Secret Six: Unhinged (Vol. 1)

Secret Six: Unhinged (Vol. 1) by Gail Simone and Nicola Scott consists of issues 1 thorugh 7 of Secret Six.

The Secret Six is a comic about six villains that got together to work as a team of mercenaries. They do good things and bad things, but the bottom line is money. This makes for a set of interesting characters that give us some laughs and sometimes make us love the characters and sometimes makes us hate them. This is something I like about the group a lot.

The group of characters were introduced in a miniseries called "Villains United", a series I didn't like, but even though I didn't like it, I enjoyed the character interactions and since Secret Six was getting stellar reviews, I had to read Secret Six.

This particular story, "Unhinged", has an interesting plot. It introduces a mysterious villain in the first issue and a mystery quest for our "heroes". The comic consists of 7 issues, all of which are about this mystery quest and this mystery villain (which I won't spoil). I'll mention that the quest and the villain are great and the character interactions are unexpected and enjoyable. However, I think the ending wasn't very strong. Surprisingly, even though it was 7 issues long, the end felt rushed. I had to reread the pages a few times to figure out what went on, but what happens is a bit nonsensical and unlikely.

One very positive thing about this book, is that the characters are much more interesting that I would imagine they would be. Bane is honorable and I find almost everything he says funny (although he doesn't realize it), Catman strives for redemption, Deadshot is very laid back but still cares a lot for his group, Ragdoll always has a funny thing to say. It is a fun bunch to read about.

I should point out that Nicola Scott, the artist, does a really good job with this story. The art is full of details, many pages with multiple villains and even when pages have characters seen from very far it still looks good (I am often disappointed with how a character looks overly cartoony when seen from afar). Great art.

I was disappointed with the conclusion to the story arc, but overall the comic was very good.