Wanna know a secret? The original Secret Six

As my Silver Age reread is now sliding into 1970, I’m writing about Secret Six a little late. #1 of the original series by that name came out cover-dated April/May of 1968; the seventh and final issue came out a year later. But better late than never, especially with one of DC’s more interesting experiments of the late Silver Age.

Unlike Bat Lash, Dolphin or Angel and the Ape, the Secret Six debuted in their own book rather than Showcase. Did the higher-ups think a series modeled on the hit series Mission: Impossible had potential? Or was it more a case of “hell, why not?” As noted at the link, Batton Lash and Angel O’Day (and of course her partner, Sam Simeon) only appeared in one issue of Showcase before going to series; launching blind wasn’t that big a step by comparison.

Maybe it helped that this was an era when DC was edging away from supervillains — too reminiscent of TV’s Batman and fans will never, never, never forgive that abomination (or so it seemed at the time)! — and relevance was in. Here we have a series dealing with real-world villains (commie spies, organized crime) and non-super protagonists with troubled, real-world pasts (well, compared to coming from Krypton or Paradise Island).

E. Nelson Bridwell plotted Secret Six and, I believe, came up with the core concept. Joe Gill provided dialogue; Jack Sparling provided the art except for the first issue, which was Frank Springer. I’m not a big fan of Sparling’s work, though I think he does better here than the countless dull anthology stories he turned in earlier in the decade.

The premise is simple: what if everyone on the Impossible Mission Force had been blackmailed to join? In the first issue the mysterious team leader Mockingbird calls the six together. They meet for the first time and we meet them too (though the Sparling image below is from #2).

Mike Tempest, former heavyweight boxer. When the mob told him to take a dive, Mike told the cop. The mobsters got busted, Mike got a price on his head. Thanks to Mockingbird Mike’s now a homeless vagabond but at least the syndicate has no idea where he is. Unless Mockingbird tells them.

Dr. August Durant, Pentagon nuclear physicist. A communist agent tested an experimental bioweapon on Durant and it worked. The only reason he’s alive is because Mockingbird provides a drug that keeps him in remission — as long as Durant plays ball.

Italian Carlo Di Rienzi is a master magician and the greatest escapologist since Houdini. The Mafia wanted him to use his skills to open a few safes for them; when Carlo refused, his wife wound up dead and his son permanently crippled. An experimental treatment keeps the kid walking — as long as Mockingbird doesn’t cut off access.

Lili de Nueve has the A-list beauty salon and plastic surgery clinic on the Riviera. When she refused to provide wanted men with new faces, mobsters framed her for murder to get control of her company. Mockingbird saved her with a phony alibi, but if he ever reveals it’s a fake …

King Savage, Korean War hero turned movie stunt man, is a legend for breaking out of a POW camp to save his regiment from an ambush. Nobody knows he cracked under torture and gave up the information that led to the ambush. Nobody, that is, but Mockingbird, who rescued him in time to save the regiment. Savage would sooner die than have Mockingbird reveal the truth.

Last but not least, Crimson Dawn, the hottest model on the London fashion scene. Before a complete makeover at Lili’s establishment, she was a lot less attractive, a lot more gullible and easy prey for a slimeball who stole her inheritance. She has a new life and impressive martial arts skills. If, however, Mockingbird tells her family where to find her — well, she couldn’t bear that.

Who is Mockingbird? Although he’s called them all to meet with him, the VTOL jet on which they assemble is empty of anyone else. Durant draws a conclusion — Mockingbird’s there as one of the six, using a fake cover story to fit in. But which?

(If you find this reasoning a stretch, so did some readers at the time. Bridwell’s response in the letter column was that Durant might be wrong — who knows?).

The first case involves Zoltan Lupus, an international criminal planning to demonstrate a deadly new gas to four potential buyers. The Six’s mission: see the demonstration fails. They pull it off, despite Mike being distracted when one of the buyers turns out to be the mob boss who put a price on his head.

#2, “Plunder the Pentagon,” (cover by Cardy) has the Six infiltrate the Pentagon to replace a top-secret weapon blueprint with a fake, thwarting a Soviet spy planning to steal it. Things go wrong, the spy gets the blueprints — can the team recover them?

#3, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has someone target the team for death. It appears someone’s after Mockingbird; in reality the syndicate, having learned from the first issue that Mike is alive, plans to eliminate him and his friends.

#4, “Escape for an Enemy,” requires the team penetrate “Red” China as it was known at the time to bring out a Korean general who’s wound up on the wrong side of Chinese power politics. Trouble is, it’s the man who tortured Savage during the Korean War.

You can see the pattern: each story after the first puts one of the Six in the spotlight. #5 has Crimson encounter her no-good ex; #6 pits Lili against the people who framed her; #7 lets Carlo settle some scores with the Mafia. This lets us get into the team’s backstories in detail. Where would they have gone after that? Who knows.

The book was fun and different from anything else on the stands at the time. It has weaknesses: Dr. Durant’s skill-set doesn’t contribute to most of the missions the way Crimson’s martial-arts skills or Carlo’s stage magic do, making things uneven. King Savage having a Korean War backstory means Mockingbird was setting this up more than a decade ago — why wait that long? Or would Bridwell eventually have revealed that Savage had been on an earlier version of the team? It would also rule out twenty-something Crimson as Mockingbird, except that it was her father who got Savage out of the camp for Mockingbird. Is Crimson a secret legacy hero?

Regardless, I enjoyed Secret Six. I bought the five issues I didn’t have off eBay when that point in my reread rolled around and I have no regrets.

I’m in a minority. The book didn’t last, but this was an era when Dr. Strange and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD got cancelled too; I’m not sure it’s any reflection on the series. However, where other off-the-wall characters from this era returned in the Bronze Age — Bat Lash, Creeper, Johnny Double — I can’t recall anyone even referencing the Secret Six in the following decade, though an issue of Bridwell’s Super-Friends gives Carlo a name-drop.

In 1988, Action Comics Weekly revived the series, sort of, as one of the backup strips (shown in the middle of this Dave Gibbons cover).

Created by Martin Pasko and Dan Spiegle, it has Mockingbird recruit a new team, six people with disabilities (blind, deaf, paraplegic). He provides the tech to overcome their disability; if they rebel against him, he turns it off. I found this too heavy on disability cliches and also unimaginative. The original team had distinctive, individual backstories; the new team’s uniformity was dull.

Among comics fans who are into the series, the big question, of course, is Mockingbird’s identity. Durant seems to be the fan favorite and I’ve read arguments explaining why it had to be him. He’s Mockingbird in the revival series and also when the Six show up in Scooby-Doo Team-Up #30 (cover by Dario Brizuela). According to a friend of mine, however, Bridwell flatly ruled out Durant in a conversation with fans.

Another friend says Bridwell, much later in life, identified Mike Tempest as Mockingbird.

For almost all fans reading today, I imagine the Simone Secret Six is the definitive take. No complaints here — it’s a terrific series. But I still have a soft spot for the original team.

Angel and the Ape by Bob Oksner, Johnny Double by Dick Giordano, modern Secret Six by Cliff Chiang.