The Secret Six No. 1 Cover by Frank Springer

E Nelson Bridwell and Frank Springer co-created The Secret Six, and the characters first appeared in this No. 1 issue of their comic. The powerful and innovative cover by Springer is also the first story page.

The series’ premise: six people are coerced to become members of an international tactical response team by the mysterious Mockingbird. The twist: one of the six is Mockingbird and we don’t know which one. The series lasted seven issues in its own book, and was later continued in Action Comics Weekly where we found out which one was Mockingbird.

Bridwell is an important figure in the history of DC Comics. Long before we had searchable wikis and series indexes at our fingertips, he had all that encyclopædic knowledge in his head and used it well to keep DC’s continuity straight, and to package great reprint collections of DC’s best stories.

This marks the fourth of seven Secret Six covers I’ve restored and coloured. Hopefully DC one day will realise that I’d love to do a deluxe repackaged omnibus of all the stories. (The email link is in the footer.)

As published

With no original art scan available, the art was re-created via tracing over a high-res scan of the cover

Re-created trade dress added

Original colour scheme re-created

New colour version