Issue #1 Secret Six
Title: Secret Six #1
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Ken Lashley & Drew Garaci
The Buzz: Basically, Gail Simone tweeted that Secret Six was coming back, and let slip that Catman was in the new team, and that was ALL WE NEEDED. Her previous run of Secret Six are the kind of comics you thrust into the hands of friends on the condition that they read them fast and get them back to you because the trades are always half out of print, damn them all. Dark, funny and occasionally kinda filthy. So the promise of more of the same made the New 52 look a whole lot more interesting.
All You Need To Know: Secret Six happens when a bunch of amoral super-types, nutcases and criminals get together. I’m not even sure from this issue if they’re doing a Birds of Prey on us and pretending that the pre-New 52 Secret Six issues never happened, but I choose to believe they totally did happen. Still, you don’t need to know much except that Catman is the best and the worst, always.
Story: Thomas Blake, AKA Catman, is taken down in a grimy bar, and not in a good way. It’s kinda hot. He awakes in an impenetrable steel prison cell with a bunch of creeps, a corpse, a table full of individualised masks and a repeated question: WHAT IS THE SECRET? Oh, and they have to decide which of them is going to die first pretty soon, if they can’t answer the question.
Art: It’s a slightly too busy, sketchy sort of style but that suits the noir tones of the early scenes, and Lashley’s facial expressions are kind of gorgeous. Colours are muted and sultry. It’s an interesting looking book, and the art is very non-superhero which, fair enough really.
But What Did I Miss?: If you know who Black Alice and Catman are, you may be extra excited about this book, but it’s clearly a clean slate Issue 1.
Would Read Issue 2?: As long as Simone is writing it, I’m reading it.
PREVIOUS ISSUE #1 POSTS
Thor #1 (2014)
Spider-Woman #1 (2014)
All-New Captain America #1 (2014)
Captain America & the Mighty Avengers #1 (2014)
S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 (2014)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 (2015)
Bitch Planet #1 (2014)
