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 is seen more as a mercenary team than crooks. They aren’t choosy who they work for and an unknown resident from Gotham City with a herring smell wants them to get ex-FBI agent Catalina Flores, imprisoned for murder to him. None of which is helped that the Six have now got a $10 million contract on their own heads for doing so. Added to this mix is a criminal boss who spends his time in a crate and has his own form of justice if you cross him. He doesn’t get a name but the reveal when it happens is totally spoiler.
Instead, the Secret Six find they have been employed by a certain individual in a hat to take a card to Gotham and then suddenly find most of the city’s villains waiting to take them on. There is also an awareness that the Batman is missing. With a large gang preparing to kidnap three wealthy families children, Bane, Catman and Ragdoll stepping in to save them. Its also the first time we see Nightwing who finds he has to compromise than fight them. I should point out that Bane is trying to resist taking his steroid drug. Not always successfully but a useful warning not to rely on such drugs.
You do have to wonder if the Secret Six has an agent to negotiate their deals or they wouldn’t have been so easy to end up going to a prison island ran by a Mr. Smyth and discovering he’s a slaver and even they are uncomfortable with that. It does enter a grey area that the USA willingly sent the Amazon tribe Bana-Mighdall there after an incident. Would they have done so had they known they were being tortured? Wonder Woman turns up and Jeannette who can turn into a banshee subdues her. There’s a lot of grey areas in this story as do they act as mercenaries or get a conscience?
A lot of this is spoiler but it if there is a weakness then it’s the varying moralities of the team. Even the military ideal that the team protects itself first isn’t adhered to as they will turn on themselves at a drop of a hat. Quite how young readers would see these stories is questionable. I suppose that depends on who DC Comics thinks their readership age level is. Thing is, if any of the super-heroes turned up regularly, any or all of the Secret Six could be jailed. As mercenaries working world-wide, it might be easier to avoid them. As this series also won awards, presumably, it reached 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
