What This Actually Is
People keep coming across this term on forums and wiki pages and getting confused because there isn't one single thing called Justice League Secret Society. The actual proper name is the Secret Society of Super-Villains, and it exists within the DC Universe as the antagonist counterpart to the Justice League. It's not a game you download, it's not an app, it's a comic book organization created by Leo Gold and Michael Fleisher that debuted in Adventure Comics #395 back in 1970. The basic idea is straightforward. You take several of DC's most dangerous villains and put them under a single leadership structure with the explicit goal of taking down the Justice League. Lex Luthor usually runs things. Darkseid has also led it. Sometimes it's Black Manta or Circe depending on which writer is working the book at the time.
Justice League Secret Society - How It Works In Practice
If you are trying to get into reading the character as part of a team dynamic, here is where most people mess up. The Secret Society operates very differently depending on the era and the continuity, and the power scaling shifts wildly. In the Silver Age, it was basically a group of B-list villains getting assembled for a weekly scheme of the week. In the modern Post-Crisis and New 52 runs, the Society gets written as an existential threat level organization where members have planet-busting power levels and strategic coordination that makes them genuinely dangerous to heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman. I spent a lot of time compiling member rosters for a fan project and the inconsistency alone is enough to drive you crazy. The core roster changes almost every major crossover. Checkmate, Brother Eye, the darker alternate universes, they all remix the lineup differently. The only constant members across most continuities are Lex Luthor, Sinestro, Cheetah, and Killer Croc. Everything else is writer-dependent. The main story arcs worth reading are the original Infinity Inc. tie-in from the late seventies, the Society issue from the 2000s written by Dan Jurgens, and the Rebirth run that recontextualized the organization as a more structured criminal syndicate. The Rebirth version actually made the most narrative sense because it gave the group internal politics and succession mechanics rather than just having villains argue with each other the whole time.
If you are looking for a place to start, the Secret Society of Super-Villains miniseries from 2005-2006 is the most accessible entry point. It establishes the hierarchy, gives you the major players, and doesn't require thirty years of Justice League reading history to follow. That said, the artwork in that series is uneven and the pacing drags in the middle issues. You will want to skim issues four through six and focus on one and two and seven for the actual plot payoff. The biggest pitfall people run into is assuming the Secret Society is a permanent fixed roster like the Justice League itself. It is not. It is a narrative device that gets assembled and disbanded based on whatever threat the writers want to introduce at that moment. Some runs treat it like a formal organization with membership cards and meeting schedules. Others just throw a bunch of villains in a room and call it a day. There is no consistent canon to rely on. One specific problem I hit when building a comprehensive timeline of every appearance was tracking down the original Adventure Comics issues. The scan quality on the Internet Archive versions of issues #395 through #398 is terrible, and the lettering is nearly illegible in places. I ended up buying the trades that collected those stories because theDC Database references don't include proper panel images. If you are doing research on this material, budget some money for the collected editions rather than trying to read everything free online.
Get the Full Details
There is also a separate Secret Society concept in the animated universe and the DCAU expanded continuity that operates completely independently from the comics version. The animated series version had a different lineup and a different origin story. If you are mixing sources, make sure you know which continuity you are referencing or your notes will become meaningless very quickly.
