Webcomic Review
Hexagon Death Squad
"Waiting For Machiavelli"

The author of this comic has plainitively expressed the wish that he be spared the John Solomon treatment.

This seems absolutely baffling, as this comic seems entirely composed of cute, vicious and indestructible girls who go about murdering about everybody they meet. There's the black-haired one who kills people and trucks. There's another one who stabs people's eyes out with a Curly Stooge eyepoke and then laughs manaiacally and endlessly as the guy screams endlessly in agony. Then there's the nice one who questions a guy and then, when asked if she'll let him go, chirps essentially 'Nope!' and kills him. She's the cute one. That much seems pretty clear.

I am completely at a loss as to how this artist can be doing this in sincerity and yet be worried about his hurt feelings. It seems a bit late to suggest a creative worldview where you're not expected to like and side with such reprehensible, vicious people... the idea is that the enemies are even worse, except they're a haphazard lot feebly organizing to fight a ruthless military dictatorship- except that we're apparently supposed to like the dictatorship, or at least like their puppets the Hexagon Death Squad.

Generally death squads are not met with the same enthusiasm you get for football teams. They're not typically cute and perky. They might be given to fits of cruelty and savagery, but one isn't expected to like these things.

Or are we supposed to see through it to an underlying mockery, in the manner of Slaughter U. Dark Zoey?

That's the trouble- I think not. Hexagon Death Squad's bad guys are there to injure and hurt the inhumanly deadly hero girls, but although everybody in the comic is unsympathetic with the possible exception of one little old lady (who has really weird taste in husbands and doesn't get away without seeming really unbalanced), the balance of things clearly drives home that our death squad is the death squad we're to identify with, mostly on the grounds of coolness.

It's really weird to be siding with a crowd that does the bidding of a monstrous military government that trowels on lots of totalitarian details as if it was trying out for the role of the villain, but it's possible we're not supposed to think about that part, or the fact that the terrorists being mowed down right and left call themselves 'democratists'. More bafflement... it's true that in future these girls could side with democracy against the military dictatorship (composed of militaries from the US, Russia and China) as they show no sign of thinking about anything political at all.

Their attention is singly and wholly on the task of pluckily slaughtering anyone they're aimed at, anyone who gets in the way, pretty much anybody you could imagine. They're absolute psychopaths, and so are some of their enemies. It's reminiscent of some of Tom Clancy's weirder excesses, where he's really into manufacturing excuses to describe heads being blown to pulp by bullets, presumably in between masturbating.

But I don't want to refer to that again- we can talk about heads being blown to pulp and masturbating without having to mention the C-word. Instead I'm going to bring up another reference.

Back in the day, there was a genre known as hard-boiled detective novels. At their best, they gave us characters like Rex Stout's Archie Goodwin, or Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op and Sam Spade. Then, they also gave us "I The Jury" himself, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.

And that guy was every bit as capable of going on a rant like "Kill! Kill! I wanted to line all those Commies up and when they were lined up I'd start shooting them until the gutters ran with blood that would paint a better freedom than we'd ever known". A loose paraphrase, but correct in essence. In short- a fucking psychopath, treated as a hero, and so far over the edge that his actions and attitudes are absolutely indistinguishable from those he hunts.

Hexagon Death Squad starts off like this, but by the end of Chapter 3 we're seeing things develop beyond where they started and in a disturbing direction- one of the girls begins to show pacifist tendencies, which is pretty shocking in a story like this. Also, the squad may be preparing to change sides, but that's a far less significant point. Killing randomly and unthinkingly could be done just as well for one side as for another, but beginning to think is a serious problem that undermines the whole theme of the comic.

I'm not joking.

Oh, thinking about plots or the next move made by the bad guys (i.e. the next target) is fine, but this is not a comic where characters should want to be mommies and raise a family. This is a mind-mangling dystopian nightmare enlivened by quips and flashy personality and cannot also be a politically correct drama about feelings and one girl's awakening to her own moral issues. (what a horrible awakening that would be!)

No, the trick to making this sort of thing work is two C-words that are not Clancy- consistency, and consequences. This is where Hexagon Death Squad has really blown it at times- the girl going all pacifist and Judo-minded turns out to be simply readjusting her head to where she gleefully hamstrings an attacker and leaves him alive, which one of the comic's readers pointed out was actually crueler than killing him, given the situation he lived in. That was a major violation of consistency, and a failure to think of consequences- in this story, it's just too twisted to have one of the hero girls happily going around crippling people in the name of sparing life.

Terry Pratchett's 'Death' says that mercy is a SHARP edge. That would fit in this story without breaking anything.

But more than consistency, consequences would bring more to this comic than groping for sympathetic elements in grotesque ways. Anyone reading it is fine with the murderous girls with their swords, and with them being a death squad quite literally. It's a bit like a politicised Buffy The Vampire Slayer- so long as you're not cringing too hard at the bizarre dystopian politics, you can watch huge amounts of gory violence and brutality, plus quips, and this can go on and on for page after page.

But with consequences, things begin to happen. For example, if these girls turn against their masters, it would be for some kind of reason. It feels like it's going to be pacifist girl teaching everybody how to be compassionate and caring, which is horrible. What if, instead, this treacherous and evil government, that they're obviously being set up to rebel against, turns on them first? What if they bring the girls in for some sort of promotion or briefing and try to kill them? What if they off pacifist girl because she's just not quick enough anymore?

This is all hypothetical- the real story will doubtless be different- but if that were to happen, the survivors would be twice as badass, aligned against the government for good solid reasons that don't require soul-searching, and all clear to continue their killing spree against their real targets.

The point being: consequences means when stuff happens, it matters and continues to affect things, affects them in coherent and believable ways. It's not believable that these girls would become mommies and homemakers, and even the idea is weird and distracting. It is, however, believable that if these girls are attacked, they will fight back. That's what they always do- so, make the attack come from an unexpected direction, and suddenly their fighting back takes on a whole new importance. Consequences means the story can take a turn where readers will WANT to see the girls fight and kill, against an enemy who seems to deserve it.

Mind you, by the nature of the comic, there aren't going to be any tree-hugging hippy freak readers with any patience for peace and love crap. It's pretty unthinkable that any of those would make it through the first chapters. The readers will be hard-boiled types, wanting violence and vengeance and a good quip, and they will want to know who the enemy is and to hell with what made them that way. This is not a comic that should attempt psychological depth.

Put down the I'm OK You're OK, and pick up some Le Carre novels or Machiavelli...

Because with this much violence, killing, evil and power, what this comic needs is some really good treachery and scheming. Nobody's going to mind what (or how little) the characters are feeling, compared to what terrible things the reader knows the bad guys are doing.

This would have been a shorter review if I didn't find so much of the comic reprehensible- it seems like the fundamental themes are horrible, and it's just perverse when it tries to add morality. I had to go a long long way before I felt I was in sync with what the comic wanted. But bear in mind- when it goes all PC, it's not that it wants to be moral, it really just wants not to be criticised on moral grounds. That's a trap it can ill afford. Rather than trying to win respect by throwing in moral characters saying likely-sounding things, it should embrace its inner sociopath, be extremely violent, and come up with good urgent reasons for whatever the violence is.

What more could you fairly want from it?