Secret Six #1: Three Traumas

Absolute Power is over, and its end came with no shortage of consequences. The consequences that aren’t getting nearly enough attention is the trauma caused by Waller’s actions. Three of the most traumatized characters take center stage in Secret Six #1, a comic that uses Amanda Waller’s disappearance to try and explore the very human emotional toll taken on her victims.

Amanda Waller is missing. The three characters who are searching for her in Secret Six #1 are three of the most damaged in the wake of her assault on super humans. Their first stop on the hunt is to interrogate another former Waller associate, Black Alice. Perhaps a question bigger than where Waller is, though, is whether Jon Kent, Jay Nakamura, and Nia Nal can keep from tearing each other apart as they work together.

Amanda Waller’s disappearance is ostensibly this series’ plot. But Secret Six #1 isn’t primarily concerned with that. The focus for much of this issue is Absolute Power’s aftermath–specifically the scars those events left on Jon, Jay, and Nia. Maines uses the plot point of Waller’s disappearance as a vehicle to examine the trauma these three characters suffered at her hands in Absolute Power.

Giving Jay and Nia a heavily character oriented reason to find Waller isn’t the only benefit of diving into these characters’ trauma. Maines uses Jay and Nia’s separate backgrounds with Waller as a source of conflict between the two of them. Rather than start Secret Six #1 with Jay and Nia seeking healing via the common cause of searching for Waller, Maines chooses the more interesting course of setting the two against each other as extremely reluctant allies.

Jon is the hardest of Secret Six #1’s three main characters to understand. Maines establishes what he suffered in Absolute Power in this issue’s opening pages via Jon’s internal monologue, but she largely sidesteps it for the rest of the issue. Given the extent to which Maines examines Jay and Nia, this does run the risk of leaving the reader with the impression that Maines is pushing Jon to the background–acknowledging his trauma only to turn him into a weak willed mediator for the other two characters.

Segovia delivers visually on Secret Six #1’s high level of emotion. But the facial art is low on details, resulting in more broad expressions. Almost all of the emotion is communicated via characters’ eyes and mouths. This largely works, though many sequences make their point with images of Jay and Nia yelling at each other. There are times when Segovia delivers richer detail, mostly in more extreme close-ups on characters’ faces. In such instances, soft, tiny lines create light shading that contrasts with the comparatively much thicker black lines that outline the characters. These panels and pages with greater artistic nuance balance the tendency toward broad expression found in much of the issue.

Coloring more so than art makes the big visual impression in Secret Six #1. Beredo is very consistent with implied light sources, something that is key in an issue that takes place almost exclusively outdoors at night or inside dark settings. Nothing gets cluttered or lost to backgrounds. Beredo’s coloring enhances Segovia’s art to create levels of dimension.

That same kind of added dimension applies even more with closeups on characters. Beredo transitions through different shades as those implied light sources play over characters’ faces. Even when Segovia goes broad with these characters, particularly Jay and Nia, Beredo’s coloring keeps them grounded.

Fight sequences benefit considerably from Segovia’s tendency toward broad expressions. They are also a showcase of collaboration between artist and colorist. Segovia delivers on dynamic poses and wider group panels. Beredo creates high contrast, especially with bright colors set against those same dark settings.

Wands succeeds at keeping dialogue and caption boxes organized throughout the issue during text heavy sequences. But the most effective lettering work comes with Jon’s internal monologue. Rather than color-code the caption boxes to one of Jon’s Superman outfits, Wands uses a brighter blue that corresponds to one of Jon’s previous designs. The result are captions that pop off the page thanks to their contrast with the surrounding darker colors.