So far it has been Jonathan Hickman’s year hasn’t it? With Fantastic Four and Manhattan Projects I find myself wondering how can this man top himself from two wonderful series. Well the man is trying to top himself with yet another ongoing series with Image’s “Secret”. After what seems like forever (8 weeks actually) since the first issue it is time to see Hickman get the ball rolling on this series after a pretty wordy beginning.

Unfortunately I found myself struggling to care on what was going on inside this issue. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a terrible issue by any means. But what I struggled was on why I should be caring about ANY of these characters. Maybe the trouble is that, because of the delay, you can’t remember what happened before. Well fortunately I did read the first issue before getting my hands on this and it did not help me out what so ever. I still have no idea what the overall goal is for this mysterious group, I have no idea what the relationships are between them, and Hickman is writing in the style of ‘Pax Romana’ that is is a bit tough to follow. Again what’s here is okay and I do like the flashback to start the issue. But if Hickman is going to go at a crawl like this for the story then it is going to be tough to continue.

The art by Ryan Bodenheim is pretty good, and it better be considering this series has been nothing but talking heads so far. The characters are well defined and unique from each other and they are pretty well detailed as well. You can see the individual cracks in their fingers or the subtle changes in their faces as they react. What also helps this issue is that Hickman doesn’t cram as much story into this issue like the first. So Bodenheim layouts can flow a little better and we don’t have 9 panels on each page like before. What bothers me though is the coloring….What is the reasoning behind it? Sometimes it makes sense when Michael Garland puts red on an important item but other times an entire panel is colored a single color. I see no rhyme or reason for it yet but maybe it’ll make sense as the story goes.

So with two issues into this new series I still have no idea what is going on. The story is a bit confusing and Hickman hasn’t done much for me to actually care for these characters yet. Luckily he’s got a pretty damn good artist to draw some really nice pages for a slow thriller. But this has been the style of Hickman for many years and you just have to get used to it. Maybe it’s a bit frustrating but hopefully in the long term this story is going to pay out. Then again this is the same man who gave us S.H.I.E.L.D…..and that was a success….