By Gail Simone (writer), Marcos Marz (pencils), Luciana Delnegro (inks), Jason Wright (colors), Travis Lanham (letters)
The Story: The Six finish their dealings with the ever-tricky Lex Luthor, and Vandal and Scandal bring their part of the story to a resolution as well. Threats, deals, betrayals and ticking time bombs abound, and everyone goes out with a bang.
What’s Good: So, I love Secret Six. I also love what’s been going on in Action Comics, and especially love the characterization of Luthor and company. You’d think that this crossover, then, would be tailor-made for me, and it is, to some extent. Although it does have some problems (which we’ll get to below), it’s pretty successful overall, and does a good job of bringing some of the DCU’s best villains together under the same storyline. Cornell is a great writer, and my love for Simone is already well documented, so watching them make use of each others’ signature characters is great fun, on a pure coolness level. It’s great to see the characters playing off of each other, and the storyline itself is well conceptualized and executed on both ends. It’s certainly a fun and entertaining crossover, if nothing else.
What’s Not So Good: Although Simone is just a good writer, period, the Secret Six are the characters she was clearly born to write and speak for. Usually, this isn’t an issue; her writing is consistent because she’s either writing the Six book, or writing something else entirely. When the Six are combined with another huge personality like Luthor, though, the difference in voice is highlighted much more. It’s not that her take on Luthor is bad–far from it–but it’s certainly not as strong as her take on the Six themselves.
The illustrations, while also not bad, are also not the issue’s strong suit. Marz does an admirable job filling in, and the consistency of Wright’s coloring helps take some of the jar out of the temporary switch, but I don’t think I’m the only one looking forward to the return of Calafiore’s detail-rich pencils. He complements Simone’s tough and violent writing style very well indeed, and it’s a shame to have lost that for this of all issues.
Conclusion: A strong–though definitely not the strongest–issue. Watching Luthor and the Six play off each other is a lot of fun, and forcing the Six to solve a problem primarily through negotiation, rather than violence, is a nice change of pace. Also: Ragdoll is awesome. Best. Plot exposition. EVER.
Grade: B-
-SoldierHawk
Filed under: DC Comics Tagged: | Gail Simone, Jason Wright, Luciana Delnegro, Marcos Marz, Secret Six, Secret Six #29, Secret Six #29 review, Travis Lanham, Weekly Comic Book Reivew
Only major problem I had here was the art.
It looked really static and stiff, the action scenes were pretty weird, and what the heck was up with the coloring on the characters’ faces?
-Alex
Hm, I didn’t have a particular problem with the coloring…I’ll have to take another look at that. Maybe I was being overly harsh on the pencil work, while overlooking the coloring issues.