Warning: Spoilers for Suicide Squad #3!
The good folks over at DC Comics are finally letting the Hollywood invests hundreds of millions of dollars into characters—no matter how obscure they were in the original comics—they become set in stone, for better or for worse.
Suicide Squad isn’t the first series to fall into the trap of sticking to what worked in the movies. Fans notably got a taste of this phenomenon in 2014 when Marvel Studios and Disney released which heavily features the Suicide Squad, the team includes: Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc, and Harley Quinn. That is, until Robbie Thompson and Eduardo Pansica took over the Suicide Squad series this year.
Part of what makes the Suicide Squad so novel and exciting is the absolute disposability of its . With any other series, readers expect that most if not all characters—especially core heroes and villains—are immune to lasting damage. When the Suicide Squad became hamstrung to sticking with popular and recognizable supervillains they lost that special quality that made the book standout. Take Harley Quinn for example, there’s no way anything could happen to such a valuable character. It’s inconceivable that she could even be injured seriously enough to sit out a few issues. Now that Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Killer Croc, and Rick Flag are more mainstream thanks to the film franchise, their cachet to pull in new readers have increased—not to the same extent as Quinn of course, but still. These characters might as well not be implanted with neck-bombs at all, now that the fans and even the characters themselves are aware that they’ll never be used. The end result is that the very title of the book completely loses its meaning.
The freedom of the new series has allowed for the creative team to throw in some surprising twists along the way, the most notable being Superboy’s recruitment and grooming to eventually lead the squad. Meanwhile, stable leader Rick Flag has been tossed aside in favor of Peacemaker. This plot point may not have been praised by all, but it certainly showcases the kind of risks Thompson and Pansica are allowed to take. With characters perishing in every issue, the team is consequently more vulnerable than it was before. The end result of these changes is a fresher, more engaging storyline.
Big publishers like DC Comics have good financial reasons for synergizing their comic book, film, and television universes in this way. In the case of the Suicide Squad however, it detracted from the overall draw of the comic book. Thankfully, the DCEU is undergoing a significant rebranding phase and the latest film adaptation, coincidentally helmed by James Gunn, is keen to embrace what makes the source material so great.
