The Secret Six Part 2: Who Are the Secret Six?

The cover to issue 2 of Villains United asks the question, "Who Are the Secret Six?" I figured the intro to this part would be a good time to answer that. Let it be known, firstly, that I am discussing the third incarnation of the Secret Six. The first was some kind of covert ops team in the 1960s. In the 1980s, there was a revival with characters linked to the 1960s team. But, just like the Suicide Squad started out as a World War 2 team and became much more interesting, so did the third version of the Six. The only through line is that they are led by a mysterious person codenamed Mockingbird. The latest version of the Six don't acknowledge or discuss the previous versions (unlike the Suicide Squad).

So, who are these characters? To think there were only six is to be extremely naive. Like all good stories of consequence, members die or leave on a regular basis. They always try to maintain six members at any given time. I believe by the end there are about 9 members acting all at once, but I could be wrong.

I will address characters as they arise in the story but here are the ones people knew going into Villains United...

Catman- Thomas Blake (I got so excited when I thought Joseph Gordon Levitt was playing a stealth version of him in DKR) first appeared as a Batman villain in 1963. He is essentially Kraven the Hunter for DC comics. He pissed off Catwoman and Batman by being a ripping off the former's style and being a criminal in the latter's town. There were (apparently, I never read these issues) implications that he was eaten by a gorilla in the pages of Green Arrow comics. Of course, it was also rumored that his costume gave him 9 lives. Regardless, always third-rate and never a very good character, Simone polishes him up well in this series.

Cheshire- A Vietnamese assassin introduced in the 1980s run of Teen Titans, she is most known for detonating a nuke in the Middle Eastern nation of Qurac. She is the mother of Arsenal's (aka Speedy aka Green Arrow's sidekick) daughter. During the course of this series, she has another kid, too. She is known for creating poisons and being a pretty badass martial artist.

Deadshot- My favorite character of all time. Starting his career in a 1950s issue of Batman, he is a rich boy turned assassin. Claiming to never miss, he was a not-very-convincing villain for Batman throughout the 70s. Finally, John Ostrander put him in the ground floor of the Suicide Squad and even created a mini-series devoted to him. These stories fleshed out exactly why Floyd Lawton has a death wish, why he can't seem to shoot Batman and what his messed up family history is all about. Since the end of the Squad, he pops up as a go-to villain every now and then. Christos Gage wrote a mini-series about him in the 2000s that gave him a new wife and child (after losing his son in a most grisly way back in the 80s). His kid is now his Achilles Heel. He has had one of the better arcs of a villain over the years and I love to see where writers take him.

Those were the established members. New for this series are...

Scandal- At first just a middle-management type in a business suit with a clipboard, she reveals her warrior nature halfway through Villains United and, by the end, we learn she is the daughter of Vandal Savage. Vandal Savage is an immortal villain who was a cave man (comics!) and has menaced pretty much every hero in the DCU at some point. Scandal wields the Lamentation Blades (the most heavy metal name for a weapon ever) and is a proud lesbian. She later develops a weird father/daughter thing with Batman's enemy, Bane.

Ragdoll- The original Ragdoll is a Golden Age villain like the Fiddler (the poor schmuck killed in issue 1). Ragdoll's powers are being floppy. In James Robinson's Starman run the original Ragdoll had a son who had his powers of floppiness and began a weird Charles Manson-style murder cult in Opal City. That Ragdoll was genuinely creepy in a Joker kind of way. This Ragdoll is another brother born without his family's triple-jointed abilities. So, he has has surgery after surgery to make his body bend and contort in unnatural ways (he alludes to having had his bait and tackle removed, yikes). He is ever so polite but is into highly unnatural sex acts.

The Parademon- I thought this was a fascinating idea. Darkseid (the biggest bad guy of the DCU) has an army of monsters he calls Parademons. We never find out how but one has managed to get away and start a life for himself on Earth. Due to the twisted torture he endured all throughout his life, he thinks the homicidal Ragdoll is some sort of clown and pain makes him giggle. Very much a "fish out of water" getting accustomed to Earth, he is disturbing in his own way.


The seventh and eighth members are introduced in the mini-series when Knockout and Mad Hatter are brought in to take the place of a departed member and a dearly departed member.

Knockout is another subject of Darkseid (this time one of his Female Furies) who first appeared in the 1990s to menace Superboy. She also served with Deadshot in a brief incarnation of the Suicide Squad but never seems to mention it. She is super strong...think She-Hulk and (minor spoiler) the lover of Scandal Savage.

Mad Hatter- Any fan of Batman should know this Alice in Wonderland-obsessed loony. To bolster their ranks, Hatter is recruited by Catman in the mini-series but never really does much good as a team member. He likes to put little hats on his food before he eats it. As much as I enjoy some of Simone's interpretations of certain characters, her Hatter never really took off for me.

The remainder of the Villains United series is a lumbering beast in terms of plot. I have decided not to spoil things (as best I can). You can probably read between the lines and figure out which characters die or leave. If there is a major spoiler, I will warn first.

The remainder of Villains United covers some team making ground. The group is ambushed in issue 2 by a cadre of Society criminals. This is the issue where we finally get to see Catman be a badass. Issue three finally brings the team together by having them all tortured at the hands of the Crime Doctor. By the time they escape, they mostly trust and have bonded with each other. Nice bit of work by Simone and the series is only half over.

Issue 4 is a little side trip to mostly tie into an issue of Firestorm without the team meeting him. The team uncovers the Society's master plan, to mind-wipe the heroes of Earth. However, all this is just a smokescreen. Issue 5 features the group trying to determine who Mockingbird is by breaking into a Society safehouse. It ends with Catman offering the group up to do a suicide run against the Society.

At this point, the plot almost breaks down due to the nature of the crossover and Simone's need to build a self-contained story. Cheshire tricks one of the Six into knocking her up so that, if Mockingbird kills her daughter, she has a spare. She is also able to turn various members against each other as she reveals who really killed Catman's lions back in issue 1.

All these revelations come fast and furious to get to the point of Issue 6, a big ol' fight between the Society and the Six in the House of Secrets. By the end, several of the Six have been gunned down. One is dead and (minor spoiler you could probably figure out) Knockout is revealed to have been a mole for the Six within the Society the whole time. You get some pretty awesome match ups in this issue, my favorite being the Deadshot/Deathstroke shoot-out. The anti-climax of the whole thing is the reveal that Mockingbird is, in fact, Lex Luthor. I know, confusing, right?

This is where a little more Infinite Crisis knowledge is needed. Villains United actually did plant some clues as the the nature of Infinite Crisis in the last few issues. Sinestro is shown capturing Lady Quark and Pariah is brought in and killed by the Society's Lex. Readers of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths may recall that these two played decent roles in that story.

The reason Waid thought the good old days were coming back was because the main gist of Infinite Crisis is that the Golden Age Superman and Lois Lane return to "fix" the overly dark, bloody DCU. Helping them is Superboy Prime (who is from...sigh..."our" Earth...long story) and Alexander Luthor, who came from Earth 3. The thing about Earth 3 is that evil and good are swapped. So, Bruce Wayne is a criminal mastermind named Owlman and Clark Kent is Ultraman, another villain. One of the few heroes is Lex Luthor, who sent his son to safety as his Earth was destroyed in the original Crisis. The messed up thing about all this is that these four surviving characters were all heroes and good guys in the original Crisis. They all made sacrifices to save the universe. In Infinite Crisis, Alexander Luthor disguises himself as "Lex" and creates the Society as a failsafe plan to conquer the planet if his really convoluted plan to recreate the multiverse doesn't work. So the Lex who is running the Secret Six is the "original" Lex Luthor and the Society Lex is Alexander Luthor from Earth 3 (and the only way to tell them apart is eye color). Comics!

The real message of Infinite Crisis seemed to be that the bloodlust of modern comic fans can corrupt even the good intentions of the original Superman. If you are a character in modern comics, prepare to kill or be killed. The guys trying to bring back the innocence of an earlier time are defeated and the status quo remains intact. It is kind of a fucked up series if you think about it.

The Villains United special actually does what the mini-series promised to do, which is focus on the Society more than the Secret Six (although they do appear). After the Society creates worldwide jail breaks so they will have an army to march on Metropolis with, the Secret Six get the scoop on the attack from Scarecrow and Amos Fortune, warning the heroes in time for them to prepare for the battle. The Six decide to stay out of the whole conflict and offer their services to the highest bidder while remaining a team. This wrote them out of Infinite Crisis and was more of a way to move pieces around between issues of Crisis than to move the story of the Six forward.

The Secret Six Mini-series followed a few months after the end of Infinite Crisis. With Brad Walker (a Tim Sale disciple if ever I saw one) on art this time around, the Six find themselves under attack from a variety loose ends from the Villains United series (including Dr. Psycho and Vandal Savage). A few more c-listers die in the course of this series but the fun part is the addition of Mad Hatter to the line-up. Although he does nothing for the first three issues, his role in the narrative becomes clearer with Issue 4 (wherein the Six find themselves fighting the Doom Patrol).

There is betrayal, ultra-violence, sex and lots of other things not exactly reminiscent of the "good old days." Some of the Six have to deal with being parents, others have to deal with complex love lives and some just want to sit naked in their rooms and wear hats that make them trip balls all day. I think Ragdoll's character really comes into focus in these issues as just the most demented member of the group. That he keeps his dead teammate stuffed and in his room to speak with is just a great touch.

Like all "will this premise sell books" experiments, this mini-series had the unenviable task of wrapping up loose story elements while trying to set up future adventures (on the off chance the book was picked up). The Tim Sale style of art is fine for characters like Catman and Mad Hatter but looks a little weird on Deadshot or people with normal faces.

Next time, the challenges of writing a villain-based narrative.