This issue, I decided that the only character I like is King Shark. Mostly because he only gets two words per issue, and they only have to do with eating things/people.
The cover this time around is mostly inoffensive, but absolutely atrocious. Every inch of his body is rippling with muscles, probably in an attempt to stop him from falling over backwards in an attempt to keep that ridiculous pose.
It also kind of looks like the Squad is falling from the moon for whatever reason.
We’re dropped into the first page without context again. I would assume that the disembodied hand is important considering the unnecessarily massive size of its containment jar, but I have no idea where it’s from (or rather who) and thus, no idea why it would be important. I can hazard a guess that it might be from Resurrection Man (presumably chainsawed into pieces at the end of last issue), but someone must have made some sort of blood pact never to talk about Resurrection Man again because we never get any sort closure on that mission or why Waller wanted him captured. (Or if they even managed to find a way to successfully detain him.)
On the other hand (HA!), I may just be reading into this and in all actuality Waller just keeps a disembodied hand in a gigantic jar in her office to stroke. Why not.
She’s talking to Deadshot, who is upset that she didn’t feel the necessity for a mission briefing prior to deployment. The only sound suggestion in the entirety of this comic is met with an “I don’t give a shit” from Waller who has failed to show any interest in helping this team succeed in anything before, so why should she start now. I remain suspicious that she’s intentionally sabotaging her own project.
When he back-sasses her, she exposits (AGAIN FUCKING AGAIN) about the nano-bomb in his neck and “YOU BEST DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD BOY” and pause!
I just want to seriously say here how sad it is that Waller’s control, loose that it is, has been completely downsized to threats we as readers know are basically empty. She shouldn’t need remind her team constantly about the stupid bombs—they should be afraid of her, not the threat of decapitation. (Well, maybe that too but.) Her threats have the effect of a whiny kitten, and it gets harder and harder to take her seriously when you know she barely has a handle on Deadshot and the others anyway. (Which is pretty remarkable considering how actually compliant they are in general for psychopathic criminals.) She reminds me of my mom yelling at my little brother to do his work before she takes his computer away. It’s the threat she always uses, but she can’t go through with it because he needs the computer to work.
Waller, you used to command a presence. Look what they’ve done to you.
That’s really fucking depressing, let’s move on. I spent longer than usual figuring out this page because at first I questioned why Deadshot’s dialog would be broken up into “I’m sick of being in the—“
“DARK”
He breaks off because suddenly he’s falling down a shaft that he didn’t notice because it was dark? But then, all of his squad members appear to be falling beneath him, implying they all fell into the hole first. While the Squad is pretty intellectually challenged, they aren’t lemmings.
Oh, oh, they’re climbing. Icicle or whatever his name is plays the voice of the reader.
It’s played for humor but he’s fucking right
Why are they making this more difficult for themselves?! There’s nothing in the writing so far that implies they shouldn’t. Harley appears on the next page, already at the floor they were trying to reach, implying that they probably could have taken the stairs.
[freaky deaky]
Her role on the next page is to look stoned (who the fuck says “freaky deaky”) and lick Deadshot’s…mask. Despite being mid-toss, she calmly delivers another groanworthy line about having a split personality I HATE YOU GLASS.
God that is so clichéd it hurts. I feel like I’m reading a bad 80’s psychological “thriller.”
Waller calls her Bo-Bo the Clown (no) and tells them to get the fuck to the plot already jeezus. The plot (“plot”) is lime green and holding a bunch of corporate execs hostage. The dialog boxes inform us that he’s a member of Hydra Basilisk, and is presumably very upset that his uniform looks like it was designed by a third grader.
I don’t know what he’s complaining about when there are characters like Harley running around.
Actually, I lied. His motives are completely unclear because apparently he is just standing around with some guns waiting for the Suicide Squad to show up. Also then there is a panel that is just Ronald Reagan’s face???
Only when they have this green guy in their sights does Waller explain what they’re even doing there, which is capturing the Basilisk agent alive. “Be quick and quiet” she says for no goddamn reason because Harley waltzes in there with an actual pizza box that I GUESS SHE JUST PULLED OUT HER ASS
IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY?
WHY
WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THAT
In a terrible scene transition, Lime Green is suddenly holding a gun to J. Jonah Jameson’s head.
Deadshot bursts in and kills not only JJ but every single hostage
I was at a loss for words here because why
His excuse is that the dossiers Waller sent them a few minutes ago documented every terrible thing these execs had done, and they deserved it but
Why
Why would he waste ammo and time killing these people
He also implies that now there’s nobody left for Lime Green to take hostage, but if you don’t care if they live or die anyway, WHY
Also apparently Lime Green’s name is actually Tyler Reese, which sounds like Tyreese if you say it really fast. And El Diablo peppers his speech with Spanish because nothing is more threatening than using the word “pero” in a fight because that’s not awkward and stilted at all.
Am I the only one hearing all of El Diablo’s dialogue in a really terrible high school level Spanish accent?
Tyreese pulls a real bodice-ripper pose, exposing that he’s got a bomb that he hasn’t detonated yet because
Harley’s part Harleen now, so she delivers a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, and I have no idea how Glass keeps making me hate her character more. Then Tyreese offers the squad a job with Basilisk?! WHY!? HOW DOES THAT—
WHY WOULD—
Oh my fucking god
And in the span of two panels Icicle moves completely unnoticed from here
to DIRECTLY BEHIND TYREESE, where he makes an ice pun
Holy shit and it’s not even a good one. “Chill with that” is not a phrase that English speakers use. It just isn’t.
(This only supports my “ESL Adam Glass” theory.)
For some reason that disables the bomb and yadda yadda, Tyreese is incapacitated, King Shark wants to eat him because that’s all King Shark does, they pull a tooth out of his head with their bare hands. (Cyanide, you know how it is.)
Apparently the characters have known the plot all along and consciously decided to keep it to themselves until now because finally we get some idea of their current goal: they want to find the leader of Basilisk and hope Tyreese will lead them there. Deadshot seems skeptical that they have a leader, Regulus. (Why…?)
Black Spider then proves Regulus’ existence with an anecdotal flashback about getting beaten up in a sewer. It’s not readily apparent how the hell any of it relates to Regulus until I figured out that Adam Glass didn’t actually name a super powered blob “DEATH.”
Look Glass, your writing is stupid that naming a character death wouldn’t even faze me. Why doesn’t he say “YOUR death”? If he’s the leader of Basilisk, why is he running around killing drug dealers in sewers???
Black Spider thinks Tyreese is being used as a distraction, so he wants King Shark to eat him instead of delivering him to Waller, rendering the entire mission pointless. I swear, Adam Glass either only half thinks these things through, or he has extremely sophisticated logic that he forgets to inform the rest of us of.
Either way, King Shark is dancing around with schoolgirl-like glee.
Waller also displays staggering logic by telling Deadshot, who is ordering Black Spider not to let King Shark eat Tyreese, to “STAND DOWN” and deliver “the package.” DOES THIS BOOK EVEN HAVE AN EDITOR
Also Yo-Yo’s back and half his face has been digested.
He doesn’t immediately kill Waller, but I can’t figure out why. Apparently he lived in King Shark’s intestine for a month (with no explanation as to why he didn’t escape sooner) and THIS WAS WALLER’S PLAN ALL ALONG
to
test his survival skills or something?
If they wanted to prove he’s indestructible, there was probably a better way of doing it. Like shooting him.
Also now that she’s answered his questions, there’s really no reason why he wouldn’t kill her.
Meanwhile, the Suicide Squad displays their incompetence gloriously because Tyreese has managed to get poisoned anyway without anyone noticing.
HOW ARE YOU ALL SO BAD AT YOUR JOBS
