Category Archives: Reviews
Comic Review: ‘X-Men: Schism’ #3
In my effort to do more comic book reviews, I’m going to throw down with another of the big Event Comics coming out of Marvel this summer: X-Men: Schism. This will be my first time visiting X-Men Schism, and sadly I’ve found it to be lacking.
It’s a fun X-Men comic, but it’s utterly failing at its two main points: splitting up Cyclops and Wolverine and introducing some new villains.
X-Men: Schism is essentially the prologue to the next big X-franchise reboot this fall. For years now, the X-Men have been hanging out and doing their thing on the West Coast. They abandoned the classic X-Mansion in Westchester and moved out to their own private island off the coast of San Francisco, then named it Utopia. The X-Men claim they’re their own sovereign nation; whatever. The point is, all the mutants are now living on Utopia with Cyclops leading the X-Men. They’ve been nice and comfortable for years, fighting baddies and doing superhero stuff.
So now it’s time to break them up, it seems.
Zappy, zappy! Slashy, slashy!
The main thrust of this story is supposed to be that some dangerous something or other has come along that’s going to drive a wedge between Cyclops and Wolverine. They’ve never really gotten along, but for decades now they’ve been respectable pals. They trust each other, fight alongside each other and can count on each other. Well the new X-franchise reboot is going to involve a split where each one takes one half of the team and forms their own X-Men. So how do we get to that position?
By issue #3 of the 5-part Schism, I’m not really sure. Absolutely nothing that’s happened so far has convinced me at all that we’re heading to a monumental split of the X-Men, or even a minor split between Cyclops and Wolverine. Writher Jason Aaron is basically feeding us a few minor squabbles so far that I guess are going to lead to the bigger split between the two. But there’s just so much history and friendship between Cyclops and Wolverine that even they seem to acknowledge that getting at each other’s throats is silly.
And this is only issue #3
The story itself is actually fairly cool, and would make a good X-Men story. With mutants gathering power on Utopia, Cyclops and Wolverine attended a world conference about peace and security in issue #1. Cyclops gave a good speech and argued a bit with some jerkly diplomats. Then an evil mutant punk crashed the party and used his telepathy to start making all the diplomats admit their darkest secrets in front of the TV cameras. It’s a minor terroristic prank from a third-rate character – but it pisses everybody off. All around the world these diplomats are calling on their countries to bring their old Sentinel robots out of storage to once again defend themselves against mutants.
That’s a good idea, and I’m enjoying that part of the story. Under Cyclops’ leadership, the X-Men step up and start taking down these idiots and their mutant-killing machines.
Then the evil mutant punk asks for asylum on Utopia, and Cyclops gives it to him FOR SOME REASON! Cyclops’ decision to protect the jerk-whistle who started this mess makes very little sense. Sure there’s the sense of protecting a fellow mutant, but since when has that been an option? Whenever the X-Men beat up evil mutants in the past, they didn’t take those guys under their wings to protect them. It’s a decision that seems forced just to cause a riff with Wolverine, since Wolvie wants to turn the punk over to the proper authorities.
I’m really getting the sense that Cyclops is supposed to be in the wrong here. Because the next little squabble comes in issue #3. One of the young student characters, Idie, is out in the city with some other X-Men when the bad guys attack (more on them later). Idie is a scared teenage girl, and she’s hiding. When she’s the last X-Man standing, she’s able to get on the radio to the others. Wolverine tells her to stay hidden and not do anything. Cyclops tells her to do what she must to save everybody in the building.
So Idie saves people!
When Cyclops and Wolverine finally make it to the scene, Wolverine is pissed that Cyclops had the girl attack and kill the bad guys. Cyclops’ exact orders were ‘You do what you feel you have to’. He didn’t order Idie to kill anybody. She decided to be a hero, be an X-Man and stepped up and saved the day. Everybody made it out of the building before the ‘bomb’ went off, thanks to Idie! But Wolverine is pissed that Cyclops would put her in that situation.
Frankly, Idie is annoying the ever-loving Hell out of me. I know very little about the character. She’s brand new and is featured in a book I don’t read. What little I do know is that she’s from some African village (I think) and was mistreated because she’s a mutant. But so far in Schism, she’s written like a 4-year-old who hates herself. So seeing her do something heroic is only a good thing. As if the teenage X-Men have never gotten their hands dirty. Hell, why’d she even have to kill those guys? Haven’t the X-Men been training her how to use her powers?
Between the evil mutant punk and Idie, the writer seems to be forcing little squabbles down our throats as to why Cyclops and Wolverine will come to blows in the last two issues of this mini-series. But I’m just not buying it. Nothing has happened so far, and there’s no indication that anything will happen, that’s monumental enough to split these two friends and then split the entire X-Men into picking one side of the other.
Especially not the villains.
The Sentinels are not the villains of Schism. Instead, the writer introduces us to Kade Kilgore, a psychotic pre-teen kid who’s taken over the Hellfire Club and is attacking the X-Men for reasons that are not yet clear. I could not be more disappointed in this one-note, implausible, ridiculously over-the-top villain. It’s like the writer said, “Okay, so get this, the bad guys is going to be…a psycho kid!” and then stopped right there.
We meet Kilgore in issue #1 when he kills his father.
And they're in a flying car for some reason...
And since that one moment, we have learned nothing new about this kid or his motivations. Why does he want to kill his father and take over his company? Why is anybody letting him do it? Why does he want to go after the X-Men? No freakin’ clue!
What’s worse is that in issue #2, he’s joined by three other psycho kids who’ve also apparently killed their parents to take over their respective companies. Nobody in the business world is stopping them. Nobody seems to question that they’re now taking orders from clearly homicidal children. It just is. And that’s hair-pullingly idiotic.
First of all, they’re not even written like kids. They’re more like short adults. All four of them (with the exception of the girl who’s playing the ‘loopey’ psychotic maniac) speak and think with complete maturity and intelligence. That completely undoes the reason for them to be kids. Now they’re only kids because it’s crazier, or something to that effect. Like, wouldn’t it be crazy if they were all psycho kids? Yes, it would be crazy, but it wouldn’t make any sense.
Second of all, these kids are super-powerful. Not personally, mind you, but they seem to be unstoppable in a ridiculous way. For some reason, they’ve taken over the Hellfire Club. The idea of a purely human Hellfire Club, one that has turned away from its former mutant masters, is a good idea. But who the hell on the Hellfire Club thinks it’s a good idea to start taking orders from these insane children? Whatever, so the Hellfire Club gives the kids a couple of goon squads and they attack the opening of the new Mutant History Museum in San Francisco.
This is the building where Idie was earlier. She’s joined by her classmates, and then the X-Men Emma Frost, Colossus, Iceman, Magneto and Namor. This is a pretty big team of heavy-hitters for the X-Men. Yet when the kids attack, they and their random Hellfire goons are able to take each of the X-Men out in essentially one hit! That’s all it takes. Hell, both Magneto and Namor each have an exact same moment where they take all the time in the world to introduce themselves, give the evil children a moment to explain the fancy gun they have and then the kids use the gun to take out Magneto and Namor. And these guns are ridiculous. The gun to take down Namor shoots out heat pads on the ground, dehydrating the undersea king. The gun that takes down Magneto shoots miniaturized neutron stars, or super magnets. WHAT!? These kids have a gun that shoots miniaturized FREAKIN’ stars?
Again, ridiculous! These kids and their weaponry are just too over the top to take seriously.
Now let me stop here for a moment and say ‘yes, this is comics’. These sorts of weapons and villains are awesome in their ridiculous nature. In the world of comic books, of course such a gun is awesome and children as bad guys are cool. But they don’t fit in this mini-series.
This is a serious, down-to-Earth, grounded tale of how Cyclops and Wolverine come to blows and how it splits the X-Men. Everything so far has been very realistic in nature. They went to a peace summit, they’re attending a museum opening. They’re questioning matters of politics. And then in come these ridiculous, over-the-top villains that just clash with the nature of the story. The children villains are so one-dimensional as to be groan-inducingly boring. We don’t even know why they’re doing all of this or why they’re specifically going after the X-Men. And they seem to be able to pull whatever sort of magic weaponry they want out of their asses with the specific purpose of defeating the X-Men in ‘one punch’.
And I haven’t even mentioned the space slugs.
X-Men: Schism has been disappointing so far because it’s failing at its two main points: splitting up Cyclops and Wolverine and introducing the new villains. Nothing these evil, one-dimensional brats have done so far would convince me that the X-Men are going to split up and go their separate ways.
But other than that, the mini-series has been good. Jason Aaron writes a strong team with great personality. The idea that the X-Men have to clean up when all the world starts digging out their old Sentinels is a cool one. And I like the idea of the X-Men doing something global like attending a peace summit.
And the art has been fantastic. There’s been a different artist for each issue so far, and they’ve all been brilliant.
Except in issue #2 when Cyclops looked anorexic…
Stop the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off
Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the new prequel/reboot to the classic 60s/70s franchise, is the most superfluous movie I’ve seen this summer. There are no surprises, nothing shocking and no reason to care about the movie after the closing credits. But it’s fun while it lasts. The tale of Caesar, the first super-intelligent chimp, is an enjoyable tale as he goes from baby to revolutionary. And the CGI is fantastic. At no point do the entirely computer-generated apes look cartoony or fake.
You really root for the apes as they wage apocalyptic war against all of humanity.
He knows what you did
Quite honestly, this is the apes’ movie. There is a human story, starring James Franco, John Lithgow and hottie Freida Pinto, but that’s just so much filler that it doesn’t matter. Franco’s a scientist who’s developed a cure for Alzheimer’s, and this is the wonder drug that makes chimps smart. Caesar is the son of one of the test chimps, so he’s born with the drug in his genes. Franco raises Caesar in secret alongside his Alzheimer’s-inflicted father, who is cured by the drug.
Eventually Caesar goes through his grumpy teenage years, and one bad incident gets him taken away from Franco and locked up in a primate reserve. The pricks working at the reserve treat Caesar like shit, which prompts him to start rallying the rest of the apes to the cause of freedom. There’s also an orangutan who knows the same chimp sign language, and he and Caesar chat about stuff, like the circus and how apes are actually kind of stupid. So Caesar breaks out, steals some of Franco’s upgraded Cure 2.0 and uses it to make the reserve apes super smart as well. And Caesar becomes even smarter. So smart that he challenges the prick humans to a fight…and that’s just the beginning.
Soon he has a whole army of super smart apes and they tear San Francisco a new one.
Viva la revolution!
The Alzheimer’s cure stuff with James Franco is just a means to an end. He has a girlfriend and a boss, as well as some extraneous co-workers, but they’re only ever half-developed and uninteresting. Only Franco serves any real purpose, and that’s only as an emotional foil for Caesar. Once Caesar becomes leader of the ape resistance movement, the film keeps teasing us with the only emotional moment it has left: Franco confronting his out-of-control ‘son’. That pay-off is fun, but so open-ended as to be anti-climactic. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say this movie doesn’t end so much as just dramatically stop.
The humans, they do nothing!
But forget all of that. The reason to see this movie is the reason they made this movie: awesome ape-tastic action. Andy Serkis, the guy who did motion-capture for both Gollum and King Kong, is back as Caesar and he does a fantastic job! As I said before, the CGI is brilliant. You can really see the intelligence in Caesar’s eyes. He can’t talk, so all of his plotting and planning is conveyed through the body language of his eyes. It’s at times adorable, and at other times it’s chilling. But you never hate or dislike Caesar. He’s the hero of this movie, and every chilling glance from his calculating eyes is exciting. The pricks at the primate reserve really are bastards, and the clever ways that Caesar plots against them are fun to watch.
When he finally does get his revenge on the pricks, it’s the most exciting moment in the film.
Then it builds to even more excitement as the super smart apes get out and go on a rampage through the streets of San Francisco. They free the other test chimps at Franco’s lab, as well as the chimps at the zoo. They build their army and basically cause a lot of mayhem. The cops and other agencies are too slow to react, so the apes get their victories. It all builds to an impressive battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. One has to ask how the apes would defeat humans that have machine guns and SWAT gear; well the apes do it with style!
But not with this much style
I never saw the original Planet of the Apes movies, so I have no idea if this film ‘fits’ with the franchise ‘continuity’. It definitely ignores Tim Burton’s 2001 reboot (which I did see). But you don’t need to know anything about those films to enjoy this one. I’d like to think that a lot of the basics about the original Planet of the Apes are well known to society, and knowing some of those details let you appreciate the various Easter Eggs thrown into this film. Though when they get around to saying the famous, ‘Get your paws off me, you dirty ape’ line, it’s a little cheesy. But the full scene with all the context is utterly fantastic.
So little bits like that add to the fun of the film.
And that’s the only real reason to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes: to have fun. It’s an enjoyable ride, and thankfully not in3D. Just don’t go in expecting any sort of masterpiece. The only thing you should expect is awesome ape action!
Ellen Page is the World’s Greatest Kid Sidekick
I just finished watching the movie Super starring Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page, and it was so mind-shockingly amazing that I just have to tell the world! As far as I can tell, this movie flew under the world’s radar with a weak April 3 opening on only 11 theaters (according to IMDB.com). It’s one of those independent films clearly riffing off of Kick-Ass, about a normal guy who dresses up as his own superhero to fight crime (among other agendas). But forget Kick-Ass, forget Defendor; Super is the new benchmark in awesomeness!
All thanks to Ellen Page as the ballsiest, most badass kid sidekick ever!
Though Rainn Wilson definitely gets some credit as the hero, Crimson Bolt. But once Boltie arrives on screen, the movie is taken to a whole new level.
She loves her costume; she made it herself
I don’t want to spoil too much of this movie because there are a lot of surprises and shocking moments that need to be seen to be believed. And I hope some of you rush right out and rent or stream this movie immediately after reading my review. You should, it’s that damn good. Like those other movies, Super treats the idea of a normal guy dressing up in a tight costume to fight crime seriously. This may be a dark comedy, if even a comedy, but the idea itself isn’t mocked or laughed at. This isn’t campy, it’s crazy. There are real questions of insanity and people off their nut in this film. Those ideas aren’t explored too deeply by the film itself, but you know that you’re not watching the boy scout Superman here. You’re watching crazy people do crazy things in the name of good.
The story is about Frank D’Arbo, played by Rainn Wilson, of The Office. He’s happily married, but his former-addict wife has started getting back into drugs and hanging out with the wrong people. Frank finds himself unable to stop it until it’s too late, and his wife Sarah, played by Liv Tyler, runs off into the arms of Jacques, played by Kevin Bacon. That guy has enjoyed a summer of playing comic book super-villains, it seems. Anyway, Frank storms after Jacques like a man in love, and we learn that Sarah may be a little too coked out to really know what she’s doing or where she even is. But Jacques has the goons and the power, so Frank can’t get near his wife.
So obviously he becomes a superhero.
The Crimson Bolt!
The idea comes to him through several different sources: visions from God, a religious TV show about a campy, Christian-themed superhero and the comic book knowledge of local comic store employee Libby (Ellen Page). Frank makes his own costume and takes it out for a test run, hiding behind dumpsters until he sees a drug deal going down. He then just straight up tackles the dealer and tries to wrestle with him, but the dealer gets up, fights back with a trash can lid and Frank runs off. He goes to Libby for help and information about superheroes without powers who use weapons. She fills him on on Batman, Green Arrow and more, and so Frank decides to start smacking people in the head with a big monkey wrench.
Wrench!
One hilarious montage later, and Crimson Bolt is all over the news for beating up drug dealers, child molesters, purse snatchers and more. The cops don’t like him, of course, but the public has started to like him. Frank tries to go after Jacques and his goons, but they have guns. They recognize him and chase him off. He needs help, so he turns to Libby, who just so happens to have figured out that the guy who came into her store asking about superheroes and weapons is the guy who is out in the street hitting people with a wrench! Libby has made her own costume and wants to help him. Frank is reluctant at first, but he eventually comes around.
And then the movie is kicked into a dark, hilariously brutal insane-o-fest the likes of which rarely grace the mainstream cinemas. If you thought the ending to Kick-Ass was awesome, then you will absolutely love the ending to Super, as Crimson Bolt and Boltie gear up to take on Jacques and his goons. It’s amazingly gory and completely hardcore, but done in that OK Tarantino sort of way. Like how Inglourious Basterds was gory and hardcore, but not grotesquely so.
Ellen Page is amazing in this film. She was fun in Juno and cool in X-Men 3, but here she takes her adorable, petite personality and turns it up to 11. And it all comes out when she becomes Boltie.
Rainn Wilson has that effect on women
It’s part of that psychological drama I mentioned earlier. At the start of the movie, Libby is a friendly, nerdy sort of girl who really likes working in the comic book store. Once her eyes are opened to the ballsiness of the Crimson Bolt, let alone becomes Boltie, her world and her mind change. It’s like how Peter Parker becomes a jabbering, funny sort of quipster when he becomes Spider-Man. Libby becomes a psycho when she’s Boltie, and it’s brilliantly played by Page. She’s the best part of the movie. Her performance has to be seen to be truly enjoyed.
Rainn Wilson is also pretty darn fantastic. He’s best known, of course, as Dwight Schrute in The Office. And he’s great as Dwight. I’d always been a little worried that actors from The Office would never not be from The Office to me. Like seeing John Krasinski in a movie role. Wouldn’t it just be Jim on screen? Well Rainn Wilson definitely sheds the overpowering persona of Dwight, becoming this new character. It definitely doesn’t feel like it’s just Dwight dressed up as the Crimson Bolt. He’s loserishly charming, and I easily found myself rooting for the Crimson Bolt. Even when it seems like he’s just a crazy guy, he’s still sympathetic enough to be worthy of support.
So the two leads hit this one out of the park. Everyone else is pretty much just window dressing. Kevin Bacon stays supremely grounded as a drug-dealing kingpin, making sure the story stays as real as possible. This isn’t a superhero movie. It’s a crime movie, but one of the characters dresses up like a superhero.
Thankfully the costumes look great. They’re obviously cheaply made spandex, but the filmmakers wisely add enough seams, zippers, pads, bells and whistles to the Crimson Bolt that he doesn’t look like a loser in spandex. And Boltie’s more clean-cut costume just looks great, because spandex works on the ladies. They don’t look any more out of place than they’re supposed to. Hollywood has definitely learned an important lesson about superhero costumes over the years.
Go see Super. Right now! Seriously. The bar has been raised.
Review: Punisher #1
A new Punisher series hit the stands this week by fantastic crime-writer Greg Rucka, and it’s an awesome comic that’s light on actual Punisher, but great on atmosphere and future potential. The art is realistic and moody, the story is rich with wickedness and the Punisher comes off as the boogeyman – which is exactly the Punisher I want.
Punisher #1
Though nothing will ever compare to the glorious 11-volume Punisher masterpiece by Garth Ennis.
Still, let’s get to the new issue. We open with a military wedding (or the reception afterwards), with a happy couple and a beautiful bride. Then some violent men with guns interrupt the party, and those men have brought death and destruction with them. The wedding erupts in gunfire, shattered glass and chaos, and soon a lot of people are dead, including the groom. The bride is just hanging on, but only by a thread. The police arrive soon after to investigate.
And it’s here that we’re introduced to probably the true protagonists of this tale: NYPD detectives Walter Bolt and Oscar Clemons. The former is the young, white rookie detective, while the latter is the aged, wise black detective who just happens to look a lot like Morgan Freeman. This is an interesting tactic for the comic, to not focus on the Punisher. Frank Castle is by no means a shy guy. Plenty of comics in the past have had the Punisher at the forefront with internal monologue and everything. Perhaps we’ll still get that as the series continues, but for now we start with Bolt and Clemons. There is no internal monologue, just dialogue.
Clemons and Bolt
The two detectives do some cursory work at the crime scene and trade a little dialogue, establishing that Clemons may be getting too old for this sort of carnage, and that Bolt may still be more than a little wet behind the ears. We learn more than enough to get a handle of the two, so they will make suitable entry characters into the world of the Punisher. Because unlike other bright and colorful superheroes, Frank Castle, the Punisher, lives in the dark, grimy streets of New York City. He’s only a man (with a lot of guns), and he deals with bodies, cops, hard-boiled detectives and violent criminals. And that’s how the Punisher should be. I don’t want the Punisher fighting Doctor Doom or super-villains. He’s first and foremost a street-level vigilante, and that’s how I enjoy him.
A little background in case you’re not familiar with the Punisher. Frank Castle was a soldier in Vietnam who saw first hand the horrors of war, while receiving more than a little military and special ops training. When he returned stateside to his wife and two kids, he was looking forward to an idyllic family life – but that was not to be. While out on a picnic one day, his family was gunned down in a shootout between two rival mobs. Castle and his family had nothing to do with the mobsters, they were just collateral damage in the shootout. But Frank survived. From then on, he has used all of his military training and connections to wage a one-man-war on crime. He’s not out for revenge against those specific mobsters, he’s out to punish any and all criminals who break the law.
He’s the ghost story that mobsters tell their children.
Like this...He's almost spectral, but still human
Moving on, Det. Clemons is ready to interview some of the survivors, but Bolt gets a suspicious text message about a drop spot. We cut to a subway terminal, where a nervous Bolt is sitting on a bench next to an envelope. We catch a glimpse of a suspiciously shadowed man in a black trenchcoat passing through the crowd, and then we get a brief glimpse of an underground bunker armed to the teeth. That envelope contained crime scene photos of the wedding. Looks like Bolt is passing information on to the Punisher.
The next scene is at a bar, where violent men who invaded the wedding are kicking back with a celebratory drink. They’re having fun in the crowded bar. Then the lights go out. Then people start dying. The men pull out their own guns, but they dare not shoot because they’ll only hit each other. They group up, but it doesn’t help. More blood. More bodies. Like a wraith, the Punisher moves through the crowd taking them out one-by-one until only the leader is left. And that’s when we get our first real look at the Punisher in this comic.
Bad. Ass.
Punisher goes to shoot the leader in the head, but he’s out of bullets. So the Punisher lets him live and walks off. Ideally he has something else in mind for this guy.
And that’s it. That’s where the story ends. It’s tragically short. We do get a back-up feature told in the style of a police interrogation/interview. It’s a flashback to how Bolt met the Punisher back when he was a vice cop making drug busts. He and his undercover partner were at the scene of a drug deal, in some sort of courtyard. There were also kids around. Something at the bust goes belly up and it becomes obvious that the bullets are about to fly. Bolt, still young, is scared out of his mind. His partner is in the middle of it, as are the kids. What’s he going to do?
Bolt doesn’t have to decide. A gloved hand grabs his mouth while the other hand pulls the fire alarm to get the kids out. Then the bullets do start flying, and the Punisher steps out. He pushes Bolt back and draws his weapon, returning fire. The Punisher obliterates these drug dealers, killing them with military-like precision. Bolt’s partner dies, but all the bad guys are dead and the kids are safe. Back at the station, Bolt gets all the credit. It’s hard to tell if he’s willingly taking it, or if everyone just believes it did it all himself because the Punisher didn’t stick around to talk to the cops. Whatever happened, Bolt makes detective and is now in the pocket of the Punisher.
It’s a nice little back story setting up Bolt and the Punisher. Plus it’s much more of an action scene than the massacre in the bar. So we actually get to see the Punisher shooting and doing a damn good job of it. The Punisher is absolutely badass in this entire comic, and that’s important. A lot of superheroes seem to require a softer side, like Spider-Man. Part of the appeal of Spidey is that he’s a regular guy with foibles and problems that he has to balance alongside his superhero life. Not Frank Castle. The Punisher is at his absolute best when he doesn’t have any reservations, doesn’t have any doubt in himself or his mission. He his cold and hard and determined 100% of the way.
When Punisher isn’t the nitty, gritty hard-boiled vigilante, it can get kind of silly.
His classic costume is ludicrous. Even without the white booties.
So consider me sold on this new series. It’s got the perfect amounts of street-level violence and epic Punisher badassery, with a couple of cool detective characters to serve as foils. Greg Rucka is a fantastic author. I know him best from the DC series Gotham Central, which was about the Gotham City Police Department trying to do their jobs in a city where the criminals are homicidal clowns and Batman is expected to solve everything. That series is brilliant, and is a fine indicator that Rucka can handle the same level of characters in the Punisher. The art is by Marco Checchetto, who I’ve never heard of before. But it’s nicely realistic while also haunting. It should be a nice fit.
And one of these days I’ll tell you about the Garth Ennis run on the Punisher. It’s one of the most brilliant and amazing comic book sagas ever written, and I have all 11 volumes on my bookshelf. Here’s a taste of the Punisher’s dialogue and his badassness.
Click to enlarge
Requiem for a Comic Book; the End of Secret Six
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.
Henchman-4-Hire 