Comic Book / Secret Six (2025)

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Secret Six is a 2025 comic book miniseries created by Nicole Maines and Steven Segovia, and published by DC Comics. It is part of the DC All In initiative, and follows the events of Absolute Power (2024).

At the end of Amanda Waller's brazen campaign against the superheroes, Nia Nal, AKA Dreamer, used her powers over the subconscious to bury all of the information Waller had collected about the heroes deep in her brain, preventing her from blackmailing her way out of prison. She thought Waller was finished for good, but now Waller has escaped.

To track down her nemesis, Dreamer must recruit the aid of Superman Jon Kent, Gossamer, Black Alice, Deadshot, and Catman. There's just one problem: Most of these folks remember how Dreamer used to work for Waller, and they're not too keen on helping her clean up the mess she's made.

The first issue was released March 5, 2025.

Secret Six contains examples of:

• Amnesiacs Are Innocent: After Waller's Death of Personality, the woman left behind is confused and horrified by all the violence.
• Assimilation Backfire: Black Alice copies the powers of Athena and proceeds to go on a rampage against Jeanette and the soldiers backing her, becoming incredibly boastful in the process. Eventually she gets retribution from the goddess herself, who takes her power back so violently Alice is left feebly apologizing, with Athena sternly threatening to never steal her powers again.
• Be All My Sins Remembered: When Jay confronts Nia about her role in the death of his mother, she makes very little attempt to defend herself beyond insisting that she had little choice in the matter. She admits to Jay that this mission isn't about trying to salvage her reputation, it's about getting rid of Waller once and for all.
• "Both Sides Have a Point" Remark: In the third issue, Jon's not exactly wrong when he insists that killing Waller is not a heroic act, but as Black Alice points out, Jon's dad is Superman and his mom is the world's most famous journalist, affording his family a level of protection from Waller's wrath that Nia and her family will probably never enjoy. His family name also ensures that his slate always gets wiped clean whenever he screws up, whereas she and Nia will probably spend the rest of their lives getting blackmailed over the things they did on the "Dream Team" unless they make sure that Waller never tells anyone else about it.
  Black Alice: You're doing an awful lot of judging for someone born into omnipotent goodness.
• By-the-Book Cop: Jon has become non-confrontational and a stickler for regulations because of his fear of hurting others after being used as a Living Weapon trapped in his own body by Amanda Waller during Absolute Power. He balks when Jay uses his Justice League Unlimited card to gain access to a part of Belle Reve they were not supposed to visit. He refuses to do anything to the guards even as they shoot at Jay and Nia or even use his Nigh-Invulnerability as a shield to protect them beyond demanding an explanation. And he is very disappointed in Nia when he learns that she erased Waller's memories and plans on killing her. This almost ends in him having Heroic BSoD when his friends and the military come to blows.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Deadshot's justification for trying to rescue Waller, despite how much he hates her, is that he's got some very unpleasant people after him since his resurrection and he figures that she's the only one who could get those people off his back.
• Cast Full of Gay: Superman and Catman are bisexual, Gossamer is gay, and Dreamer is transgender.
• Continuity Nod: In the third issue, Deadshot mentions Scandal getting the Get Out Of Hell Free Card as well as their trip to hell and his effects on him (no longer being as accepting of his own demise as he used to be) from the third volume of the original Secret Six run. This also confirms that these events still happened in the new continuity and the old Secret Six still existed, but simply went their separate ways (case in point they end up fighting their previous teammate Jeanette the Banshee).
• Continuity Snarl: In Superman (Phillip Kennedy Johnson), Lex Luthor's Project Blackout sacrificed Manchester Black to insert a psychic bomb in the minds of everyone outside of the Justice League and their closest friends and families that would cause a fatal aneurysm in anyone who learned Superman's or the other Super-Family members' secret identities. In this story, Catman freely refers to Jon by his real name without the lethal consequences this should logically have.
• Death of Personality: The Checkmate tech to download Waller's memories has the (possibly intentional) side-effect of completely erasing her memories and personality, essentially creating a new person in her body. Dreamer dubs the new persona "Amanda Belle Blake" and doesn't hold her responsible for Waller's crimes.
• Differing Priorities Breakup: Jay takes the drive containing Waller's memories and leaves Jon after Jon's refusal to help overthrow the United States due to his fear of becoming The Unfettered.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Black Alice would prefer that everyone call her by her codename and just forget that she was ever Lori Zechlin.
• Enemy Mine: As their team becomes fractured, Black Alice reluctantly allies herself with Dreamer, despite their past enmity, because she knows Catman and Deadshot well enough to know that she can't trust either of them, it's abundantly clear that Jay has a grudge against her, and Jon can't be relied upon for anything in his current state.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the third issue, Jeannette may be a centuries-old monster who once slowly poisoned a woman to death with ground glass in her food, but even she makes no secret of her disgust for the pedophilic Senator Doug Gravenport when he shows up to her club begging for help with his latest career problem.
• Friend in the Crosshairs: Jon Kent suffers this dilemma twice over when his friend Dreamer recruits him and his boyfriend Jay to help her kill Amanda Waller. On the one hand, as the son of Superman, he is morally opposed to killing, On the other hand, Waller has been blackmailing Dreamer for months into doing her dirty work, and Jon owes Nia for saving his life when Waller turned him into her cyborg puppet. Also, Jay is on board with killing Waller because she ordered the assassination of his mother. Things get even more complicated when the makeshift team learns that the plans to assassinate Jay's mother predated Waller and she was just the fall guy for the whole operation. Jay decides to expand their mission to finding and murdering whoever gave the orders, whereas Nia realizes that this would mean war with the US government, and Jon is not on board with that, either. Ultimately, the three former friends part ways, with Nia going back into hiding, Jon returning to his parents, and Jay departing on his continuing quest for vengeance.
• Friendship Denial: When Jay holds Nia at gunpoint, demanding to be handed over the hard drive containing Amanda Waller's memories, she tells him that they are friends. Jay tells her that that hasn't been true for a while.
• Heroic BSoD: Averted. When Catman and Jon arrive at the army base where their friends are being held, they discover that there is a fight between their friends and the military. Jon, being a By-the-Book Cop, has a hard time comprehending the situation, saying they are supposed to be the good guys, working himself into a mental breakdown. However, when Catman challenges his Black-and-White Morality in response, he manages to pull himself out of it.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: All Dreamer ever wanted was to be a hero and help people, but Waller blackmailed her into helping overthrow the government of Gamorra, and as much as she wishes otherwise, she can't undo the things that Waller compelled her to do, and thus she's not highly trusted in the superhero community.
• Homoerotic Subtext: In keeping with the original book, every interaction between Catman and Deadshot is dripping in homoeroticism. This gets full-on lampshaded in Issue 4, where Jon outright assumes the two are a couple.
• Hypocrite:
  • Jay is angry at Nia for being partially responsible for the death of his mother under orders of Amanda Waller. But at the same time, he is completely dismissive of the fact that, not only did she try to avoid his mother's death and deeply regrets not being able to prevent it, if she would have outright defied Amanda Waller, it would have been her family that would've been killed and her hometown would have been exposed, which would have further caused its destruction and more deaths, even going so far as calling her selfish for not prioritizing his mother over her own family and home.
  • Jay considers Jon one for saying that it's not their place to fight the US government, even with what they know, since Jon had no problem working with him to overthrow Henry Bendix as president of Gamorra.
• Hypocritical Humor: In the first issue, Black Alice chides Nia for calling her "Lori" instead of her codename, saying that Nia, as a trans woman, should know better than to call someone by anything other than their preferred name. That being said, Black Alice later dismisses her other Suicide Squad teammates' disguises as prison guards as dressing "gay".
• In Name Only: This series is mostly unconnected to previous Secret Six series, other than having Catman, Deadshot, and Black Alice on the team. Though the original Secret Six and their trip to hell still get a Continuity Nod in the third issue.
• Innocence Lost: The three focus characters are all young adults who are entangled in traumatic experiences and morally complex situations. Lashing out at each other for one reason or another. In the end, though there is technically a win for them, disagreements over what to do what what they've won leads to them going their separate way, giving up on seeing eye to eye or ever being friends again. Jon in particular reflects on his much longer Trauma Conga Line and how he'll never have any semblance of normalcy again.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In issue 3, Jay reveals to Jon that Nia erased Waller's memories and that she intends to kill her, having tried to recruit him for it as well. Being Superman, Jon is not angry, but he is very disappointed in Nia.
  • In issue 6, Nia reveals to Jay that when his mother was killed she had already turned on Waller and nearly died for it and that when she rescued his boyfriend Jon during Absolute Power (2024), she did die. Jay doesn't care and bluntly tells her he wants her to stay dead.
• It's All About Me: Jay's Fatal Flaw following his mother's death. He is so consumed by his mother's death that he acts completely uninterested in the fact that many of the people involved in her death didn't have much of a choice, especially Dreamer, whom he expected to choose his mother over her family and home. He didn't even care that she essentially saved his boyfriend's life at the cost of her own and kept him sane while under Waller's control. And when he tells said boyfriend that he wants to use a Waller's memories and his power to overthrow the US government, not once considering his feelings on it, and said boyfriend tries to calm him down and tell him that he can't let his pain guide him, Jay snaps at, asking him about how he dares to talk to him about pain and breaks up with him, blaming him for it. Needless to say, this attitude does not get him any friends and even Nia eventually realized how futile it is to try and repair what is broken, leaving him all alone at the end.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Jay's mental state worsens over the course of the series. Already dismissive about the fact that those involved in his mother's death didn't exactly have much choice in the matter, he ends ups killing a room full of soldiers after finding out that the US government was behind his home's takeover by Waller. He later holds Nia at gunpoint and actually pulls the trigger when she refuses to hand over a hard drive containing Waller's memories. At the end of issue 6, he has completely jumped of it, intending to use both the hard drive and his boyfriend Jon's power to overthrow the US government. When Jon tries to calm him down, Jay breaks up with him for not wanting to help him.
• Mistaken for Gay: In the fourth issue, Jon assumes Floyd and Thomas were a couple because of how close they used to be and how they bickered Like an Old Married Couple. While Thomas is bisexual, there has never been any confirmation that Deadshot is queer (although back in Gail Simone's Secret Six comics he definitely was Ambiguously Bi).
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Dreamer's pitch for why the others should help her clean up the mess she made is that they are all just as screwed as she is if Waller manages to recover her memories.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In issue #2, Floyd holds back from killing Jon and stops Catman, Jay, Dreamer, and Black Alice from fighting, because he needs answers and he realizes that Jon is less likely to provide those answers if he's dead or if something happens to Jay or Nia.
• Rage Breaking Point: Jay's attitude towards Nia for her role in the death of his mother despite her best attempts to repair their broken friendship, and the fact that her own family was held hostage, which Jay explicitly doesn't care about, finally hits Nia's breaking point in issue 6 when he holds her at gun point and demands to have her hand over a hard drive containing Amanda Waller's memories. But when he pulls the trigger, attempting to shoot her, he discovers that the gun is out of ammo. What follows is a fist fight between the two where she lets out all her frustrations about his attitude and declared that she will no longer try to appease him.
• Recycled Title: The fifth volume to be titled "Secret Six."
• The Reveal: Issue 5 reveals that the invasion of Gammora and the death of Jay’s mother wasn’t Waller's plan, but a plan the US Government put in place and had Waller run and the resulting events of Absolute Power were meant to have the US sweep their actions under the rug by making Waller their patsy.
• Shooting Superman: The prison guards open fire on Jon, Nia, and Jay for accessing a highly-secure part of Belle Reve without permission. While Nia has to keep them at bay with a forcefield, the guards should know that Superman and Gossamer have Nigh-Invulnerability and Intangibility respectively, making tranquilizer guns worthless against them.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: As one can imagine, Gossamer is not at all enthusiastic about working with Dreamer, as the latter was responsible for his mother's assassination. Catman and Deadshot are also not thrilled about having to work with a bunch of kids, or with each other. And Black Alice hates pretty much all of them.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Following the death of his mother, Jay has become much more of a jerk:
  • He dismisses the fact that Dreamer was forced to work for Waller to protect her own family and home and doesn't care for her remorse and attempts to repair their broken bond or when she tells him that at that point, she had turned against Waller and almost died for it and that she did die rescuing his boyfriend. He also gleefully reveals to Jon Dreamer's plan to kill Waller, which he pretended to agree to, knowing it would cause him to call her out for it. He later tries to shoot her when she refuses to hand over the hard drive containing her memories and flat out tells her that he wants her dead.
  • He doesn't care when Black Alice flat out tells him that no one there had much of a choice in the matter as they all had a literal bomb in their necks.
  • When captured by the military, he goes on to kill a room full of soldiers after finding out that the US government was behind the takeover of his home, showing no remorse for it.
  • When Jon tries to talk him down after Jay reveals that he wants to use the hard drive and him to overthrow the US government, Jay angrily yells at him, asking him how he dares talk to him about pain and then breaks up with him when he refuses to help him overthrow the US.
• Trauma Button: Catman pushes Jon's when he remarks that he sees the appeal of brainwashing him into something less restrained by morality, provoking an angry rant from Jon about how awful it feels to be, or to be at the mercy of, an unfettered Superman.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Nia, Jon, and Jay used to be close allies of one another, but then Nia got involved with Amanda Waller and played a role in the death of Jay's mother. Poor Jon is stuck in the middle, as he still loves both of them and does not like the idea of having to pick sides in their conflict.
  • Catman and Deadshot used to be closer than brothers when they were in the old Secret Six, but Catman feels betrayed that Deadshot went back to working for Waller.
• What the Hell, Hero?: At the end of issue 6, Jay tells Jon that he wants to use his power and Amanda Waller's memories to bring down the US government, Jon calls him out on it, telling him that he is out of control and needs to stop. In responds, Jay breaks up with him.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In the third issue, Black Alice of all people gives Nia a pep talk, telling her that she knows she's not really a bad person.