One of my difficulties in getting into DC Comics (and when I worked at a comic shop and had free reign with my pull list, believe me, I tried) is that the collection of villains faced by guys like the Flash, Green Lantern and Green Arrow are often, well, boring. Even Batman has some rogues that were just impossible for me to get into, as they had, in my estimation, no real purpose. A guy like the Penguin, for example. Great in the old TV show. Great in Batman Returns. Terrible in the comics, where he was a nightclub owner who may or may not have been running guns, who may or may not have been a good source of wisdom. Too often, a member of the Bat Family would drop in on his club, beat up Penguin until he squawked, and that’d be it. Deadshot, one of the main characters of Suicide Squad has kind of the same problem. He’s an assassin, and that’s it. You pay him, he shoots people, he moves on. Oh sure, he’s a talented assassin, and he only misses if Batman screws up his shot, but if you think about the number of superheroes and supervillains in the DC universe…there’ve got to be HUNDREDS of guys just like Deadshot out there, making a pretty good living despite the fact that they’re not dressed in some snazzy armor or carrying a wrist gauntlet gun. What’s so exciting about that?
The Suicide Squad, as created by John Ostrander, has a way of re-contextualizing these villains. Taken from their cells by a secret government agency and fitted with a tiny bomb that will blow up if they disobey orders or drop off the grid, the men and women who make up the team of ex-cons are sent to do some of the DCU’s more ruthless tasks–at the end of this issue, for instance, they’re sent on a mission to attack an NFL-sized stadium with some 60,000 people inside. Not only does it give a nobody like King Shark something to do with his life beyond biting the arms off of passers-by, it gives dudes like Deadshot something to fight for–not only will the agency kill him if he screws up, but they know his secrets and can hurt him that way, too. (more…)