Sunday 18 September 2011

Suicide Squad #1


Series: Suicide Squad
Words: Adam Glass
Images: Federico Dallocchio & Ransom Getty
Issue Number: 1
Release Date: In reality September but our cover reads November 2011
Format: Comic

I wanted to like Suicide Squad. I tried really hard to like it. Honest readers I did. I've recently started to really enjoy Deadshot as a character. I love to hate Amanda Waller. I don't have much emotional investment in the rest of the team but I do enjoy reading about teams (I have discovered) and that has sucked me into caring about some of the strangest minor characters in the past (I'm looking at you Catman).

Even with lowered expectations (I had advanced warning that other people were disappointed). Even with a desire to actually like the series. I was a fair bit disappointed with Suicide Squad. I am not going to be pulling issue two.

Now I will give them some credit they did do some things very well. The art work is sound even if I didn't like some of the actual physical character designs.

The comic is an effective prequel to the Suicide Squad that sets up the rest of the serise well. You don't need any prior knowledge of the team or of the Squad to be able to pick up this issue and follow it. The entire comic takes place hopping between a flashback back story of each individual member's arrest and their later incarceration in Belle Reve Penitentiary and their recruitment from there to the suicide squad. I found that set up for the team very, very, very well done.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough to salvage the comic for me.

I was left disappointed. I didn't like how Deadshot was characterized. Deadshot should not have a weakness that is easily exploited. Part of the fun of Deadshot is he is almost seems to have antisocial personality disorder at times and yet ends up almost always doing the right thing for one reason or another. He's a slightly more sane and slightly less abrasive Deadpool.

I was annoyed at the redesign of Harley Quinn's costume. I actually had a flash back to when a teenage ex of mine tried to get me to watch / read Heavy Metal with him.

I was very annoyed at how much weight Amanda Waller seems to have magically lost. It's an issue I've been having ever since I saw the Green Lantern movie. When she finally appears late in the Suicide Squad story you could fill the hollows in her cheeks with soup and eat a full meal. The woman is skin and bones (and tits). Amanda Waller should not look like she is in desperate need for a sandwich. She is a solidly built power house of a woman both physically, socially and politically. She was also one of the few women of colour in comics who didn't fit the “thin” ideal and yet was some how a huge force. And while I love to hate the character in general because of her approaches.

Ideal if you are a teenager. Ideal if you want to oggle some pretty comic boobs. Ideal if you want something fairly light to read.

But not the Suicide Squad I wanted to read.

So in the end. Issue two is not being purchased and I will cross my fingers for the return of Secret Six.

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