The writing team of Brian Joines and Jay Faerber along with the artistic combo of Ilias Kyriazis and Charlie Kirchoff have created the Front Line, a quirky Canadian-based team with far more interesting personal lives than their heroic pursuits, as neatly laid out in the first issue of the Image Comics series, Secret Identities.

In one of the more informative first issue covers that I have seen in awhile, the creative team does a nice job of spilling many of the dark secrets of the team before you read the first page of action. In short order you also learn the newest addition to the heroes, Crosswind, will be a traitor.

Normally such a collection of unlikeable characters would cause me to drop the series like a hot potato. Yet, the mystery of what makes all these characters so distasteful proved to be the element that captured a great deal of my interest.

Not all the characters are likely as bad as they seem (while others will prove worse than initially portrayed I speculate. But it is hard to resist certain concepts such as the speedster hero who is a bigamist or another hero who tries to make a living as a comedian. (Honestly, if someone does not try that with a Peter Parker/Spider-Man personal life reboot someday, it would be a shame--particularly considering the number of comedy writers who have taken on Spidey in recent years).

The hook for this series will not be the superteam, but rather as the title implies, the secret lives.

[Editor’s note: Each Sunday, Robot 6 contributors discuss the best in comics from the last seven days — from news and announcements to a great comic that came out to something cool creators or fans have done.]