5 out of 5

An adopted brother to the Charlton Neo family, Mystery Island’s oddball web-comic heroes Secret Society make their way to print, for three highlighted origin tales, scripted by creator Bradley Mason Hamlin and drawn by Mort Todd.

The apparently infinitely energized Todd gives the books an EC grit, slightly tweaked toward more horror or cheesecake depending on the character.  His art is bright, playful, and/or gleefully horrific, all as needed, and a uniformly great match for Hamlin’s smart scripts, which similarly run the gamut from frightfully brutal (El Secreto’s origin) to yuks (Eddie Crossbones) to witfully sarcastic meta awareness (Lucy Hell).

The book flies by, and then flies by again when you get caught up in a reread.  The Mystery Island stuff is definitely written with more of a modern bent than the Charlton Neo books, but the same baked in appreciation for making comics good emanates from every panel and page.