open/close all folders
The Team
The Team
Tropes that apply to the majority of members
- Abusive Parents: Pretty much all of the original group to one extent or another, with Scandal's and Ragdoll's fathers being portrayed as the worst by far, with Catman's sadistic trophy hunter father a close second. Parademon didn't have parents as we know them on Earth, but was still raised by Granny Goodness, the New God of Child Abuse. However, unlike his teammates, he doesn't have mental scars from it since this is a default parental method on Apokolips.
- Anti-Villain Protagonist: if they do not count as Antiheroes.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Your background matters not when working with them. Men, women, and even non-humans are welcome to join the Secret Six. A good example of this being demonstrated is with Scandal, who was once the leader and is a woman, a lesbian, and a Latina.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Though notably, everyone has different standards that often lead them into conflict. Catman is the most traditionally heroic while Deadshot will shoot anything that moves if he's paid for it. They agree on a few things, though, one of them being that Cheshire is downright awful. Including Catman, and he's still sexually attracted to her despite her actions.
- Evil Versus Evil: Though they are perfectly willing to take on heroes. The team has even been described as a neutral point, siding with neither villains nor heroes.
- Magic Is Feminine: Jeanette is a banshee and the most feminine of the three main female characters. Scandal is a metahuman Butch Lesbian and Knockout is an alien Amazonian Beauty.
- Man Bites Man: Over the course of the series, only Deadshot and Alice avoided biting off a chunk out of an opponent.
- Noble Demon: Huntress has noted that, unlike every other villain team heroes have gone up against, these people would all willingly die to protect one another.
- The Notable Numeral: Both played straight and subverted.
Word of God is that only the four core members (Catman, Deadshot, Ragdoll, and Scandal) are safe in the long run, though some may leave the team briefly, and across the first four incarnations of the team had three die, two leaving due to betrayal, and a sixth simply quitting. On the other hand, one of the core members was fired but still hung around, and since then two more members have joined. Depending on timing, then, the Secret Six can have five to nine members so far, though they do tend toward six. - Sliding Scale of Anti-Villains: Type I, the Noble Anti-Villain. Scandal is a borderline Byronic Hero.
- Sociopathic Hero: If they count as Antiheroes.
Members
Scandal
Scandal Savage
Former leader of the team, Scandal Savage is the daughter of the immortal supervillain Vandal Savage. Much like him, she's very hard to kill.
- Above Good and Evil: Her monologue in the second issue of the Six Degrees of Devastation mini shows that she doesn't believe in either concept. As far as she's concerned, there are only noble deeds and ignoble deeds.
- Allegiance Affirmation: During the 'Villains United' miniseries, the team is kidnapped by the Society of Supervillains and subjected to brutal torture. However, there's a twist: their captors keep going easy on Scandal, which causes her teammates to wonder if she's been selling them out for better treatment. After they finally manage to escape, Scandal grabs Fatality, one of their guards, bites her ear off, and then swallows it. As Fatality is an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight whose entire schtick is violently avenging slights against her, and therefore Scandal has just made one hell of an enemy, the other Secret Six members quickly decide that she's probably not a traitor.Ragdoll: She makes a compelling case with that ear thing, don't you find?
- Anti-Hero: On the border between an Unscrupulous Heroine and a Nominal Heroine.
- Archnemesis Dad: She absolutely despises her father. When your dad is Vandal Savage, this is very understandable.
- Ax-Crazy: Probably the second-most kill-happy of the team after Deadshot.
- Berserk Button: Don't bring up Scandal Savage's dad or do anything to remind her of him. Just don't do it. You'll be very lucky to still be in one piece if you make him enter her mind. Actually, that's probably the easiest way to piss Scandal off, given that she is definitely the most Ax-Crazy of the team and has a ridiculously short fuse, and being insane.
- Butch Lesbian: Shown as a Lipstick Lesbian in her first appearances, where she simply wears a business outfit with a skirt. Once she puts on her battle clothes she never goes back.
- Dark Action Girl: The woman can be utterly savage while fighting.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Was like this for a bit when Knock-Out died.
- Ear Ache: She bit off the ear of Fatality from the Green Lantern series and later admitted she swallowed it.
- Healing Factor: Something she inherited from her dad is the ability to heal from injuries.
- I Want Grandkids: Daddy Savage is gonna get that heir. Even if he has to arrange his daughter getting raped by Dr. Psycho to get them.
- The Lad-ette: To the point that she sleeps in boxers.
- Marry Them All: At the end of the series this is her solution to having both Liana and Kay, saying she wants to marry them both. Because everyone is so wrapped up in September's reboot, nobody seemed to notice that Gail wrote in a polygamous lesbian marriage. Issue 9 of the Nu52 series makes it very clear that this marriage is very much canon, and doing extremely well.
- Spicy Latina: Scandal's mother was Brazilian and she was raised there, but she's a comparatively mild example of this trope.
- Those Two Guys: With Jeanette. They're former lovers and good friends.
- Token Good Teammate: She's exceedingly short-tempered, has absolutely no qualms about killing or horribly maiming people, and is generally extremely uncompromising, in addition to despising conventional heroes and viewing them as a bunch of stuck-up, self-righteous pricks and hypocrites of the worst kind, but she cleaves to a morally good path more often than anyone else on the team.
- Wolverine Claws: They're gauntlets worn around her forearms.
Catman
Catman (Thomas Blake)
Thomas Blake was a socialite who squandered his fortune in an unsuccessful bid to become a Great White Hunter. After his fortune went kaput, Blake instead used the skills he learned to become a thief, becoming a Spear Counterpart to Catwoman. Despite being a Scarily Competent Tracker with fairly decent fighting skills, his success was somewhat inconsistent until he reinvented himself as a morally ambiguous mercenary. After some time in the wilds of Africa, the now chiseled and badass Catman is one of the more (anti) heroic members of the group... most of the time.
- Abusive Parents: His dad was not a nice guy. So much so that finding out his father was in hell was enough to help him cope with the depression and suicidal thoughts he'd been suffering from
- Alas, Poor Villain: While in Africa, Blake befriended a pride of lions. It's hard not to feel bad for him when Lex Luthor orders Deadshot to kill them all.
- Ambiguously Bi: He's shown to have been in relationships with women, even having a son with Cheshire. But he's also a lot of blatant tension with Deadshot. Later on in the New 52, the "ambiguous" part is dropped and he's confirmed to be bisexual.
- Anti-Hero: Unscrupulous Hero on a bad day, Pragmatic Hero on a good one. Is this even more so in the New 52, where he casually states he's not a good person, yet he's polite, kind and friendly to his teammates (especially Strix) as well as to a female museum security guard that he saved from being shot by her corrupt superior, and he also saves a dog (he hates dogs) from its abusive cop owner, even adopting said dog.
- Ax-Crazy: Only when he's pissed.
- Badass Decay: Lampshaded in universe. After a long stint in prison, he became an overweight loser. Green Arrow eventually calls him on this, and he decides to shape up and go back to his roots.
- Badass Normal: One of the few non-empowered or augmented individuals in the DCU who have managed to best Batman in a straight fight.
- Berserk Button: The New 52 quickly establishes a couple more. He will get very violent if people try restraining him in any way, handcuffs included, and he also despises seeing animals being abused.
- Chosen Conception Partner: In issue 12 of the reboot series Scandal asks him to be this to her and her wives and he readily agrees, clearly touched.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: He's shown to be quite good at it.
- Combat Pragmatist: If he doesn't have his knives or bagh nakhs, he'll grab whatever's handy.
- Dating Catwoman:
- His relationship with Cheshire.
- He also has a little thing with Huntress, in which he's the Catwoman.
- Notably averted with Catwoman herself, who typically hates him.
- Domestic Abuse: Would occasionally hit his girlfriends. In fairness, this was during his "washed up" period, and after he reinvented himself this trope was dropped from his personality beyond being something he was ashamed of.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Regaining his edge involved hunting wild game in Africa, wearing only a knife.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: He'd been reduced to a fat joke by the time he finally had enough, heading to Africa where his time amongst the lions turned him into an incredibly dangerous individual who could go toe-to-toe with Batman!
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Trains alongside Ollie and Connor at the start of Identity Crisis.
- Homoerotic Subtext: With Deadshot, to a blatantly obvious extent.
- Interrupted Suicide: And it would have been the most awesome suicide ever. Suicide by PUNCHING LIONS.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: His Roaring Rampage of Revenge against his son's kidnappers. See that "most of the time" up there? Yeah, this... was one of the exceptions.
- Manly Man: Tom Blake reporting for lion-punching, raw steak-eating, shirt-removing and Batman beating-up duties, SIR!
- Meaningful Appearance: Vivid green eyes. In Birds of Prey #11, they're what a hostage recognizes, and clues in Huntress that he was one of the hostage takers.
- Moral Event Horizon: In-universe, he considers the events of the Cats in the Cradle storyline to be this.
- Mr. Fanservice: He gets shirtless and/or entirely naked quite often.
- No Social Skills: While he acts mostly civilized, pretty much any dining scene will show Catman tearing into rare steaks with his bare hands.
- Old Hero, New Pals: He returns in the New 52 Secret Six, with a new outfit, new teammates and promise of an exploration of his sexuality.
- One-Note Cook: He mostly only cooks eggs, though he once claimed he could also make "a mean slab of raw zebra haunch."
- Papa Wolf: Do not threaten his son unless you're cool with not having a swift or merciful death.
- Raised by Wolves: Catman lived among a pride of lions, being fully accepted by them and learning from them.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When you kidnap his son... heh, let's just say that he doesn't take it very well.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Originally a relatively minor Bat-Family villain, until he was brought back during Brad Meltzer's run on Green Arrow.
- Scarily Competent Tracker: See the quotes page.
- Self-Made Orphan: Blake accidentally shot his mother, while trying to stop his abusive father from murdering her. When Blake's father then called the police while mocking his traumatised child, Blake stabbed him in the back.
- Sexy Cat Person: A rare male example in comics, since Gail Simone made him a muscular, frequently-shirtless, bisexual Anti-Villain.
- Shameless Fanservice Guy: He has a concept of modesty and why he should cover up in the presence of others, he just doesn't care.
- Shirtless Scene: Provided plenty of them during his time on the Secret Six.
- Unskilled, but Strong: He's not a fighter privy to styles or techniques and lampshades how he thinks styles are crap, but he's strong, quick, animalistically feral, and brutal in combat and his tactics managed to put him on par with Batman and later Bronze Tiger. By biting out the latter's jugular vein in the middle of their fight.
- Took a Level in Badass: Started out as a mid-tier supervillain with decent fighting skills, only to quickly fall from grace during the modern age of comics, reducing him to a joke character nearly on par with the likes of the original Clock King or Calendar Man. After being humiliated by Green Arrow in his own home, Blake, in his own words, decided to "murder his old life", remaking himself in Africa as one of the toughest non-powered people on the planet.
- Villain Team-Up: Originally with other low level villains, after restoring his credibility, he got to work alongside the likes of Lex Luthor, Bane, and Deadshot.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Deadshot. The two are pretty sure they're going to end up fighting to the death one day, but other than that they get along well.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In the New 52, he suffers from claustrophobia after being locked up in a small, dank cell for a year.
- Wolverine Claws: Albeit a very short version.
Deadshot
Deadshot (Floyd Lawton)
Floyd Lawton is an assassin, a former member of the Suicide Squad and a former member of Batman's Rogues Gallery, with something of a deathwish. A supremely talented gunfighter, Deadshot is probably the most mercenary of the team, but still has some standards. Under Simone's pen, he has something of a snarky sense of humor.
Knockout
Knockout
One of the New Gods from Apokolips, a former member of Darkseid's Female Furies. When the Six were hired to infiltrate the Secret Society of Super-Villains, Knockout was their contact on the inside. She turned on the Society and joined them, revealing that she and Scandal were lovers. Like the rest of the New Gods, killed by the Infinity-Man. Scandal and the Six later rescue Knockout from Hell and bring her back to life. See New Gods – Apokolips for more.
Ragdoll
Ragdoll (Peter Merkel Jr.)
Son of the Golden Age supervillain Ragdoll, Peter Merkel Jr. was born without the super-flexibility of his father and brother. Hundreds of surgical procedures duplicated and even surpassed the ability, letting him bend in strange and horrific ways. Talks to the stuffed body of former member Parademon he keeps in his room. Has no soul.
- Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Provides the trope picture. In fact, it's rare to see him not doing contortions.
- Abusive Parents: It's a wonder he isn't more messed up when you consider the state Junior's in and the fact that in comparison she got off lightly.
- Affably Evil: He's incredibly polite to everyone, even his enemies sometimes. However, he is still an insanely dangerous and mentally damaged person.
- Attention Whore: "Scandal! Scandal! Look what I can do!"
- Balls of Steel: By virtue of not actually having any anymore.
- Berserk Button: He is hardly a nice guy, but when teamed with killers like Bane and Deadshot, he seems less dangerous and certainly less focused. However, if you threaten Black Alice, he will kill you painfully.
- Beware the Silly Ones: The guy is very weird, and is not someone you should underestimate.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Does quite a lot of these, especially when casually referencing his castration.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Rivals Deadpool for the biggest one in Western comics. But not at first. In Villains United, he expressly rejects the notion that he's either funny or a clown.
- Compact Infiltrator: Among Ragdoll's talents is forcing his absurdly thin, unnaturally flexible body through tight spaces.
- Companion Cube: The aforementioned stuffed Parademon.
- Contortionist: A very unnatural and creepy one. He had extensive surgeries granting him extreme flexibility.
- Covered with Scars: From all those surgeries.
- Crazy Cat Lady: He dresses his horde of pet monkeys up in cosplay outfits and refers to them as his 'adopted children'.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: In one case, it's implied he scares Deadshot by being so angry that he stood up straight for the first time.
- The Dandy: Refers to himself as a "dandy freak" on one occasion.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He is a self-admitted and self-acknowledged freak, but he's still capable of being grossed out. Case in point, he was left just as speechless as the rest of the team when they learned Mad Hatter's backstory and he was later disturbed by Black Lantern Punch. Regarding the latter, Ragdoll even lampshaded how hard it is to disgust him.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: His teammates (especially Scandal and Deadshot) are far from shy in telling him that he freaks them right the hell out.
- Flanderization: In the initial mini, Ragdoll is explicitly not funny, coming off more as a Mad Artist assassin, but in subsequent books is the Cloudcuckoolander and Faux Affably Evil comic relief of the book.
- Word of God says he was always that weird, and just got comfortable enough with the rest of the team that he stopped hiding it.
- To the authors credit, she does make some effort to integrate his two seemingly opposing characterizations by having him speak and behave the way he did in the initial mini in certain situations (most notably while rescuing Black Alice in issue #19.)
-
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Years of horrible surgeries have given him minimal rejection response to transplants, so while he's had fingers and hands chopped off on several occasions it's not been permanent.
- Word of God is that Ragdoll does have a natural superpower: he recovers from surgery at a phenomenal rate. This was explicitly shown in Six Degrees of Devastation.
-
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: His super-flexibility has all sorts of hidden bonuses, including making him really tough: the force from blunt impacts dissipates relatively harmlessly through his whole body and not even running him over or twisting his head round 180 degrees can break his spine.
- Killer Bear Hug: One of his favorite methods of killing is to wrap his inhumanly flexible arms around someone's torso and squeezing them until they suffocate.
- Lean and Mean: Weighs seventy-three pounds.
- Legacy Character: Actually the third Ragdoll, though most people forget his elder brother.
- Made of Iron: He can take multiple blows from superhumanly strong opponents and actually get off on it.
- Mistaken Identity: Before Villains United confirmed that he's the Golden Age Ragdoll's son, a handful of fans noted that Ragdoll's flexibility, assassination training, and especially costume coloration reminded them of someone else entirely.
- Neck Snap: His favorite move. Doesn't work on him, though.
- Nightmare Face: Looks absolutely hideous under his mask as a result of the extensive surgeries he's had, though ironically, he's practically a beauty queen compared to his sister Junior.
- Nightmare Fetishist: On passing out in Hell:"All kinds of loathsome things might have had their way with me...and I missed all of it!"
- No-Sell: One of the Madmen attempts a Groin Attack on him during Villains United, which has no effect at all since Ragdoll had his testicles removed during surgery.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: A Cloud Cuckoo Lander in a clown suit whose superpower is bending himself? Well, laugh if you want, but...oh wait, he already wrapped around you and broke your neck. Or pushed you off a cliff...or drove a wrench into your skull...
- He says it himself: "You're one of those. One of those enemies who think I am only adorable, and not a threat to be measured most carefully. A joke, a jester, a jape in jammies. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE CORPSES NOW?!"
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Freaks the team out in a tense situation where he finally stands up straight (his default posture is somewhere between "slightly hunched over" and "full on crouched") in order to defend Black Alice.
- Personal Space Invader: Basically his entire fighting style.
- Territorial Comic Relief: At the end of the "Six Degrees of Devastation" miniseries, Ragdoll pushes newest team member Mad Hatter off a ledge. His reason for doing so:"There's only room for one dandy freak on this team."
- There Can Be Only One: He's willing to resort to murder to retain his position as 'team freak'.
- Training from Hell: Not training per se, but he wasn't born with triple-joints like his father and older brother. He had to undergo years of painful and disfiguring surgery to get his abilities.
- Ugly Cute: Especially when Nicola Scott draws him. Black Alice agrees.
- White Sheep: Would you believe that Ragdoll is the nicest member of his family? His father was an abusive, sociopathic monster and cult-leader, and his sister a crime lord, sadist and murderer.
Bane
Bane
The man who broke the Bat, and the only A-lister in the bunch, Bane has recently assumed control of the Six from Scandal. Having kicked his Venom habit, he now uses his cunning mind and natural strength to great effect. Has a weird-but-sweet fatherly relationship with Scandal.
Jeannette
Jeannette
A friend of Scandal's, the mysterious Jeannette is a centuries-old banshee who joins up with the Six in the first storyline of their ongoing. Created just for the series.
- Achilles' Heel: Neck injuries trigger debilitating panic attacks, as she has flashbacks to the attempted execution that led to her awakening.
- The Baroness: A noblewoman by birth and quite kinky, and is introduced with a man she's tied up in bondage.
- Blood Countess: She has many of the stereotypical traits of the blood countess, being obscenely wealthy, a widow, and having her own "castle" (in this case a hotel/casino in Las Vegas), but she is obsessed with violence and torture rather than blood, and is a banshee rather than a vampire. Her origins name-check the ur-example; she was originally a servant of Lady Bathory and became undead after a botched execution for her role in Bathory's death.
- Break the Cutie: Her past... JESUS. The fact that Elizabeth Bathory was involved should clue you in.
- Brown Note: Her scream will seriously hurt.
- Dark Action Girl: She's just as dangerous in a fight as Scandal or Bane.
- The Dog Bites Back: In her past, after spending years of watching Elizabeth Bathory murdering girls with the threat that she would be joining them at some point, Jeannette got her own back when she became Bathory's caretaker by feeding her a diet of broken glass until the day she died.
- Fantastic Racism: Possesses a pointed bias against Amazons, even making a noticeable point to deliberately antagonize them during the Devil’s Island incident against all practical sense. She believes (perhaps not unjustly) that Amazons are hypocrites since while they may present themselves as protectors of womankind, their isolationist policies ensured generations of women were subjugated and brutalized such as Jeannette herself.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Her torture of Elizabeth Bathory during her time as the countess caretaker. She fed the woman ground glass over the course of decades, making sure that she didnt have one moment without pain until her eventual death.
- Lightning Bruiser: She might not look like it, but she hits as hard as she's fast.
- Magic Is Feminine: Jeanette is a banshee and the most feminine of the three main female characters. Scandal is a metahuman Butch Lesbian and Knockout is an alien Amazonian Beauty.
- Marked Change: When she uses her banshee powers.
- Minor Injury Overreaction: A justified one that also serves as a Kryptonite Factor: injure her neck in any way and she starts to panic, thinking she's being executed all over again.
- Mystical White Hair: Her hair was originally blond, but went white, possibly out of trauma and/or becoming a banshee.
- Off with Her Head!: The way she died the first time, and being reminded of the trauma sends her into a Heroic BSoD.
- Original Generation
- Really 700 Years Old: Approximately 400 years old—as a child, she was raised in the household of Countess Bathory, who died in 1614.
- The Speechless: The trauma of living with Bathory left her unable to speak for years.
- Super-Scream: A particularly nasty one; she screams waves of death that can incapacitate even Wonder Woman. Turns out the scream is actually a form of Mind Rape that forces the person that hears it to suffer the way Jeannette did in her original life.
- Super-Strength: Strong enough to rip King Shark's arm from its socket.
- Super-Toughness: Bullets just slow her down a little. Fans speculate that decapitation might kill her. (see Minor Injury Overreaction above)
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: When transformed into her banshee appearance, she looks identical to Silver Banshee.
- Those Two Guys: Always seen with her good friend and former lover Scandal.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Deadshot begs for a chaperone for his date with her in case she takes advantage.
- Trauma Button: Injuries to her neck will turn send her into a panic in memory of the first time she died.
- Vapor Wear: On more than one occasion she's been referred to as not wearing underwear.
- Villain Has a Point: Jeannette's got a vocal dislike of Wonder Woman and the Amazons, pointing out how they act like the saviors of womankind when they spent thousands of years hiding on Themyscira while women all over the world were dehumanized, tortured, and murdered.
Mockingbird II
Mockingbird II
The team's new employer, who essentially shanghais control of the team around the time of the Devil's Island mission. Actually Amanda Waller, government agent and founder of the Suicide Squad. The Six only recently learned this Mockingbird's identity.
- The Chessmaster: Successfully manipulates the Six against the Suicide Squad in an attempt to get Deadshot to rejoin the latter. It doesn't work, but it's really a win-win situation.
- Would Hurt a Child: Doesn't hesitate to punch out Black Alice when her taking of Nightshade's powers leaves them stranded, and Nightshade even calls her out on this. Waller's response? I Did What I Had to Do.
The Second Six
When Scandal, Ragdoll, Catman and Alice leave the team, Bane and Jeannette bring in some replacements.
Dwarfstar
Dwarfstar (Sylbert Rundine)
- Fastball Special: In a rare display of teamwork, he hides in the fletchings of one of Lady Vic's arrows to hop between boats.
- Hate Sink: Giganta and Lady Vic are Punch Clock Villains and generally decent people, and King Shark isn't that bad a guy either. Dwarfstar, on the other hand, is a jerk who clearly exists to be despised by the audience and precious little else.
- Oh, Crap!: When he realizes Giganta has learned he had Ryan Choi killed.
- Psycho for Hire: He is a hired killer but loves it so much he would do it for free.
- Serial Killer: He writes a poem for each and every of his victims. Though if he's in a hurry, sometimes they have to share (such as two nameless cops, who collectively got a haiku about donuts).
- Sizeshifter: He is an Evil Counterpart to the Atom.
- Token Evil Teammate: Everybody is disgusted by him. And in a team made up of other villains, that's an accomplishment.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Turns out carrying out a hit on Giganta's boyfriend was a bad idea. He didn't know that the two of them were a couple at the time, but it was still an immensely bad plan.
- Oh, but he only gets even more stupid. Sure, he lived (albeit with every bone in his body broken), but considering that he told Ray Palmer about Slade Wilson being the one who offed Ryan... yeah, once Wilson finds out, Rundine isn't going to be alive for much longer.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: "Sylbert Rundine?"
Giganta
Giganta (Doris Zeul)
- Amazonian Beauty: Depending on the Artist, but moreso pre-Crisis. Nowadays, she's depicted as slim and athletic.
- Dating Catwoman: Dating Ryan Choi, the second Atom. Who was murdered in a hit ordered by her teammate Dwarfstar. When she found out, vengeance ensued.
- Genius Bruiser: Her name isn't Dr. Doris Zeul for nothing. And at full-size, she's almost as strong and durable as Wonder Woman.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Her attitude is strictly mercenary, and she's a pretty decent person overall.
- Sizeshifter: But just growing, not shrinking.
- Statuesque Stunner: Even without her powers, she stands at an impressive height of 6'6".
- Vapor Wear: Eventually averted; her usual attire used to be the very Nubile Savage-ish set of a leopard print top and matching loincloth and it was implied that she wasn't wearing anything underneath, but as of One Year Later, she's swapped it out for a leather jumpsuit (with a leopard print on the inside of the collar for visual identity).
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Vanishes from the book without a mention after the Skartaris arc, presumably due to being involved in alternate-history shenanigans over in Wonder Woman.
King Shark
King Shark (Nanaue)
- Antagonistic Offspring: To Kamo in the New 52, who tries to kill him on the spot and is later forced to work with him against O.M.A.C., with neither of them attempting to hide their displeasure.
- Beast and Beauty: If the glimpse of his personal damnation is anything to go by, he's attracted to human women.
- Berserk Button: He is a shark. Do not suggest otherwise.
- The Berserker: Technique doesn't really factor into his fighting style.
- Big "NO!": When his personal damnation is revealed to him... eternity in a vegetarian restaurant.
- Blood Knight: Generally a pretty easygoing guy, but never backs down from a good fight.
- Boisterous Bruiser: One of the premiere examples in the DCU.
- Butt-Monkey: But only before he joined the team, where every encounter with him ended with him getting maimed somehow.
- Cloudcuckoolander: While nowhere near as out there as Ragdoll, he is a fairly odd fellow. His habit of randomly namedropping B-movie titles is the prime example.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Unless you couldn't figure it out, he's a shark.
- Eye Scream: Got his eye ripped out by Ragdoll.
- Fish People: Don't call him that, though.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: So far he's had his arm ripped off, his jaw broken and his eye ripped out.
- Got Volunteered: Need to find a clear path through a minefield? Send in the shark.
- Healing Factor: Can regenerate lost or dislocated limbs and organs and heal from severe injuries fairly quickly.
- Insistent Terminology: He is not a "fish man." He is a shark!
- The Juggernaut: He's huge, monstrously strong, and quite durable even without his healing factor, and his fighting style can best be summed up as "charge in and destroy things".
- Leeroy Jenkins: Patience and prior planning are not his forte. If there's action to be had, he'll jump right in without a second thought.
- Man Bites Man: Comes with the territory. Although almost everyone on the team has done this at one point or another, it's basically his whole fighting style. In the Six's promotional video, his specialty is simply listed as "biting and chewing."
- Physical God: His origin was a case of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane for a while before it was confirmed that he was of divine heritage. It's more ambiguous in the New 52, as his father there (Kamo) is himself a case of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane (he may be an actual god who just fell out of worship, a demon who was once worshiped as a god, or just a really powerful monster of unknown origin), putting Nanaue's status as a demigod into question once more.
- Proud to Be a Geek: His love of B-movies, and the fact that his main complaint when his eye is torn out is that he won't be able to watch Avatar.
- Real Men Eat Meat: Shark-men, but the same principle.
- To Serve Man: Especially virgins (tender, delicious virgins!), and people with eating disorders.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Incredibly strong (stated as being able to lift over 100 tons), but he doesn't really bother with anything even resembling technique or finesse.
- The Worf Effect: If someone's going to get their ass kicked first, it's going to be him.
Lady Vic
Lady Vic (Elaine Marsh-Morton)
- Ambiguously Bi: She flirted with Arsenal in Titans, but in Birds of Prey paid a lot of attention to Black Canary's legs.
- Determinator: If she wants you dead, she will abandon basically all sense of self-preservation to make a kill. This is what happens when you have a family name to uphold while barely being able to make ends meet.
- Evil Brit: She's an English aristocrat with no problem killing people for money.
- Exotic Weapon Supremacy: She wields a wide variety of exotic and antique weapons which she inherited from her ancestors' colonial conquests.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: A pair of katars are her most common melee armament.
- Carry a Big Stick: She once wielded a pair of Zulu weapons, an asegai spear and knobkerrie club, in a duel with Batman.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Her second-most common melee weapon is a Japanese katana.
- Kukris Are Kool: She has occasionally dual wielded kukris.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: She wields an antique Webley, one of the most powerful revolvers ever made, as her primary firearm.
- Impoverished Patrician: Descended from a long and storied line of mercenaries and assassins. Unfortunately, the name is all that she really has left, as she's broke as a joke and accepts jobs largely to avoid the shame of losing the family estate to foreclosure.
- Left for Dead: Gets her knees blown out by Deadshot and is abandoned in Skartaris.
- Ms. Fanservice: Her first appearance includes her naked with a Modesty Towel, and every single one of her outfits has a prominent cleavage at the very least. Her Skartaris outfit is essentially a few black straps covering her naughty bits.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: Depending on the Artist, the neckline on her costume can go so deep that it reaches her stomach.
- Professional Killer: Her family's raison d'etre.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Those bills won't pay themselves, and that family name bars her from making a living through anything other than mercenary work and hired hits. If her employer hasn't sicced her on you, she's more than happy to live and let live.
- Would Hurt a Child: Her first appearance had her threaten a man's young daughter for information as to a client who hadn't paid up.
Former Members
Because the team always tends toward six members (though it's had as many as eight at once), and the missions they go on tend to have high body counts, there's a high rate of turnover in the Six's ranks.
Mockingbird
Mockingbird
The team's mysterious founder. Actually Lex Luthor, who formed the team to fight against the Secret Society formed by his doppelganger Alex Luthor in Infinite Crisis. Left the Six to their own devices after they were no longer of use to him. See the Superman character sheet for more.
Fiddler
Fiddler (Isaac Bowin)
An old man with a magic fiddle; he was one of the Golden Age Flash's enemies. One of the first recruits into the Secret Six, the Fiddler proved a liability in his first outing, so Deadshot executed him on Mockingbird's orders, and he later returns as an undead Black Lantern during the Blackest Night crossover to get revenge on the Six. See The Flash – Rogues Gallery for more.
Harley Quinn
Harley Quinn
Better known as The Joker's Perky Female Minion. Briefly joined the Six in one of their earlier outings under their own command. Quit the team when she decided to reform.
Mad Hatter
Mad Hatter (Jervis Tetch)
Was brought in when the team started out under its own leadership; they needed his expertise in mind-control devices to counter their enemy, Doctor Psycho. Was ingloriously pushed off a cliff by Ragdoll because there's "only room for one dandy freak on the team." See Batman: Rogues Gallery (Part 3) for more.
Parademon
Parademon
One of the millions of airborne minions of Darkseid, it's unlikely that Parademon even knew his own name. Blew himself up in a fight with the Society. He had an off-beat friendship with Ragdoll, who stuffed his corpse and keeps it in his bedroom.
- Mook: He's a Parademon, and as such was bred to be one.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: He's exceptionally tough and inventive for a Parademon. Just look at all those Mother Boxes he looted from dead New Genosians.
- Too Kinky to Torture: It reminds him of his Granny (Goodness, that is). He doesn't even mind that Ragdoll ultimately decides to leave him in Hell. He likes it there!
Black Alice
Black Alice (Lori Zechlin)
A newcomer to the team, Lori Zechlin is a teenage girl who can "borrow" the powers of any magically powered character in the DCU. She quit the Secret Six team after transporting them to the entrance to hell.
- Distaff Counterpart: Her power basically lets her turn into these, complete with Stripperiffic costume variant.
- Goth: And she's quite insistent that she's not Emo.
- Goth Girls Know Magic: She can "borrow" them anyway.
- Instant Expert: She seems initially quite skilled at using the magic powers she borrows, but it is eventually subverted when she reveals that she tried to use healing magic to cure her father's asthma, but accidentally messed up his insides and gave him cancer. It's also further subverted when she clarifies that she suffers from Power Creep, Power Seep, with exceptional levels of power being difficult to maintain for more than a few moments, and in the difference between calling upon people with limited or natural magical abilities, and someone who requires training — Doctor Occult's one of the least powerful people she's tapped into, but his abilities proved too difficult to use reliably.
- Little Miss Badass: She's only 16 years old.
- Nightmare Fetishist: As evidenced by her crush on Ragdoll. Even he was a bit creeped out by this.
- Old Hero, New Pals: She's returning in the New 52 Secret Six, with new teammates — aside from Catman.
- Power Copying: Black Alice seriously won the Superpower Lottery: she can replicate the powers (and appearance) of any DC magic user. She is however seriously limited by her inexperience with those powers and in the field, and the fact that the powers may disappear suddenly.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: She quit the team rather than go with them to Hell. Her previous encounter with the place left her that traumatized. Ragdoll notes, when they return, that her room was so bare it was like she was never even there.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: As Catman notes during their first meeting, she saw them set up a pedophile killer for death at the hands of the father of one of his victims and didn't even blink. And then asked for a job.
Nu52 Members
Strix
Strix (Mary Turner)
Mary Turner was a young girl who'd been scarred for life by a bombing incident in the 1940s, and then brought to the attention of the Court of Owls. The Court remade Mary into one of their immortal assassins, a Talon. However, she later rebelled against her masters and tried to become a hero, taking on the name Strix, but she is still learning to control her more dangerous tendencies.
- Broken Bird: Bird-motif aside, she's a young woman who's been through a lot of hardship.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Probably as a result of her stunted development, she has a habit of acting like an airheaded preschooler more than a formidable undead assassin. She collects lawn gnomes, insists on munching on cookies during a fight, and in one instance wears a tackishly girly prom dress over her Talon uniform.
- Companion Cube: Becomes very fond of a lawn gnome at Big Shot's yard and often carries it around with her.
- Covert Pervert: Despite her childish personality, she admitted to having sex on the couch at the start of issue 3, and later on, joined Shawna, Porcelain and Jeanette in fawning over Aquaman and Catman's brawl.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kidnapped by the Court of Owls and turned into one of their assassins.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After the terrible life she has had both before and after her integration as a Talon for the Court of Owls, she got to see the Six as her family and was as loyal as them as they to her. Come the final issue, she now lives happily with the whole crew (minus Shawna after her betrayal) after they decide to retire from action and go straight, has her own "room" in a tree house built just for her (and full of lawn gnomes), even the neighbors like her, and she has notably removed the bandages from her face with no shame of her scars. She narrates the final few pages of the book and it's clear she's happier than ever.
- Expy: The New 52's rendition of Cassandra Cain, the third Batgirl, before the latter’s eventual reintroduction. Both are young but deadly assassins with stunted development, limited vocabulary, and were brainwashed by shadowy organizations but retained moral compasses that convince them to abandon killing.
- Manchild: To a degree, in that she has no formal education and her time kept in stasis has limited her understanding of how to function as an adult. She's pretty much a child in an adult body.
- Talking with Signs: As a result of being The Speechless.
Ventriloquist II
Ventriloquist II (Shauna Belzer)
As a child, Shauna Belzer felt she was overshadowed by her twin brother, so she used her telekinetic abilities to kill him. Followed by anyone else who has caught her bad side. Using a ventriloquist dummy named Ferdie she "received" from a performer named Rainbow Rodney, Shauna seeks fame and credibility as the Ventriloquist, a mass-murdering psychopath who can turn anyone into her puppet.
- Antagonistic Offspring: Her parents were deathly afraid of her, and she eventually killed them and turned them into living puppets.
- Ax-Crazy: Of all previous Ventriloquists, she's easily the most messed up and dangerous.
- Body Horror: She's as thin as a skeleton and it appears as though she doesn't practice any kind of hygiene. Catman caught a glimpse of her bare privates by accident, and he promptly wanted to vomit.
- Creepy Child: She had a tendency to torture and murder the kids who teased her when she was little.
- Dead Guy Puppet: One of her specialties.
- Demonic Dummy: Ferdie. Like the original Ventriloquist, it's up for debate if he's actually alive or if it's just Shauna controlling him. Unlike the original, Shauna was already insane long before she got Ferdie. In the third issue of the current Secret Six series, Porcelain is disturbed by how Ferdie keeps talking even when Shauna is eating and her mouth is full. Then during the encounter with Riddler and his goons, Shauna is shot with a tranquilizer dart and knocked out, yet Ferdie continues moving and talking on his own accord, revealing it was he who stole a jewel Riddler was pining for as a gift to Sue Dibny. The final issue reveals that Ferdie is definitely not alive, but it's actually a different personality of Shawna's, the only part of her personality that was actually getting to genuinely care for the Six and be loyal to them. Shawna admitted to not liking this and leaves Ferdie behind after betraying the team.
- It's All About Me: Shauna has a huge ego, loves being the center of attention, and thinks of herself as popular and famous. She can't stand anyone else getting more attention than her, and out of the whole team, she's the one who is least interested in helping others out.
- Legacy Character: In the post-Flashpoint DC Universe, she is technically the second Ventriloquist to appear, as Arnold Wesker, the original, made a brief appearance about a year before she did.
- Mind over Matter: She's telekinetic and can turn anything into a puppet, including corpses. She doesn't even have to be in the room with said corpse.
- The Pig-Pen: Personal hygiene is not one of her fortes. Especially not her private parts, as Catman can attest.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: She was originally a part of Batgirl's Rogues Gallery.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Considers herself "America's sweetheart."
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: When she was a child.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: She looks like she came right out of a Japanese horror movie.
- Toilet Humour: Her jokes are crass and disgusting.
- Token Evil Teammate: Easily fills this role in the team. She eventually betrays them in the final issue.
- Younger Than They Look: Her gaunt and extremely unkempt appearance, coupled with her lack of any hygiene makes her look middle-aged at the very least, but she's actually just 18 years old.
Porcelain
Porcelain
A dashingly dressed and levelheaded bank robber with the ability to make things turn brittle and shatter like glass. Real name Kani, they are gender-fluid and dress in both masculine and feminine clothing, stating "Sometimes I feel like a girl, other days not so much."
- Anti-Villain: Seems to be this for the most part, being a thief with a sense of morals and getting along with most of the team, even being relatively friendly with Shauna, who is very bad at hiding that she doesn't particularly like Porcelain.
- Classy Cat-Burglar/Gentleman Thief: What with being gender-fluid, and also dressing in a classy looking yet quite skin-tight suit.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady/Lady Looks Like a Dude: Gail Simone has referred to Porcelain using "they," and they've been confirmed as gender-fluid.
- Hates Being Touched: On occasion, as seen in issue 3 when getting grabbed by a loud-mouthed, musclebound meathead. Porcelain did give him a warning, but quickly lost whatever patience they had left and didn't hesitate to use their power on the meathead and his buddy.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: They can make things shatter like glass, which is very effective for breaking into or out of places, as well as for hand-to-hand combat, being able to shatter the opponent's bones with a mere touch. It's also stated that the harder an object is, the more powerful Porcelain's power gets, which is demonstrated with Superman, who finds out first-hand just how dangerous Porcelain's power can truly be. The only reason Superman survives the encounter is because Porcelain could not bring themselves to kill the Man of Steel.
- Logical Weakness: Since their power scales to how hard an object is, this means they can barely affect soft objects, if at all. When they end up trying to get Catman and Big Shot to stop fighting, they can barely do anything to the latter because his body is too malleable for them to weaken.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Is certainly this when it comes to Catman, being quite huggy and flirty with him.
- The Unreveal: Their "real" sex is never confirmed, and art could go either way.
Big Shot
Big Shot
A private detective practically straight out of an old movie, Damon Welles also has the ability to make his body swell up in size. He's actually Ralph Dibny.
- Canon Character All Along: He's Elongated Man!
- The Mole: He works for Mockingbird/The Riddler.
- Papa Wolf: Despite not being Black Alice's actual father, Big Shot's quite protective of her.
(Worse) Villains
Junior
Junior
A mysterious crime lord, who controls the entire West-Coast mob from a crate, using only a pad of paper and a phone. Actually Ragdoll's sister Alex.
- Ax-Crazy: Considering the amount of mutilations she’s inflicted on herself over the years as well as the fact that she tore the head off a prostitute for asking about a pay phone she’s not really all sane to put it mildly.
- Bald of Evil: With her face exposed, she is shown to only have a few strands of hair. The majority of it was lost due to her mutilating her scalp, and she's a monstrous and deranged individual.
- Berserk Button: Do NOT look at their face or body.
- Body Horror/Facial Horror: Due to numerous self-inflicted mutilations.
- Depraved Bisexual: Mentions "forced relations" with both men and women, but this may have more to do with how severely screwed up Junior's concept of sexuality is, thanks to the below Freudian Excuse.
- Disney Villain Death: Subverted; she takes a long fall at the end of her Birds of Prey appearance...but the Birds don't believe for a minute that it killed her.
- Disproportionate Retribution: An unfortunate prostitute demands that Junior let her use a pay phone. Junior tears off her head. Barehanded.
- Dual Wielding: Scissors, in their Birds of Prey appearance.
- The Faceless: Until The Reveal.
- Fan Disservice: Four words: Nude scene. Without warning.
- Freudian Excuse: Has a big one, mainly her father sexually abusing her, not that it's really an excuse for anything.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Despite what's mentioned in Freudian Excuse, the comics make it clear that it does nothing to excuse or wipe away all of the horrific acts Junior has committed. The only person who feels any sympathy for Junior is Ragdoll, her brother, and all his sympathy gets him is Junior giving him and his friends a head-start to try and escape her, and it still doesn't stop her from cutting off his fingers.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Spends a portion of their time attacking while completely naked.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Despite being pretty much skin and bones, you really don't want to try to pick a fight with Junior.
- Mutilation Interrogation: A skilled practitioner.
- Never Found the Body: After being blasted by a large group of villains and diving off a bridge in flames, is assumed dead. She survived, and is currently menacing the Birds of Prey.
- Nightmare Face: Imagine if Gollum were a Reaver.
- Pet the Dog: It's not much, especially considering they also sliced some of his fingers off, but the one time Junior ever does anything even remotely honorable, is when they gave their brother and his friends a head-start to try and get away from them upon remembering the kindness he showed them.
- Razor-Sharp Hand: Stabs two fingers into Bane's shoulder while fighting him.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Was seemingly meant to become a Birds of Prey villain, but the New 52 cut it short.
- Sadistic Choice: Junior's preferred means of torture is to threaten to kill someone, or else kill their family and friends, the victim's choice. It's a lie, and the victim is usually the only one to die. Junior leaves their body where the family — preferably the children — can find it, with a tape recording of their dead loved one begging Junior to kill the family instead.
- Averted with Bane. When Junior attempts the above on him, counting out several dozen bricks in a pile and throwing them at him, counting down each time, before offering the Sadistic Choice to save himself or the rest of the Six. Bane interrupts her, tells her that he picks himself, and reminds her of her place in the counting. This is juxtaposed with the rest of the Six voting four-to-one to abandon him.
- Samus Is a Girl: Turns out she's a woman.
- Super-Strength: Despite having no muscle mass whatsoever, Junior can still tear off people's heads barehanded.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: At their core, Junior is a woman who was driven irrevocably deranged by sexual abuse.
Cheshire
AKA: Jade Nguyen
Cheshire is a deadly international terrorist and an enemy of the Teen Titans, often recognized as one of the world's greatest and most ruthless assassins. Her skills include mastery over physical combat, various weaponry, and she is an expert on exotic poisons. In the past she has had multiple romantic relationships and given birth to two children with different fathers, Lian Harper with Arsenal and Thomas Blake, Jr. with Catman. She has been a member of the Ravens, Tartarus, Injustice League, the Secret Six and Titans Villains for Hire. She betrayed the Secret Six to the Society in the opening story arc and has popped up again a number of times since.
See Teen Titans: Cheshire for her character page.
