Suicide Squad (The New 52) Volume 1: Kicked In The Teeth by Adam Glass, Federico Dallocchio and Clayton Henry (graphic novel review).
I blame The New 52 Justice League. With the hint of the Suicide Squad there and the bickering the Justice League has amongst its own members, Task Force X can’t get much worse, can they? Recruitment is still tough. You need a criminal record, be in Belle Reve Prison, and withstand torture. Only the toughest of the tough, and the current squad only has six members, each with a micro-bomb in their neck to ensure obedience, are doing what they normally do, except for the government under the orders of Amanda Waller. Hardly surprising, the films are based on them. The team consists of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, El Diablo, Voltaic, Black Spider and King Shark although, without going into spoilers, don’t expect this to last. This opener graphic novel, ‘Suicide Squad (The New 52) Volume 1: Kicked In The Teeth’, contains the first seven issues of the original comicbook.
In many respects, there isn’t much difference between this version and other reality versions, mostly, I suspect, because they are always villains, and being a little more vicious would make it hard to tell any difference. I’m going to speak in general terms here because so much is a spoiler. A lot of the tasks Waller sends the squad on are supposed to be below the public eye, but when an entire stadium of 60,000 people turns zombie, you do have to wonder if the Justice League’s computer is on the blink and not spotting it. Even if Waller tampered with their computers or even Cyborg, surely they might have picked up something in the news media later. The same is true when they go to Batman’s home turf. Then again, working out where the Justice League is compared to these events is hard to say.
As the New 52 didn’t last more than a few years, this is a finite series and, in the order of the Justice League, is almost like what if an earlier version of Marvel had written it with no holds barred.
GF Willmetts
February 2024
(pub: DC Comics, 2012. 160 page graphic novel softcover. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-1-4012-3544-4)
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