A comic book died today.

Possibly the greatest comic book published by DC Comics in the past many years, and it has been cancelled with issue #36. Universally beloved, a critical darling and absolutely perfect page after page after page. There was no greater cast, no greater stories coming out of DC than those from the Secret Six.

Who?

These sons of bitches right here.

God speed, you sons of bitches

Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, Bane, Jeannette, King Shark, Parademon, Cheshire, Black Alice and Harley Quinn for an issue or two. Yes, that’s a lot more than six, but they changed a few characters here and there. And again, you’re probably asking, ‘Who the Hell are these characters?’ It’s a reasonable question.

Read on, and I will tell you about these warrior poets, these losers among gods.

The concept of the Secret Six is very simple. Writer Gail Simone (who has written nearly every single issue this team has appeared in) created a super-villain team starring some of the lamest, most obscure characters in the DC Universe. She also made up a few, just for kicks. The first team was Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, Cheshire and Parademon, and they debuted in the mini-series Villains United. That 6-issue story is the single greatest team story I have ever read. There is more heart, character and inter-team camaraderie between these six obscure nobodies than in the entire history of the Justice League, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four or anybody else. We’re talking Firefly levels of character dynamic.

And that is what makes the core of the Secret Six: heart.

The story begins with an Event Comic called Infinite Crisis, and Villains United was one of four separate mini-series that told a prologue to the main Event. Villains United focused on the massive super-villain army that Lex Luthor was building. He already had his power players, like Black Adam, Deathstroke and Talia al Ghul, and he was going about recruiting all the minor villains too. The bigger the army, the better.

Something like this...

The Secret Six are the people who turned Lex Luthor down. They all had their various reasons for doing so, with a strong focus on Catman in the beginning. Up until then, Catman had been a joke villain. Just look at his name. He’d become a punching bag for all the heroes out there. Well in Villains United we learn that Catman put the world behind him and retired to Africa, where he became a lean, mean fighting machine living among the lions on the African Savannah. And he just didn’t want to give that up for Lex Luthor.

Meanwhile, a mysterious figure named Mockingbird recruits these Six to help him disrupt Lex Luthor’s plans. He has leverage on all six of them to get them to work for him, so they do so grudgingly. Catman is the lion-like power fighter with the noble spirit and vicious dark side; Scandal is the daughter of the immortal Vandal Savage and is trying hard to make a name for herself; Ragdoll is the insane and comically loopy son of the original Ragdoll; Deadshot is the expert marksman with a nonchalant and aloof manner; Parademon is a refugee from the extradimensional nightmare planet Apokolips and Cheshire is one of the world’s deadliest assassins with her own secret agenda. The book was a long shot, and I can’t imagine anyone expected it to really work.

But the magic pen of Ms. Simone made it happen.

Famous for her work on Birds of Prey, especially with Barbara Gordon, Gail Simone is probably the most famous female writer in the comic book industry. She’s got a fantastic wit and a sense of character, and she brought it all to bear with the Secret Six. Villains United was an instant hit, though I didn’t read it until after it came out as a trade paperback. I’d heard great things on the Interwebs, so I gave it a look. I haven’t turned away since.

Going their way

Villains United made way for a second mini-series, and eventually an ongoing series launched in September 2008 to much applause. I’m serious when I say that Secret Six is universally beloved. I imagine every comic fan out there will agree that this comic, this cast of characters, is and always has been pure gold. The new series lost none of the heart but upped the adventures. Now they could have more and more stories, with new team members coming and going. Bane joined the team, breathing new life into the villain that was famous in the mid-90s for breaking Batman’s back but never did anything else. Jeanette, a new character, joined the team to add some feminine whiles and more characters came and went. The core was always Catman, Deadshot, Scandal and Ragdoll. They became a pseudo family, characters so obscure that they had no one else but came to cling to one another.

Like the various times they just went out clubbing with each other. Or when the Deadshot, Scandal and Ragdoll broke off from Bane and Jeanette to tag after Catman after he broke into a psychotic rage to track down the men who had kidnapped his infant son. And they were also at each others’ throats more often than not, but rarely was it vicious. It was just business. They were used to pointing knives at each other, they didn’t take it personally. The Secret Six existed in a world of gray mortality. Some were outright villains, some were heroic in nature and they were always sort of wondering where they fit in the great spectrum from superhero to super-villain.

The most recent stories had them going to Hell to both make peace with themselves and to recover some lost teammates.

Merchandising!

But all good things must come to an end. As I’ve written about before, DC is relaunching their entire comic book line in September. For some reason, they decided not to just bring Secret Six over into the relaunch. Hence it has been cancelled with today’s issue, #36. I don’t know what’s going to happen to most of the characters. Since Bane is going to be in The Dark Knight Returns, chances are he’s going to be getting a big push over the next year. Some of them, specifically Deadshot and King Shark, will be appearing in the new Suicide Squad book. I’ll be picking it up because it seems like it might be the spiritual successor of Secret Six.

We shall see.

Fortunately, Gail Simone will still be writing for DC, so hopefully someday she’ll be able to bring everyone back.

So how does the final issue stack up? It’s alright overall, with a couple of great moments. It’s the second half a 2-part story to finish off the series. The team recently returned from Hell, where Bane learned that his soul would go to Hell for his various crimes. However, Bane had always thought himself a noble and honorable person. He lived by a solid moral code.

Batman's back was not as solid

But now that he knows he is going to Hell no matter what he does, Bane has decided that he must truly break Batman to make his life mean anything. He has since learned about emotions and teamwork while with the Six, and he’s decided that breaking Batman’s back was just a physical set-back. To truly break the Batman, one must take out his heart, meaning his sidekicks and allies. So he recruits the Six to help him kill Red Robin, Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon and others. They go along with it because they support Bane.

The issue is littered with flashbacks, giving each character one last moment to shine. Catman and Deadshot have a chance to reflect on the friendship they just can’t acknowledge. Ragdoll just comes out and tells them to suck it up and admit they like hanging out together. Scandal gets one last romantic moment to be with the women she loves, and Jeanette gets to witness that brief happy ending. King Shark gets to eat a guy. Then they all come together for Bane’s plan, ready to support one another one last time.

However, they are double-crossed by the Penguin, who has called in enough favors that the Justice League, Teen Titans and dozens of other superheroes have converged on the Secret Six’s warehouse hideout. There’s a homeless family living in the abandoned warehouse, so the Six have not only a bargaining chip, but one last moral quandary for them to overcome. Is it OK to just kill those hostages in cold blood? Are they heroic and moral enough to let them go?

What about surrender? Batman, Superman and every other hero worth a damn has gathered against them. Why not just give up and go to prison? They’re bad guys, right? Why fight?

That's why. Honestly, this one panel is just so beautiful. It comes from the same scene in Villains United as that giant army of super-villains I posted up above. Catman, this former joke, reaches deep down within himself in this one breath of a moment and comes out fighting. Poetry, people.

So the Secret Six go out in a blaze of glory! They juice up on Bane’s Venom serum (which Bane has made a point to not use in the entirety of the run. It’s a drug, after all). They fight and hold their own against the superheroes, for a little bit at least. The Huntess gets to narrate the final fight, as all the heroes sort of recognize that this isn’t some ordinary super-villain brawl. The heroes recognize the depth, humanity and family that they’re fighting, but they don’t stop fighting. The Six are quickly defeated to be shipped off to whatever future awaits.

A final epilogue reveals that this was Bane’s plan all along. He needed to free himself from this family unit so that he could become hardcore again – but he couldn’t do it himself. He couldn’t just leave them. So he set up this plan to kill Batman’s allies, got everyone involved and he knew that the Penguin would betray them to the superheroes. He knew they would have to make a final stand.

They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And they won their honor, if not their comic book.