Hard to Care About a Team I Never Knew
With my review of the first issue, I said Secret Seven was an bit of an inaccessible story for readers not already familiar with Shade the Changing Man but that it was also still a good story for what it was. Now, I have to take the latter back. This is really not such a good story, possibly due to being too big of a story for a three issue limited series.
The story of the Secret Seven coming together and turning on one another is as broken as I guess some the characters themselves are supposed to be. This issue really does just descend into a mess of storytelling as characters savagely turn on each other for practically nonexistent motivations. This is partially chalked up to magic and Shade's meta-vest, but that comes off more as cheap storytelling than anything really story-driven.
The truth is that Peter Milligan simply does not develop any part of this story enough to support it. The destruction of the Secret Seven doesn't even carry the weight of the paper it is printed on, because we are never given a proper idea of what the Secret Seven was in the first place. The betrayals and conflicts between characters mean nothing, because we really do not know who most of these people are in this timeline.
Reading Secret Seven #1-3 is more like reading Secret Seven #25-27. This may have been purposeful on Milligan's part, because for the purposes of Flashpoint, it does make sense that we are coming into a team with a preexisting complicated history in this altered timeline. But that doesn't make it a good idea. Readers still need to be able to understand what is going on and who the characters are. Milligan doesn't make the concessions to allow for that here.
Even disregarding how poorly the story developed to this point, how the Secret Seven's destruction plays out is still a poorly handled sequence. It is one of those times when a character wins clearly because the writer wants them to, so things that should work against them don't simply because... because. Twice in this scene, the betrayer appears defeated but manages not to be for no real reason.
The art is solid for what it is and serves its purpose for the story, matching the tone and carrying some of the twisted scenes of magic well. However, the character designs in general have been very uninspired, either just sticking very close to characters' standards looks or just very poorly realized ideas like Zatanna's look.
The most frustrating thing is how interesting the Secret Seven seem like they were in the imaginary 25 issues before this limited series. It would have been great to have been exposed to this team properly rather than the way Milligan chose to handle it. Because as it is, Secret Seven is a disappointing read.