by John
Ostrander (Author)
Publisher: DC Comics
(July 19, 2016)
Softcover, 272
pages
This
was one of those multi-issue crossover stories that strafed across five titles.
The kind we got plenty of in the late eighties and which quickly became
tiresome. The purpose was to boost sales in flagging books, but all it really
achieved, from the standpoint of a reader, was to interrupt the storylines of the
series you were interested in in order to shoehorn in some part of a bullshit
story of which you were only half aware.
That
being said, when the entire collection is put together like this, it makes it
much more palatable to read, but it is still slightly annoying. After all,
you've bought a book about the Suicide Squad and they only appear in about half
the issues. The rest of it is filled with various characters to which I have
only a peripheral knowledge of, or their Pre-Crisis version, or an Elseworlds
version, or whatever. This book collects issues 26 - 30 of Suicide Squad, 15 - 18 of Checkmate,
#14 of Manhunter, #86 of Firestorm, and #30 of Captain Atom (the last one could've been
jettisoned from the pack in my opinion).
A
cold war has erupted between the American intelligence services various
metahuman (DC talk for superhero) teams. People have been killed and secrets
compromised. This results in a lot of back and forth conflicts. One team hits
another. Some people are killed. Lois Lane investigates. Then the real culprit
is revealed and finally defeated. Unlike most crossovers however, this one has
lasting effects for the Suicide Squad.
Like
most Suicide Squad arcs, it is uncertain which characters will survive to see
its end. The team itself is made up of 2nd tier super-villains, all of them
easily expendable. In fact, this series was famous for making wash-up villains
more interesting (Deadshot & Captain Boomerang, are two examples) and
promoting their popularity so much that they had to be written out of the
series.
No comments:
Post a Comment