Suicide Squad #6 – Review

By: Adam Glass (writer), Clayton Henry (artist), Scott Hanna (inker), Vale Staples & Hi-Fi (colorists)

The Story: If any couple deserves the tag of “Crazy Love,” these two do.

The Review: As a rule, I have no hesitation in jumping into the middle of a series with little to no context whatsoever.  In fact, it’s often more useful to judge a series’ merits that way; right off the bat you can tell how consistently solid it is without the help of strong starts, big finishes, or hype to move it along.  That’s how I got hooked onto Cougar Town, strangely enough—once I saw Andy doing a Shawshank Redemption homage in a pool, I knew I’d be in for the long haul.

Actually, the Shawshank reference is quite apt in this case considering all the jailbreak elements we’re dealing with here.  But returning to my point, I jumped into Suicide Squad quite easily, and even in this issue, it’s not at all difficult to follow the general plotline.  What really threw me off were all the constant references to earlier issues or events from other titles, including Detective Comics, Green Arrow, and Stormwatch.  It just got a little distracting at certain points, and there were definitely moments where I felt like I was missing some necessary exposition.

Those minor wrinkles aside, the issue as a whole has a rhythm that’s very easy to fall into.  In contrast to the more sober tone the Squad has when Diablo and Black Spider hang around, the presence of Lime and Light (aptly nicknamed by Deadshot as “the Twitter Twins,” as they tend to talk in meaningless blurbs) and Savant bring some lightness to the proceedings.  I especially appreciate Savant’s attempt to cover up his mis-shot by falling back on, “…I know.  I like to play with my food before I kill it,” to which Deadshot merely replies, “Idiot.”

Naturally, since we have a Harley Quinn-centric story on our hands, most of the humor comes from her, albeit one of a very black hue.  Glass has the rather daunting task of showing us the origins of Harley’s romance with Joker, and not only that, but selling it to us as credible.  For the most part, he succeeds.