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A review by luana420
Suicide Squad, Volume 1: Trial By Fire by John Ostrander
4.0
COMICS!
So I read the collection "Suicide Squad: The Silver Age" first as a lark, right? It was a bit of a slog but sure, some laffs were had.
I start on this collection (the Suicide Squad as it is basically known in pop culture today, with the supervillains working off their sentences) and there's a little issue of Secret Origins, which recounts the WWII teams and the 60s teams, making the two Rick Flags in those father and son rather than the same guy. They ALSO reveal that the 60s team disbanded after an ill-fated Himalaya mission that for some reason was not shown in the "Silver Age" collection. They ALSO ALSO reveal that this Squad had already run at least one mission that... you can read about in the LEGENDS miniseries, the first company-wide cross-over since the first Crisis.
Man, fuck you, comics!
To Ostrander's credit, you're mostly kept up to speed with everything you need to follow the plot, though I have to say that this guy Nemesis is real vague and I'm not really hooked on whatever his deal is. Vigilante with a guilt trip because...?
Boomerang's a real piece of shit which is amusing considering he's one of the Flash rogues who are supposed to be pretty innocent in the scheme of things. He's also a champ at calling women "bikes" which I assume is the female equivalent of a cleaned-up homophobic slur that we usually get in the form of "maggot".
Ostrander quite slyly pays homage to the WWII adventures of misfits on Dinosaur Island with Flag and Deadshot being the two guys who hate each other's guts, as would usually be the dynamic in those stories. There's even one moment where Flag pulls a gun on DS and goes "You better not miss, Lawton... cuz I sure as hell won't...", an exchange that happened about 10,000x an issue in the WWII books.
Deadshot is probably the biggest surprise cool guy character in this book, as I normally switch from comic book to prose book in my reading habits, but I figured why the hell not and give Deadshot's origin mini a go. Oughta tell ya how much I enjoyed this!
Hilarious detail: although this is a pre-Harley Squad, we are introduced to a cute blonde bespectacled psychiatrist called Marnie who gets emotionally involved with the supervillain she's treating. Did Paul Dini read this book?
So I read the collection "Suicide Squad: The Silver Age" first as a lark, right? It was a bit of a slog but sure, some laffs were had.
I start on this collection (the Suicide Squad as it is basically known in pop culture today, with the supervillains working off their sentences) and there's a little issue of Secret Origins, which recounts the WWII teams and the 60s teams, making the two Rick Flags in those father and son rather than the same guy. They ALSO reveal that the 60s team disbanded after an ill-fated Himalaya mission that for some reason was not shown in the "Silver Age" collection. They ALSO ALSO reveal that this Squad had already run at least one mission that... you can read about in the LEGENDS miniseries, the first company-wide cross-over since the first Crisis.
Man, fuck you, comics!
To Ostrander's credit, you're mostly kept up to speed with everything you need to follow the plot, though I have to say that this guy Nemesis is real vague and I'm not really hooked on whatever his deal is. Vigilante with a guilt trip because...?
Boomerang's a real piece of shit which is amusing considering he's one of the Flash rogues who are supposed to be pretty innocent in the scheme of things. He's also a champ at calling women "bikes" which I assume is the female equivalent of a cleaned-up homophobic slur that we usually get in the form of "maggot".
Ostrander quite slyly pays homage to the WWII adventures of misfits on Dinosaur Island with Flag and Deadshot being the two guys who hate each other's guts, as would usually be the dynamic in those stories. There's even one moment where Flag pulls a gun on DS and goes "You better not miss, Lawton... cuz I sure as hell won't...", an exchange that happened about 10,000x an issue in the WWII books.
Deadshot is probably the biggest surprise cool guy character in this book, as I normally switch from comic book to prose book in my reading habits, but I figured why the hell not and give Deadshot's origin mini a go. Oughta tell ya how much I enjoyed this!
Hilarious detail: although this is a pre-Harley Squad, we are introduced to a cute blonde bespectacled psychiatrist called Marnie who gets emotionally involved with the supervillain she's treating. Did Paul Dini read this book?