Secret Six #15 Review

Gail Simone and Nicola Scott are out, John Ostrander and J. Calafiore are in, and with an issue absent of our familiar chaos that should be a minor bridge from one story to the other, Secret Six #15 ends up being a deep and dark travel through the mind of one of the Secret’s most troubled.

Since Gail’s first take on the Secret Six in Villains United we’ve seen Deadshot grow from the cold hearted and at times underestimated B Class villain to the near antihero he is now. It’s as if he woke up one day with a conscience but hasn’t fully realized it yet, and we the reader are left wondering “is Deadshot a good guy or a bad guy?” Is he in denial? Or will he snap out of it at some point and turn back into the cutthroat suicidal sharp shooter blasting at anything that moves with no remorse for human life? And now, having refreshed ourselves on his origin and sitting in the passenger’s seat of his subconscious I think it’s fair to assume that as under control he might think he is or how much growing up he continues to do Deadhsot is still that guy who gets visions of killing virtually everyone around him, which I have to think makes him one unstable guy. Good. That’s how I like my Deadshot, unstable.

I’m not as familiar with John Ostrander and I’d lying if I said it was nice to take a break from this Six (I miss them) but the last thing I want to be is greedy; Gail Simone and Nicola Scott have delivered 14 straight issues with the same quality of greatness in each one, they’ve earned the time off. And I appreciate that Gail Simone doesn’t give us a mailed in issue but instead hands it off to someone who is familiar with the characters and settings. Ostrander did a great job of placing us in and out of the head of Deadshot. The random moments of violent killings that flashed in and out of his mind, with that red overtone, were pure awesome. And the flashback of Deadshot’s first meeting with Batman was not only a great call back to his first appearance but also an interesting insight into his family and mindset. I particularly liked the respect for Batman we see Deadshot give, all but admitting Bats is the better man. And as a fan, it’s always fun to see a guy like Deadshot not see that Bruce is Batman. Calafiore’s art was a great fit for the story. Just enough grime to match the tone but he gave us some great looking action and shooting scenes as well.

As much as I enjoyed this read though I can’t help but be just slightly disappointed. It was a cool read and by no means did I waste my money but in the long run this could end up being a forgotten about issue in my growing Secret Six pile. If someone didn’t know Deadshot’s background this would be a great hand me down and for big Suicide Squad fans seeing Creamer was an added bonus that I couldn’t fully appreciate but when it’s all said and done I doubt I’ll be coming back to this issue any time soon. With the exception of a brief mention of the ‘get out of hell free’ card there is virtually no tie-in to the Secret Six plot and all you need to know when we get back into Gail’s story is that Deadshot is “back in control”, what that means we’ll see. Not a bad issue by any stretch, in fact I really enjoyed reading it. It was very entertaining and will hold me over till next week…but that’s about it.