It makes sense. Sort of. Kinda. In a way only the M-Vest can…
What They Say:
FLASH FACT: The Secret Seven are being slaughtered from within. Shade the Changing Man must figure out who it is in time, or he will have another team’s death on his hands.
The Review:
While most of the Flashpoint miniseries have had a strong connection to varying degrees to the main storyline, Secret Seven is a title that feels like it just went completely off the rails and did something all on its own with no real connection. There is a tangent here for it, don’t get me wrong, but you could remove it and nothing would change anywhere. When it comes to a character like Shade, this is admittedly expected since he’s just so out there and surreal because of what his abilities are, his background and his personality in general. When it comes to him, things just happen and it may make sense in the mind of the writer and some readers that can string it all together, for most it’s just going to be a strange mess.
And that’s certainly true of this issue where it follows up Shade killing Amethyst, a twelve year old in an older body, just because he felt like it. Shade’s long been a conflicted character and his grasp on reality is tentative at best, so having something like this happen here isn’t exactly a surprise. When June sees all of this, he takes a step further by re-animating her body to show that he can bring her back to life, or some semblance thereof. It’s so creepy that it’s enough to shake June back into her Enchantress personality which in turn has her working her main goal of completely ruining the man so he can’t interfere with the larger plans the Amazons have as she’s working for them. It’s such a thin thread that’s brought in at long last for this and has little real meaning since Shade was pretty much completely disconnected from reality before all of this and this just seems like overkill.
With the way that Shade has tried to bring together a new team through less than pleasant methods since his M-Vest has gone out of control, they’re not thrilled to see him. This worlds version of Zatanna isn’t a shock in that she’s more edgy and the like and less apt to take any grief from anyone, least of all Shade with the pain they felt from his calling to them. Everything turns surreal and bloody as Enchantress shows her true colors again and it’s kind of comical in a way with how Zatanna goes all harsh on her only to have it all backfire in the long run. There’s a resolution to the book, but it really felt off because the whole book felt so completely disconnected from the Flashpoint series in general that when they try to make that tenuous connection at the end, it’s almost like a slap in the face to say that they’re part of the event.
Digital Notes:
This Comixology edition of Flashpoint: Secret Seven contains the main cover as seen with the print edition with no variants or other extras included.
In Summary:
All that can really be said about the Secret Seven is that it shows just how awesome the Secret Six are even more and it served as a way to re familiarize people with the character of Shade before going into the relaunch. I’ve long been a fan of Shade and under Peter Milligan’s hand as well as the original run he did pre-Vertigo was just trippy and surreal in a way that was exhilarating. This series is just a complete mess though with what it wants to do as it’s never truly defined, brings in too much baggage and just never feels like it knew what it wanted to do. It’s filled with sex, violence and characters that are hard pressed to be called heroes on their best day. It had its moments, some of them quite disturbing, but as a whole it’s one of the weakest if not the weakest book of the event.
Grade: C-