Customer Reviews

Suicide Squad: From the Ashes

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John Ostrander's 80 run on the Suicide Squad was ground-breaking in it's use of realistic story lines and dark characters. When the Suicide Squad went on a mission people died. The foes were just as likely to be drug lords or terrorists as aliens or supervillains.

But more than the body count or politics, the series worked because the characters were very well realized and did not fit into comic book cliches. Two of the best were the squad's leader Amanda Waller - an angry black woman willing to do anything to accomplish her goals - and Rick Flag Jr - a straight arrow soldier trying to live up to the shadow of his WWII hero father.

Eventually Flag snapped and apparently died in a suicide mission. His death was one of the milestones of the title and a sign that no one, not even the apparent hero of the book was safe.

So I was quite leery when I heard Ostrander was returning to the squad AND bringing back Rick Flag.

But it works. And well.

There is some fudging. The 80s Suicide Squad was grounded in late-80s politics but most comic books are set in the present so their adventures now happened '5 years ago'. While Rick Flag the son of a WWII hero made sense in the 80s, in the 00s he is now Rick Flag III, a grandson. And the way Flag is returned relies on the sort of plot twist that only works in comics. It involves dinosaurs and a hot sorceress.

But once Flag is back and sparring with Waller it feels like old times. A team of mismatched, barely-controlled villains is assembled to lead an attack on a thinly-veiled version of Halliburton (including an evil boss apparently modeled on Dick Cheney). Things go disastrously wrong, with double crosses and triple crosses, people die and the survivors limp home.

Under Javier Pina's pencils the Squad has rarely looked better.

If you're a fan of the 80's version of the Squad or have always wondered what the fuss was about you should pick this up!

This is a great comic. The storyline is really well thought out. I loved every second of it. Highly recommended.