Despite having a critically acclaimed run under their belt and some miniseries appearances the Suicide Squad – both the concept and publishing property – never really broke out into the mainstream comic consciousness after their run ended in 1992. Which is odd considering that period would soon see the Image revolution and from it a rash of militaristic team books like “Wetworks,” “Team 7,” “WildC.A.T.s” among others. My first real knowledge of the Ostrander-Yale run came from listening to an early episode of The Comic Conspiracy podcast, frequent guest Ryan Scott had written most of the wiki page on the Squad. That wasn’t my first interaction with the Suicide Squad, however, that came much earlier with Justice League Unlimited season 2 episode 4 “Task Force X.” Screenwriter Darwyn Cooke, from a story by Dwayne McDuffie, never writes “Suicide Squad” but it is them. The Squad would have semi frequent animated appearances as part of Warner Bros. Animation direct to video line of DC animated features. First, they would appear in a feature set in the Arkhamverse of games with Batman: Assault on Arkham in 2014. In 2018 they again would be the lead of another animated feature Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, the subject of next weeks column. Even if the Squad never went mainstream prior to their live action appearances on Arrow or on the big screen their frequent animated appearances speak to their cult affinity and symbolic mutability as each show differing directions and degrees the concept of the Suicide Squad can be taken.
Justice League Unlimited “Task Force X” is one of my favorite episodes of this series. It was when I first watched it and has only grown since. You have the tight screenplay by Darwyn Cooke that condenses a heist film into 23 minutes. “Dr. Fight” Joaquim Dos Santos directed this episode that features plenty of his sobriquet, but more importantly the thrills of Hitchcockian suspense. All while flipping the script by shifting the perspective away from the Justice League and instead introducing and defining what is effectively an entirely new cast of characters. (I think Colonel Flag shows up in the background a few more times.) Both Floyd Lawton aka Deadshot and Captain Boomerang aka Digger Harkness had made appearances in the prior Justice League animated series, along with Temple Fugate, a.k.a. The Clock King in the wider DCAU. The expectation that audiences would all recognize these characters however goes against even the strong serialized storytelling Unlimited was built on with appearances coming years apart from one another.
The episode efficiently shades these characters so that they are recognizable as being akin to their comic counterparts but workable in the realm of a children’s television show. Captain Boomerang is willing to cut and run at a moment’s notice, but his xenophobia and misogyny are excised. Floyd Lawton’s death drive are replaced with a charismatic turn by actor Michael Rosenbaum that emphasizes his willingness to work as a hitman. Plastique is given the least to work with, having been turned into a southern belle type.
Framing this episode as a heist allows everything else to flow. Audiences are given just enough information about what it is everyone is expected to do along with a visual layout of the Watchtower. Deadshot and Plastique are the distraction while Flagg and Boomerang secure the package, the Annihilator suit introduced in the first season. It isn’t much but the basics are just enough so that when things go very wrong the tension starts to kick in and the episode becomes a thriller.
Knowing the plan is running behind is part of the episodes thrilling cocktail, another piece is the composition of Task Force X itself. The Suicide Squad has traditionally been the home to B and C list villains, often seemingly coming out of the Silver Age. While the DCAU doesn’t have that history what Unlimited does have is the ongoing conflict between the Justice League and Project Cadmus and the question of who watches the metahuman Watchmen. Other than Colonel Flagg, who is nebulously referred to as not needing weapons, no one on the Task Force displays metahuman abilities. Their costumed villiany and nom de guerre are all born from using and being proficient in specialized technologies like explosives, guns, and boomerangs. Meanwhile the League has Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom, Atom Smasher, on duty along with the Shining Knight and Vigilante. The latter groups metahuman abilities put them at an unspoken class above everyone else. That power disparity is to Cooke and Dos Santos’ advantage as it allows the villains to be positioned as underdogs. They might do something underhanded things like threatening to blow up Atom Smasher, but what else would you have them do in response to such overwhelming force.
Continued belowThe episodes shift in perspective and emphasis on the power disparity also helps to put the truth to Project Cadmus’ fear of the League. Project Cadmus fears the Justice League and metahumans for their unchecked power, what ethical or legal bound are they accountable to? After the Task Force escapes the Justice League begins to clean up and hunt for who helped them resulting in the detention of the unremarkable Vance, the only mind Martian Manhunter could not read. In a frustrated response Manhunter wishes he could just wipe the last two years of memories away from Vance. A huge unchecked ethical breach that is only blocked by the apparent technology Cadmus has given him. But what if they hadn’t and Manhunter did do that? What’s to stop him and other Leaguers from taking those actions in the future. It’s a question of ethics that isn’t too far removed from the concerns raised in Zack Snyder’s first to DC movies, who for all their grandeur were astutely aware of the power these characters wielded unilaterally.
By the end of the episode Task Force X has succeeded both in its mission as well as the larger goal of breaking the trust within the League. “Task Force X” by staging this David vs Goliath heist illustrates the point that Project Cadmus worries are not unfounded.
Batman: Assault on Arkham was directed by Jay Oliva and Ethan Spaulding from a screenplay by Heath Corson. “Task Force X” leaned into the need for efficiency required for its 22-minute limit. Running nearly three times as long, 76 minutes, this feature is nowhere near efficient despite having a similar simple heist setup. Amanda Waller has tasked the Suicide Squad with stealing the Riddler’s back up flash drive. To do that these criminals must break into Arkham Asylum undetected. Meanwhile Batman is prowling around trying to uncover the Joker’s latest plot, his hidden dirty bomb. Despite this simple setup the films screenplay does not lean into either “Task Force X” or Ostrander-Yale’s ability to characterize Task Force X. Assault on Arkham is if anything an exercise in aesthetics and the idea of Suicide Squads inherently disreputable nature. That idea of disrepute turns the film into an exercise of aesthetics taking the posture of boundary pushing work. How the film chooses to define its edge and “push boundaries” reveals more about their limits and what is permissible when it comes to sex and violence.
Arkham does one thing that no Squad based property has shown thus far. It explicitly makes good on Amanda Waller’s threat of a bomb in their neck. First with KGBeast proving Waller’s threat is real and blowing his clean off and later after King Shark’s bomb fails to short circuit. The latter’s death involves the slow expansion of his head not to dissimilar from Fist of the North Star splattering nondescript viscera everywhere. Arkham is a film that wants to be filled with bloodletting and yet fails to materialize it. The majority of the films deaths appear off screen and noticeable dry, as in lacking blood. Arkham comes at an interesting time as DC films a year later like Batman: Bad Blood would get bloodier and keep their PG-13 rating. Which is more a commentary on the sad state of MPAA hypocrisy than anything.
Jean-Luc Godard would say “It’s not blood, it’s red.” The feature may not be able to show red, but it can show skintone. Arkham takes a marked shift toward sexuality and sensuality compared to previously chaste DC animated features. In doing so it reveals more about what is permissible. That the banal, objectifying, displays of the female body are fine. On multiple occasions Harley Quinn, who feels wildly out of character compared to other Arkhamverse material, goes strategically topless. It appears to be played as faux-empowerment, her accessing her feminine wiles to distract and manipulate the men around her but is contextualized by the misogyny surrounds her. The screenplay does nothing to develop her character beyond the cooky “crazy” one who constantly says “Yahtzee.” A similar shock of the female body occurs when Killer Frost is brought to the morgue, nude, in a body bag. The diener is shocked to see her body, despite seeing dead bodies for a living. Her breasts are strategically covered in two quick shots meant to again tell the viewer they’re seeing something more, but not actually show them anything. These moments are comparatively quick against the repeated low angle butt shots the directors go for with various female characters.
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The choice of shot reveals the gender dynamics at play and how one body is up for display in ways others are not. Why go for that perspective in the above image? All it does is obscure the action in the frame, Batman dodging Killer Frosts Mr. Freeze’s gun channeled blast. The phallic nature of Freeze’s gun is already connoted by Frosts inability to lift that big weighty shaft out of its crate. King Shark’s ability to continues his dimwitted hyper sexed characterization. Instead of going for something typical with the gun – for an ironic twist on this see Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok – the directors deny this borrowing of the phallus and instead just plant the viewer staring at Frosts behind as part of a low angle pan. Arkham already shown it could do first person perspective shots well at the beginning of the movie. But those were anonymous male characters.
Batman: Assault on Arkham is a Suicide Squad movie that feels closer to the haphazard New 52 era of the “Squad.” One that was characterized by excess without characterization. Instead of acting as a commentary unethical action leans it leans into postmodern aestheticism to cover for its lack of a core. Some would say it is style without substance. The style is the substance as it reenact historical visual culture misogyny as a compensator for the inability to speak to the death drive.
