Secret #3 Review
“The System”
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Ryan Bodenheim
Colors: Michael Garland
Letters: Rus Wooton
Review by Eric Owens
With a name like Secret, it’s no surprise that each issue raises more questions than it answers. It may be handy to make a flow chart to keep handy as the series progresses and more connections and layers are revealed. Hopefully this review can make sense of the series so far.
This issue starts four years in the past. Grant and Thomas are working for Steadfast Security Solutions and have just finished taking care of a few targets before meeting up with Grant’s future partner, Veronica, and Thomas’ future wife, Donna for dinner.
In the present, Thomas is dead, the victim of a mass shooting in London. Veronica promises Donna they’ll get to the bottom of it, but Grant’s boss has told him not to get involved and has withheld some vital information from him. Grant is understandably pissed, and his recently paroled brother, Marcus, takes it upon himself to find out what he can about the death of their friend.
Meanwhile, Thomas is working on gaining access to the database of a new client he acquired for the Krimm Group, a company connected to Steadfast. He brings on board Chad, Yuon, a morally ambiguous hacker who has just proven himself by stealing from his own employer and setting up Mr. Krimm to take the fall. Within a day, Chad manages to break through Koptein-Lewis’ multi-tiered security. He’s only able to get one important piece of information, but that little bit makes everything that’s happen so far a lot more interesting.
The story moves along well, filling in some blanks while introducing new characters and relationships. Hickman’s dialogue can be heavy on exposition at times before getting vague when Hickman doesn’t want to reveal something to the audience yet. It makes sense given how much we need to know and how much we need to not know, but it can sound unnatural at times. There are also occasional large chunks of dialogue, especially the wall of text from the priest at Thomas’ funeral, which really doesn’t add much at all. Bodenheim does a great job of choosing angles and positioning characters to give Wooton plenty of room for speech bubbles, but he still has to use rather long tails sometimes to avoid covering up anything important.
Bodenheim puts lots of detail into every aspect of his art. Each character is given a unique style, which comes in handy for recognizing them from a distance or telling them apart more easily. For example, Grant goes tieless with his collar unbuttoned whenever possible, and Veronica has been wearing the same necklace for at least four years. Little things like the clutter on Chad’s desk or the reflection on the lens of Marcus’ spy scope don’t need to be there, but their presence adds to the realism. Although most of the book is done in a standard boxy layout, the art goes beyond the panel borders a few times. It’s a neat effect that gives the illusion of Chad entering through the door or Marcus spying on something far in the distance, for example.
Color plays a major role in the look of the series. Each scene is tinted in varying shades of one or two colors. This could easily make things look flat, but the shades and shadows give everything depth. When two colors are used, one color usually works to emphasize or draw connections between objects or draw the readers attention in some other way. For example, in the flashback sequence, Donna’s dress, necklace, lips, and nails are all red. Everything else is a shade of gray. The focus of the reader, just like that of Thomas, is immediately drawn to her.
Hickman is creating quite a tangled web so far. It’s worth checking the series out to see where it all goes, but don’t expect this issue to be new-reader friendly. Reading the prior two issues first is strongly recommended.
4/5 stars
Eric is a contributing writer for Drunk On Comics. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricDOwens.