The read through continues with ‘Apokolips Now’ which contained Suicide Squad #31-39. These issues are available to read with a DC Universe Infinite subscription.
After ‘The Janus Directive’ it appeared that John Ostrander and Kim Yale had setup the Squad up for a new normal as the series moved into its third year of publication. If there has one been one constant to this series, however, it is that it is always changing. Which fits a general mood for this collection of issues as Ostrander-Yale and primarily artists John K. Snyder III and Greg Isherwood render the destructive nature of formerly Task Force X onto itself. The back matter for this collection proclaims in bold lettering “The Wall has Fallen.” Our last page of narrative content sees Amanda Waller in jail for murder (pleaded down to manslaughter). Ben Turner confronts some dark truths about his time has the assassin Bronze Tiger, and everyone becomes a pawn in a game played by dark New Gods. How issue #39 ends has me curious what the mind of a monthly reader was like, they wouldn’t know it then but there is still roughly 30 issues of Ostrander “Squad” to go.
‘Apokolips Now’ is just the “Suicide Squad” after previous volumes increasing interconnectedness. The core mission or arc of the volume is from #33-36 isn’t technically a proper Suicide Squad mission as Lashina sheds her persona as the Duchess and seeks to regain her standing with that hell planet’s ruler Darkseid, by using the Suicide Squad as pawns. While this mission to Apokolips may not have been officially sanctioned it is a Suicide Squad mission in spirit, for what are they if not the unwitting pawns of people who hold power over them. The only difference is this time Amanda Waller gets a taste of her own medicine. The arc does give readers two of my favored covers for this entire run #33 and #34. The former was the basis for this collections cover, which is a dramatic image that emphasizes both the Squad and some new members. The Karl Kesel covers for issue #34 ‘Armagetto’ though is my favorite, with its bold image of Amanda Waller fighting Granny Goodness with an alien trench knife in one hand and assault rifle in the other.
The image of the Suicide Squad battling it out against Granny Goodness, the Female Furies, and other denizens of Apokolips is absurd. Not only are they merely human, but they are also the Suicide Squad; a lethal group that the creative team have consistently characterized as screwups. They should be eaten alive by these Jack Kirby creations if you broke it down into cold Akira Toriyama power ratings. The creative team, like Toriyama and Jack Kirby, understand though it’s about how you choreograph and narrativize the fight than cold tales of the tape. By confronting this allegorical fascism – for that is what Darkseid and Apokolips are, they are not just mundane evil they are fascism – Ostrander-Yale confront the structures that allow a thing like the Suicide Squad to exist and remove any sort of JLI “haha” varnish that remained. By juxtaposing the two together, the comparison isn’t great. Their scale of evil is so petty. The minor victories that Count Vertigo achieves are small, intimate, compared to the various large panel displays of destruction and hardship the Squad faces overall.
Luke McDonell has been the primary line artist for this series. He gave the book a plainly readable and clean aesthetic with some very artistic title pages. McDonnell is mostly absent from this set of issues credited with layouts for #35 and 38. The line art is primarily done by John K. Snyder III, who previously inked and did other work in the previous collection, and inker Geof Isherwood. Together they create a harsher more cartooned aesthetic to the book that is counter to previous one. This new style is an abrupt and extreme shift, but one that fits the decaying ugliness that is being revealed.
Isherwood’s inking style doesn’t seem to match up with McDonell’s pencils, or how inker Karl Kesel treated them previously, when they are paired together for #35. The cover to that issue is classic McDonell-Kesel, as Lashina stands victorious atop the bodies of the Squad and Bernadeth. The inking is clean with a fair number of spotted blacks creating an enticing and across the room readable cover. The inking by Isherwood in this issue reads as inconsistent or as if McDonnell (or Kesel) inked certain pages themselves and Isherwood did others. The opening trio of pages do their best to keep to McDonell’s style. The splash page feels like an attempt to channel Jack Kirby’s cartooning sensibilities more than anything. By the next page, however, it all goes out the window with a cartoonishly grotesque close up of Captain Boomerang, his face is pock marked in ink, the noodling line work of an obsessive. As the perspective pulls back though Isherwood uses thicker line weights that actively reduce but keep that same obsessive energy. But then you have the next three pages (5-7) and the inking is clean and subtle as Barda and Stompa battle it out. As varied the inking in this issue is, McDonell’s page design ably carries the flow of the action, in particular the Waller-Goodness mirroring on pages 9 and 10.
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In general Isherwood attacks everything with a thicker and more jagged line. Snyder’s layouts have hero moments and other typical framing, Isherwood’s inking for lack of a better term often uglifies it by denying cleanliness. Together their work reminds me of Michel Fiffe’s work in “Copra” (which is perhaps the best “Suicide Squad” series since this Ostrander run) or “Bloodstrike: Brutalists.” In particular page 16 of #36 or 144 overall, the way colorist Carl Gafford renders panels against simple solid colors in contrast to the heavy blacks of Isherwood feels like something Fiffe would do. Although Fiffe’s style overall is reads as more an active exercise in bricolage. This aesthetic choice can also be seen in the collections first issue #31, another “Personal File” focusing on Father Richard Craemer.
The aesthetic of this collection is rarely stable, always threatening to degrade as the narrative pushes the Suicide Squad deeper and deeper. That doesn’t stop Ostrander and Yale from still having a degree of comedy to the book. Doctor Arthur Light is somehow worse than Captain Boomerang. The latter is a raging racist and misogynist, but he still gets things done. The writing team consistently characterize Light through his inability to act, his feelings of inadequacy and fear of children. Which says something about the series view of masculinity that it allows someone like Boomerang to be considered “better” because he becomes violent vs. Light’s status as a timid dweeb. In Doctor Light’s defense, he is also being haunted, which comes to a ahead after Light’s victim the original Doctor Light, Jacob Finlay, goads him into trying to be a hero only to see himself unceremoniously killed. Much to the glee of Finaly who revealed it was all a ploy by him so that he can now rest in peace in heaven “where I belong.” But there lies the real dark comedy of “Squad” Finaly isn’t going to Heaven “Vengeful people who get other people killed don’t go to heaven, Jacob. Especially vengeful dead people.” One ghostly Doctor Light says to the other. This page acts as a strange interlude that serves as an excuse for the creative team to just riff on the Devil being bored in Hell at the pettiness he has been reduced to. They also finally reveal who has been the mysterious pie thrower is. It’s an exercise in allowing the reader to catch their breath and distract from the trauma of the previous issues. Interestingly in this sequence, the Snyder-Isherwood line work feels closer to comix and underground work at the time as everyone becomes rendered in this jagged ugly cartoon.
Where this aesthetic doesn’t work is when the writing team lay their cards down to deal with the Loa thread that has been dangling. The Loa have cornered the drug market and are using it to convert users into a zombi like army. Everything from the writing to the art is shot through with stereotypical depictions rooted in African American and West Indian iconography that is racist. Luke McDonnell’s depictions in previous issues are similarly rooted in that history of American mass media representation of African American and West Indian culture due to Ostrander and Yale’s scripting, however, the cleaner more realistic figure work lessened it to a degree. In issue #38 there is a monstrous quality to the Black characters that has not aged well to say the least.
That particular plot also sees the Suicide Squad shut down, again, after Waller’s continued involvement is reported in the press. Left with nothing to lose she gets together the Squad for one last “mission” to take out the Loa, whom she personally executes along with Deadshot. The Suicide Squad, Amanda Waller, everything is rendered for what it has always been at its core. The Suicide Squad is a vigilante group, with the racial historical association of vigilante justice fully on display, that was-is an arm to to the Governments at best militaristic and at worst fascist impulses.
Ostrander and Yale have deconstructed the Squad, and that’s just about the halfway point of their run.
Status Report
- New Members: Poison Ivy
- KIA: Flo Crowley, Doctor Light (Arthur Light), Brisoce (and his helicopter Sheba)
