Secret Six #2

By Gail Simone, Ken Lashley, Drew Geraci & Jason Wright

It feels like forever (Well, since December) since the release of the first issue and it’s great to see that Secret Six #2 keeps up the fine form that the new series started in. Gail Simone is an excellent writer and she continues to impress here with a great issue, as the artistic talents of Ken Lashley, Drew Geraci and Jason Wright, on pencils, inks and colours respectively (with Lashley also working with Geraci on the inks), combine to make an issue that really works, despite one or two minor flaws, and once again shows this series has mostly hit the ground running.

The characters on display here are written so well by Simone and it’s clear that she knows what she’s doing. In the hand of someone who perhaps doesn’t pay as much attention to character, Bane can often seem like no more than a thug whose most notable moment was breaking Batman’s back. That’s not the case here, as he makes an interesting and pretty excellent addition to the team as he really fit in with the other members who might not quite be as well known as him. We got a lot of focus on Catman as well, with the entire team getting some good moments that really worked well. The scene with Strix when she wrote down what she thought about Catman worked well, and further proves that Simone is great when it comes to getting characters spot on, regardless of whether they only get limited attention or are the main focus of the issue itself.

There isn’t really anything new in terms of plot here but that shouldn’t matter, because Simone brings across a story entertaining enough for it not to matter. For those who aren’t too keen on the current Suicide Squad series then Secret Six is certainly something that readers might want to consider reading instead, with plenty of stuff going on here that makes this book far from your regular anti-hero/superhero comic.

For the most part, the artwork from Ken Lashley is pretty good with a nice, atmospheric feel that is enhanced with not only his and Drew Geraci’s inks, but also Jason Wright’s colours, however, there were a few issues particularly when it came to character portrayal here with the more character focused moments feeling rushed which is a shame given the otherwise strong quality of the issue.

The pacing of Secret Six #2 is pretty solid and it’s clear that we’re still in the early stages of the series yet so there’s still plenty more to come, and there are certainly promising signs here to say the least as it continues its mostly strong quality that the first issue was given us, fleshing out some great characters that readers perhaps might not be too familiar with otherwise, as well as giving further depth to ones that they are. It’ll be very interesting to see where Simone, Lashley, Geraci and Wright can take this book going forward and hopefully the wait for the next issue won’t be as long as the wait for this one was.