No One Suspects the Drill-Handed Dummy
Written By: Gail Simone
Art By: Tom Derenick, Jason Wright, Wes Abbott
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: September 16,
2015
*Non-Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
It’s time once again to enjoin our merry band of criminal
misfits and doofuses, the Secret Six. Eric promised his Imaginext play sets he
would devote a few more hours per week hanging out with them, so I agreed to
take on reviewing this series since I have no prior commitments with my toys
and I like it better anyway. This issue teases a macabre wedding on the cover,
but that doesn’t even begin to explain the contents within this whirlwind of a
comic book. Sure, the hijinx are wacky, but is this issue any good? Read on and
see!
Explain It!:
Picking up right where we left off last issue, Riddler stands
with his gang of Riddlers, boasting before that sexy cad Catman and mute
ex-Talon Strix about how he has bested our titular team by using the man’s lost
wife to compel Big Shot aka Ralph Dibny aka the Elongated Man aka Possibly Not
Ralph Dibny to gather the crew and subject them to a series of elaborate traps
in order to bring them to this place at this moment in time because one of them
stole a diamond the Riddler wanted. Oh, and he also knocked out the other
three-plus members of the team, because they looked like they needed a knocking
out I guess. While Riddler yaps on about his diabolical superiority, Strix
murders the other guys in Riddler suits. That’s on the sixth page.
So Riddler acts all scared and lets Catman beat him up a little,
then pulls his master stroke: to have Due Dibny step from Big Shot’s clutches with
a detonator wired to blow up the whole area. Why this was deployed after
Riddler’s entire crew was murdered, or why they were even there in the first
place, is just one of many mysteries…maybe there are six such plot-related
head-scratchers each issue, hence the title Secret
Six? Big Shot acts really uncharacteristic here if he is supposed to be
Ralph Dibny, which Sue seems to think he is not. The rest of the team comes to
consciousness and advance on Sue Dibny to keep her from blowing up the spot,
but Big Shot comes to her defense on account of him thinking she has the
softest hair. He grows super huge, Bane-style, and starts thrashing the Sexy
Six around—I don’t recall Ralph Dibny being able to increase his mass and
strength like that, another reason I think he may not be who he didn’t say he
was but now says he is even though he isn’t. While our heroes tussle, the
Ventriloquist’s puppet-thing springs to life and jams his palm-mounted drill
hands into Riddler’s legs. Which is pretty gross, when you think about it, and
particularly if you’ve seen as many low-budget slasher films as I have.
Turns out the puppet stole Riddler’s diamond, a fact he rubs in
Nygma’s face as he jams drills into his feet. The team starts getting the
better of Big Shot, but it all comes to nothing when Sue simply presses the
detonator and blows everyone up. The Secret Six get away, of course, but
Riddler and Sue Dibny are nowhere to be found. The team reconvenes on some
patch of land where we learn the Ventriloquist’s dummy lost the diamond, which
is probably just as well because it was merely a contrived plot point and
probably not worth much in a literary sense anyway.
Tom Derenick’s art is great throughout and, despite the very
weird story, this is a pretty straightforward and easy-to-understand read—at
face value. Looking deeper, the issue seems filled with a lot of
inconsequential moments and concepts that end up meaningless almost as soon as
they’re introduced. Gail Simone’s strong suit is dialogue, and if you like
quips and witty patter then you should be able to enjoy this book on a surface
level. I’m still having fun with this book personally, but like Eric’s penchant
for Imaginext toys, it gets more uncomfortable the longer your scrutinize it.
Bits and
Pieces:
Very
well-drawn and well-plotted comic book about a bunch of characters that do
weird things for strange reasons. Some of the characterization is really
enjoyable, particularly in Catman and Strix, but too many of the characters
seem like throwaways or placeholders for punching bags. The wedding teased on
the cover is barely an afterthought in this issue, it comes across as just
another of the bizarre scenarios that play out through the story. And it all
takes place at the same location…this may actually be a tour de force of
Hitchcockian proportions!
Nah.
5/10
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