The main problem with the Suicide Squad discussion

[sifighter]

Before I say anything else I just want to make one thing known, I do actually like the Suicide Squad. So far I've enjoyed Rob Williams Rebirth series and I'm especially having fun with the Justice League Vs Suicide Squad event. I just want to make that known so nobody thinks I hate the series. However I do have one pretty big complaint that I honestly thought would make for some interesting thoughts or discussion.

Maybe it's just me but I no longer think the book sticks with the premise of the series anymore. The Suicide Squad is supposed to be a team of supervillains who are sent out on missions they are supposed to die in or they get their heads blown up by Waller, but honestly I think the last significant death I can remember for this team was the Reverse Flash. If that wasn't enough it looks like we now have a main core cast that are essentially the faces of the team in Deadshot, Harley, Captain Boomerang, and to an extent El Diablo. Not only have these characters been around for years but they aren't likely to die and in some cases they come back when they do, which kind of flies in the face of what the book is supposed to be about. However I'm not sure what's to be done because you need some of these characters as selling points but you need to be able to sell the book on it premise so that we as readers feel the stake of things.

What are your thoughts and opinions on this.

[Factor]

My main problem with it is that the title used to deal with complex issues and themes under Ostrander, but Williams seems content with writing a dumb superhero book that seems to have nothing to say.
Don't get me wrong. The book can be fun sometimes, but it's also pretty shallow.

[HandofPrometheus]

They lost the meaning and purpose of the team. If DC wanted a superheroey villain book they should've just made a rogues book.

[JackDaw]

That's the general problem with long runs on brand name characters...eventually nobody fully "believes" a fair few of the main storylines anymore. No sane veteran fan really believes any main character is going to permanently die, retire, etc, etc.

For me it's one of the factors that does compromise story telling quality in mainstream super hero comics. There are several! (Good stories can...of course...be told in the medium, but a fair number of the"conventions" do make it more difficult for the writer. It's one reason why mainstream super hero yarns are only a small proportion of what I read nowadays.)

In case of Suicide Squad, deep down think it was a pity anybody else wrote it after John O. But yes...if it does continue...some of the characters ought to be permanently "offed".

[Jenn]

My main problem with it is that the title used to deal with complex issues and themes under Ostrander, but Williams seems content with writing a dumb superhero book that seems to have nothing to say.
Don't get me wrong. The book can be fun sometimes, but it's also pretty shallow.

I agree with this. Even during Ostrander's run, the book was never about sacrificing characters. Sure, it had its fair share of deaths over the years, but not that much when you think about it.

The main problem with Williams though isn't that the characters aren't expendable, but that it feels too much like a regular team book right now. Sure, the main cast is mostly made up of villains, but the general feeling is the same. It's fun, yes, but it doesn't seem to have any deep flavour added to it.

The concept of villains being forced to become heroes is an interesting one, there's a lot of things you can talk about (ethical issues, psychological themes, and so on), but so far Williams hasn't even started to scratch the surface.

[gwangung]

I agree with this. Even during Ostrander's run, the book was never about sacrificing characters. Sure, it had its fair share of deaths over the years, but not that much when you think about it.

The main problem with Williams though isn't that the characters aren't expendable, but that it feels too much like a regular team book right now. Sure, the main cast is mostly made up of villains, but the general feeling is the same. It's fun, yes, but it doesn't seem to have any deep flavour added to it.

The concept of villains being forced to become heroes is an interesting one, there's a lot of things you can talk about (ethical issues, psychological themes, and so on), but so far Williams hasn't even started to scratch the surface.

The other thing was that Amanda Waller was indeed on the side of the angels...barely. The dance between good and evil in a morally grey world is much more interesting when the main character isn't acknowledged to be a sociopath that's just as comfortable with the bad guys as they are with the good guys.

[ducklord]

Maybe it's just me but I no longer think the book sticks with the premise of the series anymore. The Suicide Squad is supposed to be a team of supervillains who are sent out on missions they are supposed to die in or they get their heads blown up by Waller, but honestly I think the last significant death I can remember for this team was the Reverse Flash. If that wasn't enough it looks like we now have a main core cast that are essentially the faces of the team in Deadshot, Harley, Captain Boomerang, and to an extent El Diablo. Not only have these characters been around for years but they aren't likely to die and in some cases they come back when they do, which kind of flies in the face of what the book is supposed to be about. However I'm not sure what's to be done because you need some of these characters as selling points but you need to be able to sell the book on it premise so that we as readers feel the stake of things.

What are your thoughts and opinions on this.

I think you hit one of the many nails on the head when it comes to the new52 incarnation of the Squad.
When the modern "Amanda Waller" version of the Squad was introduced in the late 80's, DC had almost 50 years of lame (and not so lame) super-villains lying around that they could polish up for an issue before killing them off in a spectacular fashion. Monocle. Mr. 104. Slipknot. Mindboggler. Ostrander had a pile of Firestorm creations that he seemed to be particularly gleeful about mowing down. And why not? There were dozens of villains available whose dramatic arcs had run their course who were available for cannon fodder. And when all else failed, you could kill a core member of the cast for an extra kick in the nads.

But with the new 52, the entire DCU had been completely reset. Killing newly-introduced villains seemed like a waste of potential, and worse, it didn't carry any emotional heft. Killing the pre-Flashpoint original Monocle in that Suicide Squad special was a bit of a one-off back in the day, but readers has some emotional connection to him based on how cool he looked in the JLA/JSA crossover that Perez drew. Killing off the Monocle in the New 52 would rate a double-meh, 'cause he'd be an entirely new character, AND a waste of potential material. After all, who's to say that a new 52 Monocle COULDN'T be a rad new villain?

So, the new 52 Suicide Squad was kind of hampered from sticking to its missions statement from the git-go.

It'll be interesting to see if, now that DC is trying to re-insert its deep history back into its continuity, if the Squad goes back to cannon fodder-y roots.

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

The OP's post is, in fact, wrong about the Suicide Squad's original mission statement. It wasn't about sending teams of villains on missions in which their deaths were guaranteed either in the missions' completion or else Waller would blow up the explosive devices on/in the persons of anybody who survived. It was about sending a team of operatives, most of whom were not morally pure goody-goody two-shoes heroes of the likes of Superman or the Silver Age in general, on dangerous and oftentimes morally ambiguous at best missions that traditional teams and super-heroes would or could never touch, on behalf of a government that could be free to deny any connection to them if they failed, died, or were captured. The missions were not guaranteed to result in everybody's deaths, but it was not a guarantee that all participants would survive. And they weren't all bad-ass villains, either. Bronze Tiger, Nemesis, Nightshade, (pre-Vertigo) Shade the Changing Man and others were members who, despite various levels of shades of moral grey, were far more clearly on the side of the Angels than the likes of Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Count Vertigo, etc.

Besides the original characters created for the book, Suicide Squad under John Ostrander excelled at taking characters who were thrown into Limbo and left there, characters with very little to no previous consistent characterization, and characters with sometimes VERY hidden depths under earlier writers, and turning them into three-dimensional, often very messed up, fascinating characters. Sure, there were plenty of times characters were brought in just to be fodder (as anybody who remembers the SS/Doom Patrol special, not written by Ostrander I believe, or the War of the Gods crossover, will tell you), but that helped make the characters who stuck around longer. Even when some characters' stories in the Squad ended, like Duchess/Lashina or Ravan, they were better developed characters at the end than when they first joined.

People tend to forget that it was Ostrander's work on Deadshot in the Squad that made him interesting; prior to that, his most interesting appearance was arguably his half-page entry in the original WHO'S WHO #6. It was also Ostrander and his then-wife Kim Yale who rescued Barbara Gordon from the trash heap she'd been thrown on after THE KILLING JOKE and created the Oracle identity for her in the first place. Not to mention rehabilitating Ben "Bronze Tiger" Turner after he'd been brainwashed into killing (the Earth-One) Batwoman, bringing Tom "Nemesis" Tresser back from the dead, and giving both Nightshade and Vixen a home.

And of course, the Wall herself, Amanda Waller. Arguably the most fascinating character of them all. The only thing worse than leaving her in the hands of writers who preferred to portray her as a black-hatted villain with no moral shades of grey at all was the New 52 transformation of her into a generic, younger, large-breasted, tight-outfitted, sexy super-model of a field agent whose grandmother looked just like her pre-Flashpoint appearance (and was chair-bound, weak, helpless, and unable to say a word or lift a finger in her defense that one time she was brought in just to be a helpless damsel-in-distress. So. Much. Hate.)

The biggest thing damning the Suicide Squad when not written by John Ostrander, IMO, was an article I recently came across that purported to rank the 15 toughest or baddest Suicide Squad members ever....and it was composed of characters all the likes of Bane, King Shark, Killer Croc, etc. All musclebound bodybuilders. Very little to nothing in the areas of brains, intelligence, characterization, or charisma. Fail.

(In the interests of accuracy, it was the Golden Age Thinker, not Monocle, who died in the SS/DP special, and there was at least one letter column response that suggests he was killed off specifically for being a Golden Age villain, or at least a man in his 70's. Was Monocle ever a member of the Squad?)

[sifighter]

You know what that is a fair assessment to make, and was honestly the type of discussion I was hoping for. Truthfully I haven't read Ostrander's run, although it is on the list of 80's material I hope to buy in collection one day. I also didn't mean for it to sound as though I want to see everyone die in every issue of every arc. My complaint was more that the book sells itself that the characters can die at any time but I've felt that the team itself lacks stakes at times because I would say a majority of the team isn't at risk. Presently I don't feel a sense of danger for characters like Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc, or El Diablo because it feels like no matter the situation DC wouldn't risk them and that takes me out of the book a little, especially after what they just did with Boomerang.

[Lee Stone]

The OP's post is, in fact, wrong about the Suicide Squad's original mission statement. It wasn't about sending teams of villains on missions in which their deaths were guaranteed either in the missions' completion or else Waller would blow up the explosive devices on/in the persons of anybody who survived. It was about sending a team of operatives, most of whom were not morally pure goody-goody two-shoes heroes of the likes of Superman or the Silver Age in general, on dangerous and oftentimes morally ambiguous at best missions that traditional teams and super-heroes would or could never touch, on behalf of a government that could be free to deny any connection to them if they failed, died, or were captured. The missions were not guaranteed to result in everybody's deaths, but it was not a guarantee that all participants would survive. And they weren't all bad-ass villains, either. Bronze Tiger, Nemesis, Nightshade, (pre-Vertigo) Shade the Changing Man and others were members who, despite various levels of shades of moral grey, were far more clearly on the side of the Angels than the likes of Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Count Vertigo, etc.

Besides the original characters created for the book, Suicide Squad under John Ostrander excelled at taking characters who were thrown into Limbo and left there, characters with very little to no previous consistent characterization, and characters with sometimes VERY hidden depths under earlier writers, and turning them into three-dimensional, often very messed up, fascinating characters. Sure, there were plenty of times characters were brought in just to be fodder (as anybody who remembers the SS/Doom Patrol special, not written by Ostrander I believe, or the War of the Gods crossover, will tell you), but that helped make the characters who stuck around longer. Even when some characters' stories in the Squad ended, like Duchess/Lashina or Ravan, they were better developed characters at the end than when they first joined.

People tend to forget that it was Ostrander's work on Deadshot in the Squad that made him interesting; prior to that, his most interesting appearance was arguably his half-page entry in the original WHO'S WHO #6. It was also Ostrander and his then-wife Kim Yale who rescued Barbara Gordon from the trash heap she'd been thrown on after THE KILLING JOKE and created the Oracle identity for her in the first place. Not to mention rehabilitating Ben "Bronze Tiger" Turner after he'd been brainwashed into killing (the Earth-One) Batwoman, bringing Tom "Nemesis" Tresser back from the dead, and giving both Nightshade and Vixen a home.

And of course, the Wall herself, Amanda Waller. Arguably the most fascinating character of them all. The only thing worse than leaving her in the hands of writers who preferred to portray her as a black-hatted villain with no moral shades of grey at all was the New 52 transformation of her into a generic, younger, large-breasted, tight-outfitted, sexy super-model of a field agent whose grandmother looked just like her pre-Flashpoint appearance (and was chair-bound, weak, helpless, and unable to say a word or lift a finger in her defense that one time she was brought in just to be a helpless damsel-in-distress. So. Much. Hate.)

The biggest thing damning the Suicide Squad when not written by John Ostrander, IMO, was an article I recently came across that purported to rank the 15 toughest or baddest Suicide Squad members ever....and it was composed of characters all the likes of Bane, King Shark, Killer Croc, etc. All musclebound bodybuilders. Very little to nothing in the areas of brains, intelligence, characterization, or charisma. Fail.

(In the interests of accuracy, it was the Golden Age Thinker, not Monocle, who died in the SS/DP special, and there was at least one letter column response that suggests he was killed off specifically for being a Golden Age villain, or at least a man in his 70's. Was Monocle ever a member of the Squad?)

Pretty much this.

[kcekada]

My main problem with it is that the title used to deal with complex issues and themes under Ostrander, but Williams seems content with writing a dumb superhero book that seems to have nothing to say.
Don't get me wrong. The book can be fun sometimes, but it's also pretty shallow.

Completely agree!