Secret Six: Nicole Maines on reviving DC’s antihero team and her “potential villain origin story” for Dreamer and Superman Jon Kent
DC’s Secret Six returns this March with a new lineup and a new mystery to solve.
Taking place in the aftermath of last year’s Absolute Power event, the series sees Nia Nal (AKA Dreamer), Jay Nakamura, and Superman Jon Kent forced to work alongside a team of some of DC’s toughest antiheroes, including Catman, Deadshot, and Black Alice. Their mission? Track down the missing Amanda Waller who has vanished from her cell in Belle Reve.
The six-issue series is written by Nicole Maines and illustrated by Stephen Segovia. Newsarama caught up with Maines, who portrayed Dreamer on screen in the Supergirl TV show and who has continued to steer the character’s comic book adventures over the last few years, to find out more about the new book and her ongoing “five year plan” for Nia Nal…
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Newsarama: Hi Nicole. Let’s start at the beginning of Secret Six #1. This first issue really centers on Nia, Jon, and Jay. They’ve all been through a lot recently even before the events of this issue. So how are they doing?
Nicole Maines: We find the characters post Absolute Power. Perhaps more than any other heroes, Jay, Jon and Nia were targeted and affected by Amanda Waller’s campaign, and so we find them in the aftermath of that, and see how they’re each dealing with the trauma.
Jon is, as ever, the Super-son. He is determined that things are normal, things are fine, we are back at it. With Nia, I’d say that we see her struggling in a new way, but this girl has been so neck deep in trauma for years she’s exactly where she has always been, still awful, still hurling her guts out because she just can’t get a win. And Jay is starting to spiral down into this like typhoon of anger and grief and a need for vengeance and justice in a way that is very concerning to his boyfriend.
This issue really makes it feel like Jon and Jay are possibly near breaking point, despite the fact they’ve made this agreement to move in together in San Francisco…
Yeah, because who hasn’t done that before? We’ll fix it! A baby will fix it! Yeah. [laughs]
Amanda Waller was the architect of a lot of this grief – and now suddenly she’s gone missing. What can you say about that?
Amanda Waller was on the fast track to finding herself a one way ticket to Belle Reve with no sign of getting out. Dreamer had left her in her cell with all her memories of metahumans, the superhero community, who Batman is, where the Bat Cave is, what Cyborg’s real name is, all of this information now locked away behind a dream wall. She knows it, but she can’t get at any of it. But of course, having such a giant chess piece taken off the table in the DC universe obviously doesn’t fly with everybody. Somebody has to go and try to retrieve those memories, because that is a cash cow, if ever there was one…
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Waller was really at the heart of Absolute Power, and she looms over this issue. What makes her such a powerful character?
I love Amanda Waller. I am so interested in characters that are like, “I do bad things for the right reasons.” I think, perhaps more than anyone else, she just so embodies, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” She’s a Black woman from a low income community who lost half her family to gun violence and and sexual violence and revenge, and in her quest to regain control of her situation she’s [become] deeply ingrained in this comic book villain persona. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and I think she knows that, but you can’t stop a runaway train, and there’s no option but to double down now.
For Secret Six I really wanted to make sure that we had a story that was looking at the immediate aftermath of a big comic book event. I feel like it’s always, “Okay, here’s Absolute Power, Lazarus Planet, Beast World, Knight Terrors…” But what happens after the big summer event? People were hurt, and there has to be some kind of political and emotional fallout from all of this, because some big shit happened. Gamorra was overthrown again, and then was the site of another would be dictator’s theatrical fall. A president was assassinated so now what? We just move on?
That’s where Jay is at. He’s like, “I see everyone around me itching to get back to normal, but I don’t have that option. So what am I supposed to do?” And with Jon, he’s watching his boyfriend and his friend kind of gas each other up into this revenge spiral. He’s like, “Hey, hey, hey, we’re still the good guys, right?”
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And that’s were joining the Secret Six comes in. What can you say about the rest of the line-up?
We picked these characters because we wanted to make sure at least half the team was, you know, classic Secret Six members – I get there’s a little bit of, “What the f*** is Superman doing there?!” I wanted to take this specific position that these three characters find themselves in, where they’ve been the good guys, and now they’re kind of at the start of this potential villain origin story. And then we also have Catman, Deadshot, and Black Alice, who have all historically tried to be good, but they’re just so good at being bad. They’re also kind of in a situation where they’re like, when the world decides you’re the bad guy, Mama, you’re the bad guy. There’s not a whole lot you can do to shake that label.
It’s easy for Jon. He’s got a big Superman emblem on his chest, so he will always default to being the good guy, at least in other people’s eyes. Jay and Nia are new on the scene – they don’t get that option. We’ve seen Green Arrow being welcomed back with open arms into the Justice Society. Dreamer? You think she got one of those cute little Justice League cards? Noooo!
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She literally died as well!
She literally died! That’s the other thing, Dreamer’s like, “Guess I’m immortal, so now I have to keep dealing with this. I have to keep trying to do good, even though everything I touch seems to turn to ash and I just cannot, for the life of me, make a good decision.” I was talking with some of the editors and I was telling them something I’d seen on Bluesky was that some of the some of the kids have dubbed her the ultimate girl failure, which I think is so fitting and so fantastic. I’m happy that we finally have someone to really firmly stand in that niche at DC. We have plenty of girl bosses. We have Diana Prince and we have Lois Lane. What about the girl failures?
Obviously you’ve built a really strong connection with Nia over the last few years, both on TV and in comics…
Some would say unhealthy.
What’s it like for you as a writer getting to really own and steer this character?
I love it. I’m always asked, do I want to write other characters? And I’m like, of course, but this is what I want to be doing now. I do have such a deep connection with her, and I think she’s so freaking cool. I do have a five year plan, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m so blessed to be in a position where DC keeps saying yes to me and I’ve been so lucky that they have allowed me to continue this and to learn on the job. It truly is the ultimate honor to get to shepherd this character from the show into comics and have her be a part of these big events.
And, you know, not to be “woke” [laughs], but to have one of these major characters – especially right now in the political climate – be a trans woman and have it not be the center of her story, while also recognizing that this is a part of her life… In the first couple of pages of Secret Six #1 we see her having this vision of her bottom surgery, which I don’t know if we’ve done that in comics yet. I think to be able to have those bits of representation and those little nods to another part of who she is as we’re being told “it doesn’t exist, there’s only two genders,” – I think it is fantastic to be able to continue having this visibility in comics.
Also, to have her flanked by the bisexual Superman with his gay boyfriend, and then with Black Alice, whatever the f*** she is – you try to give her a label and she’d turn you into a frog and then do something horrible to you. And then we have Catman, the resident bisexual daddy and whatever the f*** he’s got going on with Deadshot… It’s fun. And that is the true meaning of Secret Six!
Secret Six #1 is published by DC on March 5.
We also talked with Nicole last year about Suicide Squad: Dream Team.
