Abra - *Fizzles* Damn It!

I had this idea randomly last weekend. In the DCU, there's Black Alice, who can basically swipe the powers of any one character with magic-based powers at any given moment, up to and including the Spectre. For a variety of reasons - being on teams, dealing with people trying to take advantage of her powers, the generally questionable decision-making that can come with being a teenager - she uses this ability fairly often.

So I thought it might have been interesting if, in other books, you saw characters with magic abilities losing them at random times. Obviously there's a potential for abuse there, with the writers opting to always take the powers away at times that are dramatically convenient. But on average, that wouldn't happen that often (and really, every so often it should work out for the heroes. Wonder Woman's fighting Giganta, and suddenly she's not giant any more). More like Zatanna's performing and whoops, she can't turn pigeons into pterodactyls right at this moment. Or heck, the JSA are having a BBQ and suddenly Dr. Fate's got no powers. It's mildly inconvenient, in the sense that it probably feels quite unusual when you're accustomed to having the powers, but not a catastrophe.

Everyone knows what's happening and why, and they probably worry for a moment about what exactly Alice is up to - and it's likely the person whose powers she borrowed would look into it once their powers are back - but at this point, it's become one of those things you kind of expect. Like that neighbor who always mows their lawn way too early in the morning, and you just have to roll with it.

Deadshot's Ammo Reserves, And The Skartaris Disaster

I was looking back over the recent Skartaris arc in Secret Six. I noticed in the last issue, Deadshot appears to run out of bullets, and sends Lori (Black Alice) off to find him something he can shoot with. She returns a few pages later with two bows, two crossbows, and two quivers full of arrows.

Which Deadshot never makes any use of that we can see. He does, however, shoot Lady Vic in both kneecaps with his firearms. After he had, you know, claimed to be out of ammo.

I'm inclined to think Floyd was simply lying about running out of bullets, as a way to protect Lori. The gun may well have been empty, but he could have reloaded. By pretending his guns had runs completely dry, he had an excuse to get her off the battlefield, at least for a minute. He may not have even expected her to find anything at all. I can't tell from his expression when she returns whether he's surprised, pleased, or annoyed.

You could argue he was out of bullets, except some he saved especially for Lady Vic, but since his original plan was to kill her, and only changed to crippling her after Bane refused to allow her death, I wouldn't expect him to save more than one bullet. He's Deadshot. For anyone not named Batman, one shot is all he needs. So I tend to think he had more than two bullets left. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with his grappling hand to hand with the mace-wielding native prior to Lori's return. If he had bullets left, why not use them? As far as he knew, she was nowhere around to know he'd lied about his guns being empty.

The arc as a whole felt like kind of a mess. The two groups fighting, then stopping, then resuming the battle later in the same issue, except with new jungle costumes and more cannon fodder. Thomas Blake's on-again, off-again feral mindset Dressing Blake up as Warlord, which didn't seem to serve much purpose. I didn't see any signs the people on his side were particularly inspired, nor the enemies particularly terrified (beyond the prospect of dying at the hands of a shirtless sword-wielding guy riding a giant white tiger). The issue of whether Deadshot was really out of ammo, how Black Alice had kept saying she couldn't sense any magic, until she concentrated for one panel, and suddenly she could sense it just fine*. Scandal attacking Bane, saying he's not her father, then slitting his throat (I still think it looks more like he grabbed her wrist, and used her blades to slit his own throat, rather than fight her), and by the next issue, Scandal's telling Jeanette she flipped out because Bane reminded her of Vandal Savage for a moment.

A lot of it feels off, things happening arbitrarily, but then again, everything they do is essentially meaningless. Both groups, as well as the residents of Skartaris are just pawns in Spy Smasher's stupid attempt to get Amanda Waller ousted. Spy Smasher doesn't care about the people she sent, the people Waller sent in response, or all the people that died as a result. Not just the ones the two Sixes killed themselves. Bane's arrival convinced the group Lorina was with that they could rise up and overthrow Machiste with the help of these outsiders. Which lead to war, which lead to bloodshed. Maybe they would have tried it anyway, without Bane and Friends, but maybe they wouldn't have. If they did, they probably wouldn't have been a dire enough threat for Machiste to don a mask that brings back some horrible magical tyrant the land was well rid of.

What's worse, the other Six believed that by siding with Machiste, they were fighting to defend Skartaris' independence, to keep them free from the U.S. At the least, that idea mattered to Scandal, Lori, and Tremor, and they were the ones making decisions. Blake, Deadshot, and Ragdoll didn't really seem to care, they just went along with it. The joke being that there is not threat of the U.S. conquering Skartaris, regardless of what Bane's group does. However, depending on one's point of view, Scandal's group was actually fighting against freedom by aiding Machiste. I don't doubt Lorina's people felt they were at a disadvantage to his and wanted to adjust that balance.

That's par for the course for the Six. They get involved in a situation, try to do what seems right to them, and it usually ends disastrously. Even if they've managed to get some scumbag killed, it's questionable if they've made things any better.

* This could be excused under the heading of "Lori needs to practice with her powers more", I suppose. I was reading JLA/Hitman and the Flash chided Tommy when he admitted he couldn't read much past surface thoughts with his telepathy. Tommy admitted he couldn't be bothered to refine his skills, which goes along with his tendency to plan on the fly. If Lori's attempt to cure her father's asthma told us anything, it's that she takes a similar approach with her powers.

Getting Through The Teenage Air Of Indifference

With Secret Six #26, I really enjoyed seeing Black Alice actually get angry once she figured out why Bane's team had been sent to Skartaris (namely, imperialism). Partially because it reminded me of myself in high school, when we'd learn about something a world power had done to some other group of people, and I'd get self-righteously angry about it. Alice's indignation about it struck me as realistic, and maybe more importantly for the character, she showed a genuine interest in something, besides Ragdoll that is.

Since she's joined the team, Alice has pretty much treated the whole thing as a game. She complains about the jobs, ignores orders, seems to flirt with Ragdoll around Bane just to rile him. When she's not acting heedless of consequences, she's usually panicking as the dangers are presented to her bluntly. She was feeling pretty cocky breaking into Belle Reve with Giganta's powers, until Vertigo dropped her. Then she swiped Nightshade's abilities, and the cockiness returned until all the zombies attacked, at which point she could barely calm down enough to use said abilities. She treated finding Catman as a jaunt, until she saw what he did to the first guy he was after.

Not that her reactions are strange. She's an incredibly powerful teenager, and unless she had something happen to her that demonstrates her own mortality, she probably thinks of herself as invincible. She temporarily stole the Spectre's powers and lived to tell about it, that'd be an ego boost for most anyone. At the same time, she's relatively new to the costumed business, particularly the brand the Six engage in, it could be a little much at times. Still, I find it hard to care much about a character that doesn't care about anything. Even Floyd Lawton cares about stuff. Not so much concepts like colonization or imperialism, but there are people he cares about, enough to try and commit acts of what he'd consider kindness. So I appreciated Alice, not sure she can use her powers in Skartaris, picking up a sharpened rock and declaring her intention to fight, because she is definitely not OK with the people of Skartaris being subjugated. She doesn't even know these people, but she thinks it's wrong, and she'll fight for them.

We'll Start With Magic, Then Shift To Team Dynamics

I'm not clear on what the issue is for Black Alice's powers while she's in Skartaris. She says her powers are still there, but she can't sense anyone magical to steal powers from, such as Wonder Woman. I understand her not being able to sense Wonder Woman, since Alice is in a separate dimension. Then why not steal Giganta's powers? She used them once before, and Giganta (and Jeanette) are both in Skartaris, so there shouldn't be a distance impediment. When the two teams began fighting, Alice did threaten to swipe Jeanette's powers, but she had that stone knife hidden behind her back the whole time, which suggests to me she was bluffing. It could be she still has her power, but something about Skartaris is blocking her ability to sense power, even when the person is right in front of them.

Or it could be Alice was trying to make amends to Scandal, which would be encouraging. She flew off the handle at Scandal in the previous arc, falsely accusing her of being interested in Ragdoll romantically, and swiped Etrigan's powers to attack with. After she calmed down, Alice admitted it was foolish and she was sorry, so this might be a conciliatory gesture. Scandal did ask the rest of the team to not kill Jeanette if they could avoid it, after all.

The Secret Six are usually presented as an odd little family. They argue, they backstab, they try to kill each other, but they also look out for each other in their own ways. Deadshot goes to the doctor for Alice's father, and makes him call her up to say there is no way her messing around with Raven's powers gave her dad cancer. It's probably false, it's probably not going to get Alice to put in more time learning to be careful with other people's powers, and Deadshot threatened the doctor at gunpoint to make it happen, but it was an attempt to make her feel better, and it worked, in the short term, at least.

Alice joined the team originally because she needs money to support her father, and the fact she felt responsible for his having cancer likely contributed as well. I wonder if being told it isn't her fault would cause her to rethink her current employment, maybe seek out a less hazardous job. The team did, I think, receive money for investigating (and killing) the cult leaders that killed Mr. MacQuarrie's son, but their track record of getting paid is lousy. It would be an interesting resolution if her lack of guilt made her too well-adjusted to be part of the team, right as she's building some tenuous connections with teammates who aren't Ragdoll.