Secret Six #3

Secret Six #3 “The Nine Levels of Suburbia”

Written by Gail Simone Pencils Dale Eaglesham Inks Dale Eaglesham Colored by Jason Wright Cover by Dale Eaglesham Jason Wright

The DCYou is upon us and despite technically starting prior to the announcement of the New 24 titles; Secret Six has been listed among these titles. And why shouldn’t it, the first issue came out in December and various delays (planned and unplanned) have pushed it back that it is only now releasing its third issue. The current set also falls into Dan Didio’s more continuity-lite approach to certain titles.

It also isn’t until this and to lesser degree the free sneak peak that Secret Six resembles the titles previous incarnations. While the Six (or Seven if you want to grant Ferdie personhood) aren’t a band of mercs yet, they have become a surrogate family unit which is what Secret Six was really about in the end. With that comes a fair amount of naughty, juvenile humor and a lot of sticking up for one another as they try to stay low at Big Shot’s house. As one can guess, the Six aren’t the best at acting inconspicuous and not because Porcelain is walking around as a purple (bedazzled? Defiantly glitterized) Clockwork Orange extra.

As I read and write more and more, the question of how to make a good reading experience is one I ponder a fair amount. It’s an interesting conundrum given the uniform page count, barring clear exception, of single issues how do you maximize density? One creator who is doing this fairly well is Jonathan Hickman with Secret Wars and his creator owned series East of West. In both series, Hickman builds in two page “commercial breaks” to separate what essentially amount to shorts within these larger issues. Gail Simone doesn’t have clear separation but structures the title around 7 thematicly titled sequences, effectively allowing the issue to reintroduce and individually (for the most part) characterize each of the Six in little slice of life moments.

Some of these moments are humorous; “The Trouble with Heresy” made me not hate Ferdie for a little bit. Others like “Violence Wears a Man like a Weapon” are the typical Simone mixture earnest melodrama. For the most part these are small moments; “Violence” is the longest at about 4-5 pages but really only needs the two pages as Strix sets the table to hit you with an emotional gut punch. The mute former Owl continues to be an interesting exercising in writing dialog for a character who cannot speak it. Unlike fellow DC mute Jericho, the Six isn’t plastered with narration boxes. The use of Strix’ note pad to slowly build on the accumulation of words over a 2 pages, going form “Don’t no” to “I Don’t know how to Home” is an effective dramatic ramp. Perhaps it is because of the lack of quasi-ephemeral dialog balloons, these words stay on the pad.

Having this issue be essentially a slice of life issue should pay off in the long run. Yes, there is a cliffhanger that seems to setup these next few issues, but none of that plotting matter if I don’t buy that this is a group of people who care for each other. These small moments go a long way in building the idea of what these characters do in their off time.

“The Nine Levels of Surburbia” also features Secret Six: Villians United artist Dale Eaglesham on pencils and inks, replacing Ken Lashley and Drew Garcia. I very much enjoyed Lashley’s impressionist tinged style the title employed, but I don’t know how that would translate to the monotonous suburbia the Six find themselves in. Eaglesham also brings a pre-Flashpoint sensibility to the character designs, creating a unified style but playing into the inherently cartoony nature of Six and cape comics in general. He is able to cleanly represent these characters emotional states which is what this issue needed. Colorist Jason Wright deserves credit for the pallet used here that really seals the kind of absurdist camp suburbia featured.

I’m a bit of a Six mark, and while the previous two issues were decidedly different from previous incarnations of the Six I was enjoying the stretching of what a Secret Six series could be. I wouldn’t call this a retraction but it is a return to something a bit more familiar.