Secret Six #28 Review

Tagged with: Catman  Deadshot  Gail Simone  Secret SixThe Secret Six’s time in Skataris concludes with The Reptile Brain Part Four: The Skull Just Beneath The Flesh. The first few pages are a flashback of a very young Black Alice with her family, asking about war and such things. Back to the present, Alice is trying to use a sword in the battle raging around her, as her powers aren’t working here. Deadshot sees her about to get killed and steps in to save her, but burns off the last of his ammunition to do it. Now we have a magic thief who can’t steal magic and a marksman with empty guns. Not a great day for the Six. Deadshot sends her off to find bows, crossbows, anything that fires.

Alice flees through the fight, evading enemies, former team mates, and chaos in general. Back in the throne room, Machiste has allowed himself to be possessed by the mad god-like being Demios, who apparently killed the Warlord sometime back. Bane and Scandal make up after their last near-fatal meeting, Alice brings bows to Deadshot, and the Demios as giant snake makes most of the rest of the fight irrelevant. Bane wisely calls a retreat, and Alice stands up to him, demanding they defeat this evil now, as it is their fault, likening the Six’s presence to the cancer killing her father. Tremor is persuaded to offer both Sixes the immunity deal, and everyone agrees to join forces and attack. Alice finds she can siphon Demios’ power, but unfortunately gets his persona as well, so while Machiste is freed, now Alice is attacking everyone. A great bit of dialogue here- King Shark: I thought that lil’ girl was your friend or somethin’? Ragdoll: She was! She is! To be fair, most of my friends try to kill me at some point!

Ragdoll talks Alice down, Catman considers staying here, and the native he’s been working with says he’s done enough, gesturing around at the casualties from this fight. Deadshot wants to settle his score with Lady Vic, and Bane tells him he will not permit Deadshot to kill her. In a rare mistake by Gail, Deadshot says fair enough and then shoots her in the knee (remember a bit ago when he ran out of ammo?). Deadshot also insists on leaving her behind, and Bane agrees.

Back at Belle Reeve, the teams are all present (less Lady Vic, Bane honors his word), and Amanda says she will take six of them to work for her occasionally, then sends them off to enjoy various luxury suites. Tremor comments that Dwarfstar is a rapist and serial killer. Amanda smirks and says she doesn’t think he will work out on the team.

Most of them enjoy a hot tub and patch up their friendships, for lack of a better word, and then get interrupted by King Shark. Black Alice brings the healer that brought Bane back from the edge of death to her home and uses him to cure her father. The issue ends with a scene many of us have been waiting for- Giganta settles accounts with Dwarfstar for arranging the death of her boyfriend, Ryan Choi, the Atom. She seduces him out of his size belt and beats him badly with her own growth powers, and then starts what sounds like it will be a very painful interrogation about him, and presumably who killed Ryan. Coming up soon is the Secret Six in Action Comics in a two parter that finishes here next month.

What I liked and what I didn’t:

As I said last month, Catman worked great as a Warlord stand-in. The odd sort of father-daughter dynamic with Bane and Scandal was restored, which I’ve been enjoying a lot. And I flat our loved the Giganta/Dwarfstar bit at the end, and wonder if a bit of that was Gail commenting on the editorial decision to kill her creation, Ryan Choi, without even telling her about it. Seeing Catman considering staying behind was great, as many fans (me included) speculated he would end up doing just that. Ragdoll was his usual odd self, and I’m going to be very curious to see who makes the cut to stay on the teams. I suspect Black Alice is gone if she got her father cured, that was her motivation for joining in the first place. Dwarfstar is clearly off the team, I’m not sure if Giganta will stay or go hunting Slade’s Titans herself. I do wonder if this is a set up for a Secret Six/Evil Titans clash down the road.

What I didn’t: As I said above, Gail seems to have made a rare error for her, with Deadshot kneecapping Lady Vic after running out of ammo. He didn’t just say he was out, the guns clicked empty. If he saved a bullet just in case, it would have been nice to have that explained. I also am not quite sure how Black Alice couldn’t dupe the magic powers of people right in front of her (Jeanette and Giganta) but then could suddenly get Demios. Her powers only work on Skartarans in Skartaris?

Over all, enjoyable as usual, and some nice plot threads left open for later, as well as possible future story hooks.

A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATINGProsConsgreat characterizations, the hoped for Giganta Dwarfstar bit, a decent resolutionthe ‘magic bullet’ and the bit with Black Alice’s powers Rating80% You might also like...Secret Six #26 Review

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This post was added on 3 Dec 2010, 17:39 by Wayland who has contributed 193 posts to this blog.

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