to be a severe test for team cohesion, and that whole "no honor among thieves" thing scratches its way to the surface. Villainy and trustworthiness - that's almost in the territory of antonyms.
In the end, for me, it's really about those great interactions, those character moments. Even the colorless Bane receives an infusion of personality with his disturbing fatherly demeanor towards Scandal Savage, which by the way really freaks out Floyd Lawton. And then there's Catman. A few years ago this dude was one of those irrelevant minor villains. But then the VILLAINS UNITED mini-series went a long ways to build up his credibility. Now he's the BEST TRACKER IN THE WORLD, which may have been true before but now, hell, I'm using caps. I don't even blink twice when he deploys to Gotham to distract Batman while the rest of the team carries on the Alcatraz stage of the mission. Catman has "words" with the Bat, and by "words" I mean fists to the face. And, after the fighty fight - when Catman informs Batman: "I let you win, you know." - there was a short moment when I half-bought into that. So Catman's come a long way. Out of everyone in this warped bunch, Catman may be the closest to having a moral compass. He's even contemplating going on the straight and narrow, even if Deadshot's reaction is to pretty much laugh in his face at the mere notion. I also get a kick out of how consistently Deadshot seems to get freaked out by Bane and Ragdoll. Although, yeah, Ragdoll's occasional musings do tend to open a door you'd rather had stayed close. Ragdoll is a very sick puppy.
This story arc comes with the by-now-expected gallows humor, and a good portion of the reading experience here is giggling at stuff you wouldn't giggle at in polite company and also marveling at the sudden spurts of violence and also at how sick and depraved some of these folks are. The main villain is this West Coast crimelord named Junior, and this guy is so creepy and so frightening that he supposedly makes the guys at Arkham drop a load in their pants. And if he's not enough of a Big Bad, yet another psychologically scarred villain pops in late in the game, and this one is nursing a personal grudge.
Here's one irritation. Bowing down to the then upcoming Green Lantern: Blackest Night event, issue #6 shortens up on the main story to insert an Origins & Omens bit on the Secret Six. This is a six-paged time waster, unless, of course, you haven't the 411 yet on the Secret Six. Then it's kind of handy.
SECRET SIX is one of those fringe titles, and by that I mean, by virtue of its dark, off-center qualities and its countercasting, it might not draw in readers who prefer more traditional superhero storytelling, let alone the more casual comic book readers. But Gail Simone has a knack for luring in unsuspecting window shoppers and converting them into her personal reading addicts. I've got my fingers crossed for this title.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Secret Six is back and in its own ongoing series, October 21, 2009
This review is from: Secret Six: Unhinged (Paperback)
Bags of superhero fun... Hang on, they aren't superheroes. Let me try this again.
Bags of supervillain fun... Um, well they are villains but they spend most of the time fighting other villains and doing the right thing usually for the wrong reasons and for money.
So, er, bags of super-powered fun with: Catman the conflicted sort-of bad guy who's really almost good but can't just quite get there; Deadshot the roguish amoral ruthless assassin who isn't quite as bad as he likes to make out; Scandal Savage, the leader, and in mourning for her dead girlfriend Knockout and is she just imagining that her ghost is speaking through other women?; the extremely flexible and totally insane Ragdoll who is almost a model of sanity compared to a relative of his the gang meet; newcomer Bane the man who broke Batman's back and who has a strangely chauvinistic paternal interest in Scandal; and lastly the one who doesn't turn up until later in the story.
Well, a really really bad guy sends all the supervillains he can find to get a certain something (and what a something it is!) from the Six provided in the process they inflict deeply painful and slow deaths on our friends. Lashings of gore and inappropriate inclinations, Catman fights Batman, extreme evil, great gags, and all of it wonderfully illustrated in true superhero -er, supervillain, no super- oh the heck with it, by Nicola Scott comic artist superstar in the making and garishly written by the one and only truly great Gail Simone.
How can you resist? Well, if you are, stop it. Buy this book now!
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