Secret Six #4

Are they living in the suburbs of Grand Theft Auto?

I have a confession to make. When I drive a car around in Grand Theft Auto, I cannot not run directly into anybody riding a motorcycle. It's so satisfying! I think I have some internal rage stemming from all of those bumper stickers telling me to fucking share the road and preemptively blaming me and other car drivers for killing motorcyclists. Hmm. Now that I've typed that sentence, I think a bigger problem with me is that I get angry at stupid bumper stickers! The bumper stickers I get especially angry at are the ones having a dialogue with other bumper stickers! Like that Jesus fish eating the atheist fish! Also the atheist fish alone! It doesn't make sense! And how about those idiots driving around proclaiming their dog is smarter than somebody's kid? And...and...those zombie families that proclaim they've eaten your stick figure family! Maybe I need some immersion therapy! I should get a bumper sticker that says, "My other car was impounded after purposely killing a motorcyclist with it."

Oh! I know! I'll get a sticker across the front of my hood in backwards font that reads SHARE THIS!

That was probably the least interesting confession I could have made. "Hey! I run people over in a video game and I thoroughly enjoy it!" Like, who doesn't? What's the secret?!

Anyway, last issue we learned some pretty interesting tidbits about the Secret Six. They were really important tidbits too! The kind you don't normally discover in Issue #3 of any comic book unless it's a three issue mini-series. I suppose it isn't as surprising when you realize that three issues of Secret Six took about ten years to come out, so something had to be revealed to keep everybody's attention (I only said I was going to be magnanimous and avoid the topic of delays in the last commentary!). Those revelations were (SPOILER WARNING if you haven't read Issue #3 although if you're reading a commentary on Issue #4 before reading Issue #3 than I'm guessing you don't really care. And now I'm soured on Spoiler Warnings and will never use them again because they're never appreciated) that Mockingbird is The Riddler and Big Shot is Ralph Dibny, The Elongated Man. The best part about The Elongated Man secretly being Big Shot is that he won't be wearing that stupid fucking uniform.

I wonder if Sue is buried in the garden?

All that paper is doing is getting in the way of Big Shot's mouth! Free hand that feces-covered cock substitute, Dibny!

If Dibny weren't just using his powers to make himself grow bigger (much like Phat from X-Statix. Do I sense a Mavel-DC crossover lawsuit pending?!), he'd probably eat that dog in one bite by wrapping his lips around its thick shaft and swallowing. No wait. That's probably more like something Plastic Man would do.

How embarrassing must it be for Plastic Man to be the "less dignified" stretching super hero? I suppose Jimmy Olsen was even worse though. You know, way back when Ralph would share his Gingold with him.

Big Shot and Catman return to the rest of the six waiting outside Porcelain's apartment in a van.

Especially coming at the end of a right-hand page, this beat is timed perfectly as the reader realizes everybody is accounted for except Ferdie!

I haven't turned the page yet because I'm soaking in the anticipation of whatever great perversion Ferdie is engaged in with Alice. I bet he's tempting her with both sides of the Peanut Butter Twix bar as he declares in two opposing statements that each half is the half he likes best.

Ferdie isn't acting perverse at all! Aside from looking up Alice's skirt which I think is just a natural tendency because glimpses of panties are so exciting! And Alice's are the only panties probably worth looking at because Shauna most assuredly wears only cobwebs down there and Porcelain is currently wearing boxers and Strix will fucking kill you. What's the secret?!

The team realizes they're being followed but Big Shot doesn't make a big deal about it because he's one of the bad guys! Or the good guys? He's straddling both worlds!

Oh! Oh! I know the secret! Project: Mockingird is six secret teams of six villains each! Which means Gail Simone is going to be writing 36 DC characters in this series!

The first half of this secret team is obviously Ragdoll, Scandal, and Scandal's little brother, Randall. I hope one of the teams features Brother Power the Geek and Ambush Bug!

Turning the page, I discover there's more to the scene with Ragdoll and his goggle-eyed buddies which offers more proof for my guess that there are six secret teams! Maybe they don't all have to contain six people though. This three person team could be one team. Maybe they're teams of one, two, three, four, and you get the pattern. Unless you're dumber than a raccoon which is likely in about 30% of you reading this.

I might be one of those thirty percent because I'm not an archaic gangster and had to look up "moll." Although after looking it up, I was all, "Oh yeah! I knew that! One time." And then I punched my brain for being old.

That panel confused me in another way at first too! I was wondering why he was naming birds for his moll's codename. I thought maybe The Riddler had a Robin fetish as well. I thought he should be suggesting names like "Knock Knock" or "Dirty Limerick" or "Fucking Piece of Shit Puzzle Box That Doesn't Fucking Open No Matter What You Fucking Try Goddammit!" Then I realized he's playing off of Mockingbird. I should go live in the garbage and let the raccoons have my apartment.

Back in the suburbs, Big Shot's home is lined with gnomes. Strix falls in love with one and Ferdie takes one on as his wingman so they can go do unspeakable things to the neighborhood children's dolls. I hope Strix's gnome remains part of the team even after they move on from Big Shot's little pink tiny box.

Catman smells the genders of the three people following them and it's two women and one man so I guess Randall didn't make the cut. I guess Vandal's son will have to continue to live in obscurity until I can make believe he exists at another time.

Catman has a problem with his sniffer because, judging by my cats, he should have noticed the cookies first.

Although I don't think they'd be into Pecan Sandies. Although I only eat those by dipping them in milk and the cats go fucking nuts if they hear a milk container being looked at.

The Six decline to go to prison for a year so a battle takes place over cookies. Ragdoll calls out, "Dibs on the living merkin!" Which one is that?! It could be Shauna because she is quite the frumpy disaster, although who would want her near their genitals? But since Ragdoll tackles Catman, I'll assume it was him because Ragdoll figures Catman spends most of his time sitting on genitals.

As the battle progresses, Scandal puts on her claws so everybody knows it's her. And the last of the three mentions banshees and some of her white hair falls out, so I guess that's Jeanette? Did I spell that right? I've never read the first Secret Six because I was on a comic book hiatus when it came out. But I have the first two of the new trades sitting in a pile of things that I'll eventually read if I don't get hit by a bus or arrested for running down people on motorcycles.

We still don't know the most important thing in this comic book! What is the kitten's name?! What is the secret?!

The fight ends inconclusively as everybody just winds up being too polite and feeling too awkward to continue. If only Superman and Batman were more like these assholes! Before leaving, Scandal invites everybody to an LGBTQ Mixer and Jeannette tells them that one of them is going to die. See, she's a banshee and I guess she accidentally screamed while baking the cookies and now Strix's time is up but Jeannette didn't want to blame the cookies so she pretended to have some kind of Banshee Death Sense which is totally ludicrous! Except Strix isn't the one I think will die. I have a bad feeling Ferdie is going to be introduced to a woodchipper. But he'll be back in a new body, probably!

Secret Six #4 Rating: +1 Ranking. How is it that DC can publish comic books as good as this and Grayson and Gotham Academy and Batman but they can't figure out how to write Superman?! He's like the superest easiest character to write! How come a perverse talking doll is more fun to read than Superman? Okay, right, I think that's always been the case. Maybe Superman needs to be a bit more perverse? If people were angry at Superman for being an unrepentant perv, at least I'd understand why everybody was turning on him right now in that awful Truth story arc. I'd totally support that story! Maybe when Lois switched desks with Clark without his knowing, she could have found many gigs of upskirt and x-ray vision pics on his Daily Planet computer! That's why she exposed him to the world! Maybe that's how things went down since readers still don't know the whole story and won't until Superman #44 is published in a couple of months. I hope that's what it turns out to be. I probably shouldn't be talking about Superman here. I should probably be saying Secret Six is as good as everybody expected it to be. I would say you should go read it but you're probably already reading it. Who needs me to tell them what to do anyway?!