Front Line, in all their glory (Issue #1)
Secret Identities is a comic written by Brian Joines and Jay Faerber with art by Ilias Kyriazis and published by Image Comics. It was a limited series that ran for seven issues from February to September 2015, with a trade paperback being published the month after its conclusion.
The story focuses on the international (but based out of Toronto) super team Front Line. At the start of the story, the team consists of:
- 'Luminary', your standard Flying Brick and daughter of the President;
- 'Punchline', a snarky wise-cracker with Super-Strength;
- 'Recluse', a dark and brooding detective-type;
- 'Vesuvius', a Roman centurion who was encased in rock and lava;
- 'Gaijin', an alien stranded on Earth who was adopted by a family;
- 'Helot', a high-tech warrior trying to overcome his war-centric programming; and
- 'Rundown', your standard-issue speedster.
The team has recently lost member Diamond Jim to injury. Thankfully, out of the blue steps a replacement: Crosswind. However, it turns out that Crosswind is working for a secret benefactor to undermine Front Line via blackmail, and it turns out that the members have a lot of skeletons in their closets...
Not to be confused with the common superhero trope Secret Identity.
This comic book series provides examples of:
- Aliens in Cardiff: Toronto isn't exactly a tiny city, but it is unusual for a multi-national super-team (especially one featuring the President of the United States' daughter) fending off a massive alien invasion in North America to not be centered around New York City or Washington, D.C..
- Bad Powers, Good People: Recluse can turn into a frightening spider monster as a result of an ancient African curse, a power he uses for good… even if he has to periodically eat people to keep the transformation from becoming permanent. He pointedly only feeds on criminals, the more depraved and unambiguously evil the better.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Rundown, Crosswind, and Ray Fournier. Beneath their kindly demeanors, one is unfaithful, one is The Mole and a sociopathic asshole, and one is the real Big Bad.
- Bittersweet Ending: Some of the Front Line's secrets are exposed, some are not, and all of them lead to major upheavals in their lives, for better or for worse. But at the end of the day, the team mostly stays together and defeats all the villains. Things could have gone a lot worse.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Crosswind and Fournier's plan is to uncover the Front Line's dirty secrets and use it as blackmail to tear the team apart from the inside as well as destroy their reputations. They settle on using Gaijin's Yakuza family connections as that blackmail.
- Blood Knight: Helot is becoming an unwilling one thanks to his war-centric programming being reactivated by the villains who gave him his cybernetics for begin with.
- Blow You Away: Crosswind's shtick.
- Cast of Expies: Though a big part of the twist is that they're not all expies of who you'd immediately think:
- Recluse is Spider-Man but with the attitude of Batman, such as being called "World's Greatest Detective". In the past, he used to be reminiscent of pulp heroes like The Shadow.
- Vesuvius is The Thing but with fire powers and a backstory sort of like a combination of The Incredible Hercules and Captain America.
- Luminary seems like an obvious Supergirl stand-in at first, but is really closer to a twisted fusion of the Monica Rambeau version of Captain Marvel and Green Lantern.
- Rundown is a mix of speedsters The Flash and Quicksilver, having powers more similar to the former but an unsympathetic personality more akin to the latter.
- Helot is a pastiche of cybernetic superheroes like Cyborg or Deathlok.
- Gaijin is Psylocke or Katana with the backstory of Superman.
- Punchline has the broad personality of Plastic Man as the team jokester, but a power-set more similar to someone like Luke Cage.
- Crosswind seems like a stand-in for wind-based superheroes like Banshee from X-Men but is actually one for wind-based villains like Whirlwind.
- Diamond Jim is basically Colossus from X-Men but substituting diamond skin for metal.
- Ray Fournier is Commissioner Gordon from Batman but with the twist that he hates his superhero "friends".
- Career-Ending Injury: At the start of the series, the Front Line are down one member because Diamond Jim lost his legs in a battle gone wrong and it's not certain if he'll ever be able to be a superhero again. Ultimately subverted, as Jim manages to get acclimated to prosthetic replacements and by the end has come out of his 10-Minute Retirement.
- The Commissioner Gordon: Ray Fournier of the Toronto Police is a subversion and deconstruction of this, as he secretly hates and resents superheroes after the deaths of his family in an alien attack and seeks to bring them down.
- Cyborg: Helot is a cybernetic warrior built for combat on a tech and violence obsessed commune.
- Dark Secret: Each member of the Front Line has one, either knowingly or unknowingly. Played with, as while their secrets are certainly dark, they're all still ultimately good people and there is a lot of extenuating circumstances to their situations.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: In his time as a Roman centurion, Vesuvius did some things that would be considered pretty brutal. He wasn't evil, just following orders and doing what was expected of him as a man of his time, and he feels great remorse for it all in the present day.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Ray Fournier's reason for starting the whole mess by sending Crosswind to infiltrate the Front Line and trying to destroy them was because they dared to celebrate their victory after defeating the alien attack that brought them together and in which Fournier's family died, causing him to deem them arrogant and uncaring. The real reason is almost certainly just that he's resentful he can't take revenge on the alien itself, so he takes his grief out on the Front Line instead.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Luminary develops new powers in the finale when she discovers her origins as an incubator for an alien virus.
- Engineered Heroics: Crosswind is a burgeoning supervillain refashioned into a superhero by Ray Fournier to infiltrate the Front Line.
- Face–Heel Turn: At the end of the series, Gaijin ends up turning criminal and taking control of her brother's Yakuza empire to prevent a more violent usurper from doing so. She hopes to steer the organization to less dangerous waters from within.
- Fish out of Water: Helot being from a neo-Roman tech commune means that he's unaccustomed to modern culture.
- Flying Brick: Luminary's powers are pretty standard super strength and flight, until the finale, where she becomes a being of energy.
- Giant Corpse World: Front Line's base is in the body of a giant alien they killed on their first mission as a team. When newcomer Crosswind joins, the giant's antibodies have to be calibrated so they don't attack him. The end of the comic has other aliens showing up to avenge their fallen.
- Good Is Not Nice: The aliens who gave Luminary her powers did so to defend the Earth from the V'Ran. Doing so required the deaths of two innocent Secret Service agents who couldn't withstand the superpower-granting virus and traumatizing the young Luminary. And when they contact her in the present day to explain things to her when necessary, they are blunt and not particularly sympathetic to her complaints about their methods. But everything they did was necessary to save the planet and countless other planets.
- Great White Hunter: Recluse used to be one, until it led to him getting afflicted with the black magic curse that gave him superpowers.
- He Knows Too Much: Gaijin's adoptive brother Kayoko has one of his own men killed to conceal their relationship to one another after the unlucky henchmen stumbles a little too close to the truth.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Crosswind dies after interrupting his fight with Recluse to rescue a civilian, which he only does to maintain his cover.
- Home Base: Front Line is headquartered in the carcass of the giant alien they fought off in their initial team-up.
- Horror Hunger: Recluse has to keep eating people or else he'll be a spider forever.
- Irony: Rundown has one of the most harmless dark secrets of the Front Line, but is by far one of the unsympathetic members of the team, as unlike the others he has no excuse or extenuating circumstance for his secret and is just a selfish, cheating jerk.
- Jerkass Has a Point: To an extent. Recluse notes that Fournier is somewhat correct in his belief that the Front Line were arrogant and insensitive in celebrating after they defeated the alien despite the grievous harm it caused, but then points out how ridiculously disproportionate and misguided Fournier's vengeful response was, not least of all how it ended up endangering innocent people in the same way that got Fournier's family killed.
- Karmic Death: Crosswind's determination to keep up his superhero cover identity leads to him putting himself in harm's way to save a child and her cat during the finale — not out of genuine heroism but simply to keep up appearances — and thus end up "heroically" dying when the building collapses on him before he can get himself to safety.
- The Man Behind the Man: Ray Fournier of the Toronto Police is the mastermind behind Crosswind's infiltration of Front Line.
- Meaningful Name: Recluse's name isn't just for show as he was cursed to become a monstrous spider if he doesn't sate his hunger regularly.
- The Mole: The hook of the series is that one — Crosswind — has infiltrated Front Line to bring them down from within.
- Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: A male variant. Vesuvius gets into a fight with a fellow superhero when the latter accuses Vesuvius' adoptive niece Cincia of stealing a priceless artifact, claiming she would never do such a thing. Then it turns out she really did it. Vesuvius is heartbroken at the realization that his loved one really became a criminal and lied about it straight to his face.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Late in the book other species of the giant alien the team made their base in come back for revenge.
- No Endor Holocaust: Subverted and deconstructed. A lot of people in Toronto died in the alien Kaiju attack that brought the Front Line together, including Chief Fournier's family. The fact that the Front Line celebrated their victory over the alien caused the bereaved and not entirely rational Fournier to decide they "didn't care" about the people who died and made him resent them.
- Raised by Humans: Gaijin is an alien superhero who crash landed on Earth as a kid and was raised by a human family, Superman-style. The twist is her adoptive family were criminals.
- Really 700 Years Old: As a result of his curse, Recluse is older then he looks. Much older. Old enough he used to be a pulp hero back in the 50's and has to periodically change identities to conceal his immortality.
- Retired Monster: Once upon a time, Vesuvius was a Roman soldier. He claims not to remember anything of his past... but is actually covering up for the fact that, by modern standards, he committed some atrocities in that role. However, in the present day he seems to be a genuinely nice person who sincerely regrets his past crimes, and when his past is revealed he carries on being a hero.
- Rock Monster: Vesuvius gained a molten rocky hide after being caught in Pompeii's eruption.
- Secret-Keeper: Recluse finds out that Crosswind is actually a supervillain infiltrating the Front Line to bring them down from within, but Crosswind dies before he can really do anything about it, so Recluse decides to keep the secret and use Crosswind's "heroic" death to prod the team in a better direction.
- Secret Other Family: In his downtime, Rundown uses his super speed to... keep two families, one in Halifax and one in San Diego. The epilogue shows he's married a third woman in Clearwater, Florida, and is expecting a child with her as well.
- Shoot the Dog: Recluse hates having to eat criminals to maintain his human form, but given the choice between murdering scumbags and transforming into a feral monster that would kill many innocents, he gladly chooses the former. It doesn't make it any easier when the criminal he has to eat ends up being Gaijin's brother.
- The Spartan Way: How Helot was raised in the Neo-Roman tech commune he grew up in. He's still trying to overcome the effects it had on him.
- Super-Speed: Rundown.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Pointedly averted. The Front Line has no compunctions about killing supervillains and monsters if necessary, even if they generally prefer non-lethal solutions.
- Token Good Teammate: Punchline has by far the least devastating secret and is a good, funny person.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Every member of Front Line is hiding something, and it's Crosswind's job to find it all out.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Most of the harm Crosswind causes is entirely intentional, but the V'Ran returning is caused by him accidentally triggering a transponder in the Front Line's base that alerts the dead alien's comrades while digging around for blackmail material.
- Yakuza: A gang of Yakuza trying to establish themselves overseas is a major plot point. Because their leader is Gaijin's adoptive brother.
