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.