Suicide Squad restarted at the end of 2019.

[thanekos]

It's being written by Tom Taylor now, in the same vein as his previous superhero team book/ensemble cast work.

Issue #1 opened on the Australian navy unveiling its new submarines - and the military spokesperson talking to the press being teleported up into the air, caught in mid-fall, and then dropped directly onto one of those subs because he refused to " surrender to terrorists! "

The super-powered terrorists proceeded about their work.





" .. that's where you come in. "

Deadshot didn't think much of this roster's chance against the Revolutionaries.

" I mean, Magpie? Cavalier? "



Harley checked on him.



" I don't care if you consider this the worst Suicide Squad ever assembled.

" This country is threatened by the Revolutionaries, and it can't act openly against them.

" It is time for Task Force X. "

Task Force X was thus deployed against the Revolutionaries, striking at them on their stolen submarine.

The Shark took first blood, devouring Scale the Atlantean in front of his brother Fin.



Lok took the biometric notification of Magpie's death in stride.

" Cavalier. Quinn. Go! "



A blow from behind shattered his skull.

In the helicopter, Lok handed Deadshot a sniper rifle: " Shoot them. Nonlethal only. "

He complied.



(She's the one who broke the Cavalier's head.)



Lok turned back to Osita, the Revolutionary he'd been addressing.



" Okay. "

He pressed a button and made an example out of one of the Revolutionaries.



From above, troops rappelled down.



(Pagecount's 9 and a little more than 2/10ths of 28.

Art's Bruno Redondo, colors're Adriano Lucas, and letters're Wes Abbott.)

Comments

[shakalooloo]

So, they've replaced now-somewhat-regular Squad member King Shark with visually-similar yet less-interesting The Shark? I don't get it.

[akodo_rokku]

I assume they wanted to be able to kill him off.

[crinos]

I love that look on Deadshot's face on the first page. Its a look that says "Oh dear lord the put me on a team with fucking Magpie."

You know Magpie? The Z list Batman villain whose gimmick is she steals shiny things. Like a Magpie? Like, when your gimmick makes Two Faces gimmick look good, you need to take a step back.

I mean, even the intro bumper for her says she's "Out of her depth". Understatement of the millennium.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I've always thought that the Suicide Squad needed greater character diversity. The original team had villains, heroes, anti-heroes and it made the concept work on a lot of levels. Making them just all criminals barely worked, IMO.

But welding half the cast into that roll is too much, IMO. Especially when they already have their own interactions

[lilacsigil]

Okay, as a fellow Australian, those submarines actually, finally being unveiled and promptly taken over is a great joke. Thanks, Tom!

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

What's the joke?

[lilacsigil]

So these submarines have been in development for several governments and many years. Every time they got started, a new government was elected and hijacked the program to try to win votes - the French were going to make them, but no, it must be Aussies! No, Aussies don't have an appropriate shipbuilding yard, back to the French! No, let's fund a shipbuilding yard in Adelaide where the incoming government needs the votes! Wait, that's going to take 10 years to build on its own and now the submarines are out of date! Quick, plan a new submarine...oh the government changed again.

So having it "hijacked" on launch is just one more hijacking in the long, long history of these still not built submarines.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

So a human shark man wasn't the most unrealistic thing in the comic?

Huh.

[matrix_dragon]

"Water-resistant, not water-PROOF."

[leahandillyana]

It was nice. Shame it won't likely be continued.

[silverhammerman]

Looks good. Tom Taylor's a good choice for Suicide Squad given his background in comics with high bodycounts and a shocking amount of heart. And putting a bunch of superhuman activists/terrorists on the team immediately gives them a whole new cast with a distinct agenda to develop and kill off, even if we know that mainstays like Harley Quinn and Deadshot aren't going anywhere.

Minor quibble here, and I know how this arc ends, but I feel like this isn't first time we've seen the Suicide Squad get hijacked by a "bad" government stooge and, like, Amanda Waller is also very much a bad person. Just because she's arguably nicer doesn't mean she's not also a complete monster for being involved in an endeavor so grotesquely immoral that it chafes against the rest of the DCU. I mean, the whole premise doesn't hold up as soon as you ask "Wait, Superman doesn't have a problem with this?" but I could do without stories which put the premise on trial only to resolve by having the "nice" amoral stooge put back in charge and the status quo restored. Like sure Lok's a dick, but the bigger issue is that the US government put a bomb in your skull and only addressing the former is underwhelming.

[icon_uk]

What I've appreciated about Waller (at least the version I remember from the original Suicide Squad series, I know there have been variations since then) is that she does horrible shit, and she KNOWS she does horrible shit, and she owns it, and knows she's damned for all eternity because of it, but she does it because she genuinely believes that sometimes horrible shit needs to be done, superheroes won't do it, and she'd rather it was done by someone like her who has no aspirations beyond the mission. than someone else.

She's a monster who mainstains absolute control over her monstrousness. And she has limits, if she makes a promise, she will do her utmost to honour it, and she won't waste a resource.

You're never asked to sympathise with her, or agree with her, and she'd probably not trust anyone who did.

The Waller in the movie, apart from the problem inherent in the fact the villain of the movie only exists because of her incompetence, lost me completely in the moment when the agents assisting her learn too much and she casually murders them. Waller in the comics would not have wasted lives like that, she'd have told them that no matter what their old jobs had been, they worked for HER now, and for the rest of their lives, and their security clearance had damn well better clear.

[capnduckman]

Man, just looking at the splash page, I was like "So, cavalier and magpie are dead, shame."

[scorntx]

Hey, they got introductory captions. That's more than most redshirts get.

[icon_uk]

This is a totally bizarre line up, and approach IMHO.

If you're going to use Magpie, at least play up what her useful skills to a team like this actually ARE.

As well as a skilled thief, she's a complete psychopath who creates deadly trinkets, little shiny gadgets which are incredibly lethal, which she always left in place of the pretty thing she's stolen (because she deserves ALL the pretty things from her POV), so even if her robbery didn't have a bodycount (they usually didn't) the people who discover the crime are pretty much guaranteed dead, from explosives, poison gas, acid sprays, razor sharp projectiles and the like.

That would have potential in this team line-up... their gimmick tech, you want the air ducts cleared fine, let her deposit some of her "pretties" around the place. Don't use her as fodder, it lacks imagination. Do something daring and kill a higher profile character and let her prospoer here the way Boomerang did in the original.

And her personality might mesh/clash nicely with Harley's.

The Lok character is also a hundred times less interesting than Waller, and I seriously hope he's not a regular.

[beyondthefringe]

Spoiler alert: Lok's not exactly in this for the long term.

On the bright side, it's not like we -see- Magpie die, so there's still hope for her if someone really wants to bring her back?