ACW #604 – Secret Six
Action Comics Weekly #604 (Secret Six)
“Haunts of the Very Rich”
Writer – Martin Pasko
Art – Dan Spiegle
Letters – Carrie Spiegle
Colors – Carl Gafford
Editor – Dick Giordano
When we last left our Sixers, they had split into two teams and headed out on their first Mockingbird Mission.
Which is precisely where we pick up with them!
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We open up at the estate of Elvis Brockman… in Brockton, Kansas. That’s all sorts of confusing. Brockman, Brockton… yeesh. Anyhoo, our all-new Secret Six are currently on their inaugural mission. We join Tony, Mitch and LaDonna (the latter two emerging from a shipping crate inside what appears to be a child’s room inside the premises. They check in with Maria, who’s manning the monitors, before we shift over and join Vic and Luke who hitched a ride to TechnoDyne Headquarters in Tylertown, Kansas. They proceed to… well, shoot the Plant’s security system a whole bunch.
We jump over to Elvis Brockman’s bedroom, where I swear, it looks like he’s playing with an iPhone. He is called by the spooky voice of… Clarence the Handyman (close, personal pal of Zeke the Plumber, no doubt).
Creepy Clarence enters the room… and really puts the fear of God into the tiny executive!
Back at TechnoDyne, Vic and Luke are firing away at security (with stun-tasers). Meanwhile, Elvis is chased to his personal amusement park. Clarence attempts to get the tot to admit that TechnoDyne was behind the Acid Rain in Orsonville. And, check it out, he does! Li’lvis didn’t think anyone would die… he just wanted folks to see how much TechnoDyne’s Impenetrite Shielding could help them!
With all the answers he needs, “Clarence” who is actually just a special effect rigged up by Mitch, rips his own head off just to be a jerk. Meanwhile, back at TechnoDyne R&D, Vic and Luke believe they’ve found all the evidence to prove that they were behind the Acid Rain… as if the kid’s confession ain’t enough! Well, never can be too safe.
On the roof of the R&D Building is a large satellite dish… atop what looks like an inflatable platform, believed to be full of chemical compound (a fluorosulfuric acid solution). They believe this is what TechnoDyne used to cause the Acid Storm.
It’s actually a storage unit, containing a helicopter… which, they presume is the way they triggered the Acid Rain without polluting the entire water table. I’m no scientist, so I’m just gonna take their word for all this. Either way, just as they discover this… they’re found out!
We wrap up back at Bert Convy’s place, where the Police have arrived to inform him of a plane crash. He is handed his father’s wallet, which was found in the wreckage.
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Ya know, I’ve joked around a few times over the past few weeks about how, even the two-page Superman strip in Action Comics Weekly has more actual story than a “current year” comic book… but, I might actually mean it when we’re talking about the Secret Six feature! I mean, this is some pretty dense stuff for an eight-pager!
Some of it feels a bit like overkill… but, I gotta say, I’m glad we’re pushing through this opening arc at so rapid a clip. We’ve got a confession out of L’ilvis, and some hard evidence at TechnoDyne… so, we’ve got ourselves a direction moving forward.
I almost feel bad for the tiny exec though, Clarence the Handyman is one creepy apparition. I just wonder how Mitch chose to “be” that character. Did their intel suggest that Elvis was afraid of service people? I dunno. It’s a neat enough gag, and I was happy that it involved using Mitch’s “expertise”.
The TechnoDyne scenes were a bit weaker… and involved a bit more reaches in logic. Not sure about how all of this unfolded besides to say “the computers told them so”. Either way, we’re getting answers, and I can’t say I’m not happy about that.
Tomorrow: Superman! Hey, it’s gotta be better than last week!
