Secret Six Volume 2: Money For Murder by Gail Simnone, Nicola Scott, Doug Hazlewood and Javier Pina (graphic novel review).
This volume, ‘Secret Six Volume 2: Money For Murder’ features reprints from Secret Six # 1-14. The list of creators inside the book is many times greater than on the cover. A real group effort.
This time, the Secret Six are seen more as a mercenary team than crooks. They aren’t choosy about who they work for, and an unknown resident from Gotham City with a suspicious, fishy air wants them to deliver ex-FBI agent Catalina Flores, imprisoned for murder, to him. None of this is helped by the fact that the Six now have a $10 million contract on their own heads for doing so. Added to the mix is a criminal boss who spends his time in a crate and has his own form of justice if you cross him. He isn’t named, and the reveal, when it comes, is a complete spoiler.
Instead, the Secret Six find they have been employed by a certain individual in a hat to take a card to Gotham, only to discover that most of the city’s villains are waiting to take them on. There is also an awareness that Batman is missing. With a large gang preparing to kidnap the children of three wealthy families, Bane, Catman and Ragdoll step in to save them. It’s also the first time we see Nightwing, who finds he has to compromise rather than fight them. I should point out that Bane is trying to resist taking his steroid drug. Not always successfully, but it serves as a useful warning about relying on such substances.
You do have to wonder if the Secret Six have an agent to negotiate their deals, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so easily manoeuvred into going to a prison island run by a Mr Smyth, only to discover he’s a slaver, something even they find uncomfortable. It also enters a grey area when it’s revealed that the USA willingly sent the Amazon tribe Bana-Mighdall there after an incident. Would they have done so had they known the Amazons were being tortured? Wonder Woman turns up, and Jeannette, who can transform into a banshee, subdues her. There are a lot of moral grey areas in this story, raising the question of whether the team are simply mercenaries or possess some kind of conscience.
A lot of this is, inevitably, spoiler territory, but if there is a weakness, it lies in the team’s shifting moralities. Even the military ideal that a unit protects itself first isn’t adhered to, as they will turn on each other at the drop of a hat. Quite how younger readers would view these stories is questionable. That likely depends on who DC Comics believes their target audience is. The reality is that if any of the major superheroes turned up regularly, any or all of the Secret Six would end up jailed. As mercenaries operating worldwide, it’s easier for them to avoid that fate. As this series also won awards, it presumably found the right audience.
GF Willmetts
March 2026
(pub: DC Comics, 2015. 336 page graphic novel. Price. Varies. ISBN: 978-1-4012-5237-4).
check out website: www.dc.com
