Suicide Squad #2

Two pieces of prerequisite information. 1) I realize I am way behind in discussing some of these comics, and my plan is to not go trudging through them. You don't want to read my opinions on comics that came out a month ago, and I don't want to dedicate myself to religiously writing a post on each issue. All this to say, I typically wouldn't bother discussing Suicide Squad #2 since the book's immediate relevance has passed. 2) I am only writing about #2 now, because I actually only read it last night. I haven't been too thrilled about getting on to the second issue since I read the first, but last night I was waiting for dinner and I found it lost in my stack of comics. I don't read them all at once and so sometimes things can, by chance, simply be forgotten. Suicide Squad #2 is a case.

But I chose to write about Suicide Squad #2 because it is fucking terrible.

Now, #1 wasn't so great. It was predictable and fairly uninteresting. What it did well was 3 basic things. 1) The premise is good. Super villains as part of a team to handle covert operations that are morally grey. 2) Harley Quinn is in it. People like her for a reason, and it's beyond the titillation that began around Arkham Asylum. 3) The shark guy was awesome. He speaks like a crazy carnivorous cave person and he chomps shit right off.

But, while it has those three things down, it couldn't even manage to pull those 3 off without a caveat for each. 1') I'm not sure #1 actually communicates the comic's premise clearly or efficiently. It's not complex and so maybe that's why the first issue isn't complete nonsense. The cover could suffice to communicate the premise if you are familiar with any of the context surrounding the book. 2') Harley Quinn is awful. She is dressed like an inflatable clown fuck doll and has the character of one. She says weird things and got dumped by Joker. Not much of the intelligent, deranged, but strong female villain that people actually like. 3') There is simply not enough shark guy. The comic HONESTLY spends times on the other "characters" rather than just the shark guy a'chompin all day.

Never mind 3 in that list.

Okay, so let's finally (FINALLY) talk about #2. I got a lot of problems with this book, and now you're gonna hear about it!

1) Harley Quinn is still awful. She is a ditz with a hammer. She swoons about how she likes a man that takes charge. She spouts unfunny one liners. The way she is depicted as showing off her smarts is her saying, hey, I'm smart you know, I used to be a psychologist. Remember creative writing 101, the show don't tell thing?

2) I have been struggling to think of the word I want to use to describe the art. While somewhat pretentious, I feel like the word I want to use is uninspired. The art just looks so bleh. It is functional in that it forms shapes and colours that your brain can decode into some semblance of meaning, but never does it really go beyond that. There is almost an absence of joy or fun in the art. The crowds of deformed robot zombies attack the teen girl squad and they are just kind of a bore of mutated fleshy shapes. Much in the same way that Frankenstein's tableaux of monstrosity just fades into a generic blob of what your brain just reads as "threat". EXCITING!

Also, the cover is like the same as the month before, just the characters are reorganized. Issue #3 also looks the same. I swear this is a budget title.

3) So the super senshi are dropped out of a plane in the end of #1 and they're told to kill everything in the stadium. Wow, you say, are they really there to kill a stadium full of people? That is certainly morally complicated. That complexity, oh so thankfully, is simplified immediately when we find out the entire stadium is infected with robo-zombie-ness. So yeah, killing monsters is killing monsters. They'd kill the world? Yes. No chance to fix them? Not really up for debate when there is a stadium waiting to kill the world. Fine and simple, torch the whole damn thing.

4) And this one really irks me. This book is trying SO HARD for you to think it is earning that T+ rating. But it's like the pastor's wife dressing in a leather jacket and talking to you about the dangers of drugs. The sheer obvious effort exerted to be edgy just sucks any sort of genuine moral complexity right out of the book. At the end of the book, Deadshot shoots a dude that was tasked with shocking every dead body to make sure it was good 'n dead so that whatever organization they are working for (I can't remember) can use him as a cover story. Oh and the evil monster they fight is pregnant! And one of the members is constantly fighting with Deadshot about how everything he does is sooooo wrong. Whatever, go back to choir practice.

It comes down to this, Suicide Squad is just poorly written. The dialogue is stilted and the narrative is contrived and painfully transparent. Then, the art can't pull the excess weight because it is simply there to classify this book as a comic. Maybe if the writing wasn't so bad I wouldn't mind the lame artwork, and maybe if the artwork was stunning I would just ignore the text. But no, we get, I think, my least favourite comic of the new 52.

SAVING GRACE TIME: So they find the woman they are looking for and she has the package they need to secure. Of course she is the carrier and her child the package, but when they confront her she starts to transform into a super hideous tentacle robo-zombie. <ASIDE> Why always with tentacles? Are we all afraid, actually afraid, of Chthulu? Why not like claws and shit? Animal Man can make things creepy without tentacles. </ASIDE> So the team starts to fight the mass of tentacles and shit and one mean big tentacle grabs Harley. Then it's about to squeeze her to death when shark guy BITES THE MONSTER'S HEAD OFF, and then spits it out. PATOOIEE! I think all villains should be defeated this way. NOM NOM NOM. Hilarious.

Don't bother though. It's not worth it.

Batman #2 and #3

Remember: Batman #1 was okay. When I wrote about Batman initially I was a little underwhelmed with the mystery revealed at the end of the book. I thought it obvious that Nightwing didn't murder that guy.

And in #2 the evidence that Nightwing murdered the victim is hastily dismissed.

While this dismissal is a nice character moment that shows Nightwing's closeness with Batman and him acknowledging Batman's anal retentiveness about detective-ing, it also works to explain the trajectory of the series thus far since the first issue.

Batman #2 starts out with Bruce Wayne falling to his death, pushed by a highly skilled assassin, from a tower his grandfather constructed in the early days of Gotham. As like every other narrative does, the book then goes back to show how it all started. What it does differently than #1 though, is actually make me interested in what happens in the story.

Honestly, Batman #2 and #3 have me hooked. Apparently there has been a secret society in Gotham since its earliest days, known as the Owls or something, and they control Gotham. The details aren't clear yet obviously, but I'd expect the run of the mill control of the government, cops, and crime. That's how these things work. Didn't you see The Skulls 3!?

There is also this nursery rhyme in Gotham that warns about the Owls and scares young children, which Batman of course dismisses as just a nursery rhyme. But oh ho ho, when an assassin in an Owl costume throws him from the top floor of a tower, through unbreakable glass might I add, he changes his tune. I know I've been through the whole thing with the Jolly Rancher gang in my city. Watch out for Watermelon.

Oh yeah, Batman is a badass.

Batman #3 then has Batman all detectin' and shit, uncovering some information about these Owl people. Much of what he learns about them connects to various historical facets of Gotham City. While I am aware that Gotham is a fictional city, subject to the history that is conjured by the needs of a writer, it is somewhat interesting to have a threat tied so much to the history of a major city. Might be the humanities major in me, but these faux-historical connections ground the mystery in a sense of realism. Gotham is a place with history, and the society of Owls is bound and integral to that history. Indeed the act of solving this mystery is akin to historical research, recontextualizing the historical narrative of Gotham City. But with like dudes dressed as flying nocturnal animals and have bloody knife fights.

Oh yeah, they seem to want Bruce Wayne dead because of the new Gotham project that is meant to rejuvenate Gotham. So obviously they are an allegory for conservative politics. Har.

Batman #3 also has one of my favourite covers of the DCnU so far. It also is part of the white cover trend I've noticed. I'll keep you posted on this unreported conspiracy.

There's suddenly a lot I like about this series. It is well written for the most part, with jokes and good dialogue, the mystery is intriguing, and the threat palpable. Definitely a step up from the first book. I highly recommend.

What Happened

If you've noticed I haven't posted in a few weeks, you could possibly be correct. I haven't got bored of comics or writing about them though. My computer just died.

M was working on some homework and went to save a conference application when the computer just froze. I was still half asleep so I reassured her that the computer freezes all the time and it's no big deal, and that it would unfreeze in 2 or 3 minutes. Worse case scenario, I said, it will blue screen of death and you'll just have to restart it. That's like a 1 in 30 chance though.

It blue screened.

M restarted the computer like I had done plenty of times before and she encountered a problem: "No operating system found".

I guess my computer had a bit of an existential crisis and it just couldn't go on as things were. I did keep a good number of philosophical and literary theory articles on there, any combination of which could have easily broken one's soul. Be it a metaphorical computer soul or no.

So long story short, the computer works again. Works being a generous application of the word given the various other idiosyncrasies that plague the computer that lives beyond its time.I couldn't find my Windows 7 product key though, so I'm running Linux Mint, which has provided me with a whole new set of computer challenges. But the takeaway here is that the I have a computer again and I can resume posting.

Just in time too because tomorrow is release day. I have some lingering #2s to pick up and my first set of #3s. Aside from my computer being down it has been some busy times, so I'm looking forward to dropping another fiscally questionable amount of cash on a trip to the shop tomorrow, and then spending the next week catching up on how Superman and Batman have been doing. I bet it has been awkwardly sexual.

If I had to guess, you know.