The One with the Get Out of Hell Free Card
The macguffin is one of the most common plot devices you’ll find in western narratives, mainly because you can make just about anything one. It is generally defined as the object or person who moves the plot and character forward. Hitchcock was always rather good at using them: the money in Psycho, mistaken identity in multiple features, or rope in Rope. But not all of these are made equal. For every Ark of the Covenant you will have a Crystal Skull. The key is properly defining what this device is and why it is so important; don’t just have your characters or whatever tools the given medium has treat it as important.
Ultimately, I come around to this later era quote from Hitchcock on the macguffin in a 1962 interview with François Truffaut,
The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing. I’m convinced of this, but I find it very difficult to prove it to others. My best MacGuffin, and by that I mean the emptiest, the most nonexistent, and the most absurd, is the one we used in North by Northwest. The picture is about espionage, and the only question that’s raised in the story is to find out what the spies are after. Well, during the scene at the Chicago airport, the Central Intelligence man explains the whole situation to Cary Grant, and Grant, referring to the James Mason character, asks, “What does he do?” The counterintelligence man replies, “Let’s just say that he’s an importer and exporter.” “But what does he sell?” “Oh, just government secrets!” is the answer. Here, you see, the MacGuffin has been boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!
This is why the Rabbits Foot, from Mission: Impossible III is such a nicely handled one. It is everything evil and terrifying but at the same time utterly ephemeral and replaceable and J.J. Abrams uses it to subvert and deconstruct the well worn M:I franchise formula.
For her “Unhinged” storyline in Secret Six #1-7, the first arc of the now ongoing series, writer Gail Simone fashions herself a great macguffin: a get out of hell free card, supposedly created by the Lord of Lies Neron. Not a totally implausible item to exist in the DCU but one requiring enough faith and moral conscious to be made insidious. If the card was genuine, the bearer would be able to wreak terribleness and get off Scott Free. Suddenly all the conflict, from just about every D level villain coming after them, to Junior, to the Six’s own internal conflicts make perfect sense in the context of that card. That’s all you can ask a macguffin to do really, contextualize drama so that the audience buys this absurdity.
Horror isn’t really my thing. It is a genre and mode that is so obviously manipulative and so often effective. Also I get scared easily, which makes the representation of Junior truly horrifying. “Unhinged” creative team sticks to tried and true methods for making monsters freighting and not kind of funny/normal after a while. First Gail Simone keeps Junior out of the main plot for a majority of the storyline, operating on the periphery as this unknowable doom. Artist Nicola Scott and inker Doug Hazlewood do a fantastic job with visually representing this unknowable unseen evil. Scott leverages childlike fears of the monster under the bed in her panels and layouts early on in “Unhinged” never really letting us see her fully, always obstructed or in a box. Once the monster is out of the box and we get brief panels of sight, it is still obstructed by heavy shadow allowing for our imaginations to still scare us. Simone also provides some excellent frighteningly blunt dialog for Junior that leaves no nuance for what message is being broadcast.
A lot happens between Secret Six: Degrees of Devastation and this new ongoing series, mainly the death of the New Gods, so RIP Knockout, and hello to new Six member Bane. No real idea how Bane got on the squad, I think the Six technically appear in some Birds of Prey stuff prior to the series. Still he is a great addition to the team of fringe characters. Having gotten over his addiction to Venom, Six is a bit of character rehab for the character. Its here we get to see a more thoughtful and empathic Bane, his relationship with Scandal is particularly nice.
My love for Secret Six is born out of an overall fascination with characters operating on the fringes of polite society, sticking to their own code and getting theirs. This has plenty of that and a bunch of just black humored fun and heart.
Bits at the End
So I think this is how I’m going to handle the series going forward. Writing about the book in the context of its arcs and not single issues. Though there are some single issues like #8 that I adore and must give special attention.
I am Michael Mazzacane and you can find on Twitter @MaZZM and atweekntv.com and comicweek.com