DC’s Wild Bunch: Gail Simone’s SECRET SIX

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By Taylor Pechter — What do DC’s deadliest marksmen, a washed-up big game hunter, the man who broke The Bat, the daughter of an immortal, a banshee, and a human rag doll all have in common? They form the band of baddies known as the Secret Six. Spinning out of the events of the major DC Comics stories Villain’s United and Infinite Crisis, Secret Six is a book that follows these characters as they do work as a mercenary outfit.

Penned by fan favorite writer Gail Simone with assists by legendary Suicide Squad scribe John Ostrander and the work of a cadre of artists including Dale Eaglesham, Brad Walker, Nicola Scott, and Jim Calafiore, this series is rich with distinct themes connected to its six main characters, as well as to how they affect work as a team. It all adds up to a modern classic superhero story about comradery, love, addiction, mental illness, and much more.

Secret Six - Deadshot

What lies at the heart of Secret Six is its characters, each with their own intricacies that not only inform their character but also their place within the team. To start with, let’s talk about one of the most recognizable team members: Deadshot. Floyd Lawton—alias Deadshot—is one of Batman’s deadliest adversaries, also touted as one of the deadliest assassins in the entire DCU.

With Deadshot, Simone’s story examines how his job has affected his morality as well as his mental state. In a great one-shot issue titled “Control”, written by Ostrander, Floyd meets with a priest to confess his homicidal tendencies. Through his many years of work, he has grown numb in his morality. The only way he knows how to satiate himself is by killing. While these qualities make him a hard teammate at times, his brotherly rivalry with Catman (more below) and his connection to Scandal help pull him through.

Secret Six - Catman

Speaking of Catman, let’s move on to him. Thomas Blake is the son of a big game hunter. His father was abusive to his mother, at some points threatening to run away with him. As he grew up, he became a formidable big game hunter and tracker in his own right. He eventually crossed paths with Batman, but ultimately became a has been. That is until he left for Africa and got marked by one of the lions in the pride he ran with.

After declining membership in the Secret Society, Catman joined the Six to combat the Society. In “Cat’s In The Cradle”, a story that focuses on Catman, we follow him as he tracks down the kidnappers of his son, Thomas Blake, Jr. Sadly, he couldn’t save his son, but the narrative comes back to Catman absolving himself of his past. He realized he couldn’t be there for his son, and it tears him apart.

Secret Six - Bane and Scandal   

Bane and Scandal are next. We all know Bane as the man who broke Batman. He is a master tactician and hand-to-hand combatant. However, Bane also battles addiction to the fictional steroid known as venom. Throughout most of this series, he has kicked the substance. He refuses to use it for fear of again losing control. Bane eventually gives into his temptations to juice up in order to save Scandal’s life.

Consequently, Bane is then stuck by his craving, even to the point of waking up in the middle of the night for a hit. Scandal, meanwhile, is Scandal Savage, daughter of the immortal Vandal Savage. As the leader and organizer of the team, she carries many burdens. Not only does she have to worry about her team not killing each other, she also has a lot of baggage pertaining to her relationship with her father and also with her lover, Knockout. This combination of loneliness and atonement is what drives Scandal’s arc in the series. Scandal and Bane are paired together because of the bond that grows between them. Bane becomes somewhat of a father figure to Scandal, helping her through her trouble as she gets over the loss of Knockout. This works quite well for the development of both characters.

Secret Six - Jeanette and Rag Doll

Finally, we come to Jeanette and Rag Doll. Jeanette is the most mysterious member of the team. She was a member of the Hungarian gentry but was eventually sacrificed and became a Banshee. She has a history with Scandal which is hinted at, possibly a relationship. She, however, eventually hooks up with Deadshot. They make a perfect couple since death follows them everywhere they go.

Rag Doll, meanwhile, is the comedy relief of the group. Don’t let this fool you though, he does have a dark side. During the story “The Darkest House” he becomes prince of hell. However, he is brought back to the land of living by Scandal....with Knockout in tow. Rag Doll is a character based around forgiveness. At the start of the series, his sister Alex, known as Junior, was killed by the team. In the story mentioned above, he comes to terms with her death and connects with Scandal on how she felt when she lost Knockout.

While there are other members of the group that come and go—including magic siphon Black Alice, King Shark, Giganta, and more—the six characters discussed above are the team’s core. They not only serve as the backbone of the series, but as a team that brings a much larger story together. They are dysfunctional at times, but that is to expected of a group of villains. What’s great about Simone’s characterizations throughout is that she makes each of these characters sympathetic while also not comprising their villainous personalities.

So with all that in mind, what do say: are you ready to join the Six? Do you accept the mission?

Read more of Taylor’s writing on our comics analysis page.

Taylor Pechter is a passionate comic book fan and nerd. Find him on Twitter @TheInspecter.

Tom King's Batman: Should We Keep Reading?

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By Zack Quaintance — I got a call the other day from a friend, asking if I planned to keep reading Tom King’s current run on Batman. The series is currently on #58 (out this week) of what King has said will be 104 total issues. To be quite frank, before that call I hadn’t even considered quitting. So, the question caught me off guard. My friend had also previously written about King’s work, heaping praise upon it. Yet, there he was, ambivalent about continuing.

But you know what? By the end of our conversation, I could see his point. The shine has indeed faded just a little bit from this Batman series, which is why today I’d like to talk about the big question—Tom King’s Batman, should we keep reading? I think there are valid cases to be made either way, and so I’d like to look now at both sides, starting with…

The Case Against Tom King’s Batman

Something has changed with this Batman comic.

Maybe it was the wedding, hyped by many (from DC marketing to the creators) as a pivotal moment in the long history of a classic character, until...it wasn’t. But no, that’s not it, The Cold Days arc that followed (in which Bruce Wayne finagles his way onto a jury to successfully make a case that his alter ego is flawed) was one of the best Batman stories in many, many years.

Well then, maybe it was that recent KGBeast arc? After all, Nightwing was shot in the head for some reason, which I guess was maybe kind of justified by Bruce and the aforementioned Beast having liked the same gross children’s book as kids? I don’t know. The whole thing felt a little disturbing, mostly based on (excuse the pun) the execution (although I did love Batman #54, which preceded it). This shot in the head thing, however, has been worse for the current Nightwing comic (they ran off Ben Percy!), than it has been for Batman.

The gritty themes in Heroes in Crisis have some readers wondering if DC has given up on the hope that made Rebirth popular.

Or maybe the reason was and continues to be Heroes in Crisis? The mini-series has, after all, upset many fans (perhaps purposefully), brutally murdering beloved and long-tenured characters in swift and unceremonious fashion, one of which (Wally West) was a pretty literal embodiment of the hope that defined the publisher’s most recent line-wide shakeup, Rebirth.

I think that last one is having a bit of an impact on readers, so let’s talk about it. Heroes in Crisis is a 9-part series purported to be a combination of commentary on an American PTSD epidemic resulting from the war on terror, plus also a murder mystery starring superheroes. Two issues in, it’s been utterly grim and fairly cold, literally slaughtering and autopsy-ing several young characters. It also seems to be indicative of a larger grim turn for a publisher that had its biggest success this decade with Rebirth, which, again, was built on hope.

Heroes in Crisis, in other words, hasn’t been a crowd pleaser, and Tom King is the one behind it. I’m still hearing the majority of readers (both online and off) say things like This is Tom freaking King, he knows what he’s doing, but for others, confidence in King’s ability to deliver has been slightly rattled. Meanwhile, King is also a writer whose style often feels non-conventional, relying as it does on voice-heavy tricks such as repetition of key words or phrases to re-enforce meaning, novel uses of form and structure, and quotations from poems and literature. These are all things that really standout in today’s corporate superhero comics malaise, which is part of what helped King so quickly rise to prominence. The flip-side to all of that, however, is that stylistic flourishes tend to yield diminishing returns. The poetic quotations in King’s breakout 2015 series The Vision, for example, landed much harder for me than those in this week’s Batman #58. Batman, it should be noted, is a twice monthly title on a white-knuckle creative schedule, and so, really, it’s hard to fault King for going back to some of his most trusted tools here and there.

All that said, I’m not personally at the point where I’m ready to even consider dropping this title, which brings us to our other section…

The Case for Tom King’s Batman

Overall, I’ve liked King’s run, with the highlights for me being the double date issue (Clark/Lois, Bruce/Selena), the much-loved and Eisner Award-winning Batman Annual #2 (Rooftops), and the recent Cold Days arc, wherein Bruce Wayne finagles his way onto a jury and makes a case that his own alter ego is flawed (a premise so nice I rehashed it twice…sorry). And on the whole, I’m still enjoying this comic’s writing. I have a bit of Batman fatigue, but I’ve had that for at least a decade and yet still I soldier on.

Could Tom King’s Batman run be a direct play on the classic Knightfall storyline?

To me, King is engaged in a deep character study, taking apart and rebuilding Batman in an in-depth way not attempted since Knightfall. In fact, my deep suspicion here is actually that what King is trying to do with his 104-issue run is craft Knightfall for a new generation, creating a sequel of sorts in which primary villain Bane takes a less-overt and more-cerebral approach to breaking The Bat. And if that’s the case, I’m there for it.

In the original early ‘90s Knightfall, Bane weaponizes Batman’s rogues gallery against him by freeing them all from Arkham and laying back as they exhaust the Cape Crusader, pushing Bruce to place of shaken weakness after he spends several sleepless days rounding them all up. Afterwards, Bane storms Wayne Manor/The Bat Cave, and literally breaks Bruce’s back over his knee. Why? Because he wanted to prove that he could and because, of course, he’s evil.

After the failed wedding, we learn Bane has returned to his old tricks and is trying to once again break The Bat, perhaps as revenge for an earlier story arc and all the other indiginities he’s suffered through the years at the hands of Batman. Here’s where this sequel idea really becomes interesting to me. Bane’s efforts are evolved, more subtle and more cerebral than the last time he gave it his all. He’s now manipulating Bat foes into having direct incentives to complicate and terrorize Batman, be it KGBeast’s assassination attempt of Nightwing, or Catwoman being guilted into leaving Bruce at the altar. My guess is that this all could lead up to another (or different) broken back scene soon.

I find this intriguing because it strikes me as an essential update on the Knightfall story for our times. Knightfall was published in the early ‘90s, when real world foes, like Bane, were more overt. The Soviet Union had just fallen, but for years prior we’d known them as our rival, our enemy. We’d watched out for their machinations. These days, however, we seem to be involved in a Cold War sequel, rife with speculation about what Russia may or may not be doing to move against us, as well as tertiary and internal actors seemingly being motivated to aid their cause. Casting Bane as a similarly-improved tactician is sharp and heady stuff.

If that kind of metaphor is what King’s engaged in here—phew, count me in, I’d like to see where it’s all going, even if Heroes in Crisis continues to land with a thud (although I’m still hopeful that there’s something larger in play there than the first two issues would suggest…). Moreover, even with King’s style becoming more familiar, it continues to stand out as a smarter approach to the work. The meaning isn’t always as powerful as it was in his early superhero books, but King is still on a marquee title and trying something new, an increasing rarity in this age of editorial oversight and careful guarding of would-be billion dollar movie franchises. I think that entitles him to a slightly longer rope, one I’m still personally happy to afford him.

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as BatmansBookcase. He also writes comics and is currently working hard to complete one.