A Better Bullet To The Head: Suicide Squad #17 Review

Am I the only one having fun here, boys?

– Harley Quinn

That’s the first line of Suicide Squad #17, and it’s pretty much a complete review in and of itself.

This is not the smartest comic you will read this week. It is not the finest attempt at visual narrative aspiring toward classic literature that you are ever going to see. It doesn’t have the most intricate plot – hell, it doesn’t have much plot, period. And with the exception of two panels for Harley and some backstory for Yo-Yo, the closest thing this comic has to character development is the establishment that Harley’ll let you suck her toes if you kill someone for her. So if you’re looking for some kind of high-falutin’ example of comics as the entertainment of choice for the discerning sophisticate, this is not the book for you.

However, if you are looking for non-stop, balls-out violent and gory super villain action, with entertaining repartee and a few damn good jokes? Suicide Squad #17 is about the best three bucks you can spend this week.

Amanda Waller has sent the Squad to the headquarters of Red Orchid, Yo-Yo’s sister with plant-based poison powers, in China to retrieve some unknown “package.” The package is being held in the penthouse level of the headquarters, and the Squad needs to fight their way from the ground floor up to get to it. In between here and there are ninjas of various shapes, sizes and flavors (literally – King Shark’s on the team).

As far as plot summaries go, that’s really kind of it. The entire issue is the Suicide Squad fighting their way through the building and its ninjas, from your standard tattooed, suit-wearing Yakuza-looking types, to schoolgirl-looking knockoffs of Gogo from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Sure, there’s a couple, three page flashback that establishes Yo-Yo’s and Red Orchid’s origins, but most of the issue is just the Squad tuning up ninjas.

But it’s what writer Adam Glass does with that simple structure that makes the issue so damn entertaining. First of all, there is the implicit acknowledgment that the Squad is comprised of supervillains, and therefore when it comes to fighting ninjas, they don’t have to – or want to – follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules. The battle up the skyscraper is loaded with sequences of Deadshot shooting guys in the face, Harley bashing open heads with her sledgehammer, and King Shark, well, ripping people apart and eating them (the sequence where Shark gleefully growls, “Dim sum!” was delightfully funny. Mildly racist, yet funny). This issue is packed front to back with extreme cartoony violence and interesting kills. If your tastes run that way (and, on occasion, mine do), there’s a lot here to keep you entertained.

And the dialogue in this issue is just fun. At this point, this team has been working together for a year and a half, and in this situation, where they are fighting opponents that are generally vastly inferior to the Squad, they have plenty of time and energy to shoot the shit back and forth while killing a bunch of guys. As we go through the battle, we get comments like:

Okay, I’m starting to get bored here! I thought being part of a secret government black ops group full of villains would be funnier than this,

and, as the team rides an elevator toward their objective and listens to the Musak:

Deadshot: Oh, c’mon. Is nothing sacred?

King Shark: I feel sick.

Harley: Poor Kurt Cobain.

While is issue isn’t a wall-to-wall larf riot, there’s enough entertaining repartee here to keep things light and fun, even as the body count reaches what seems to be the triple-digits.

Henrik Jonsson’s art is a generally good match for the book, if not a style I usually like. In general, he works in a fine line, with angular faces and figures, and enough fine detail crosshatching to be able to play tic-tac-toe on just about any character’s face in any given closeup panel. Normally, this kind of detail work turns me off, but where his art really felt appropriate was in the extreme violence of the book, which is, in fact, not as detailed as it could be. There is a matter-of-fact quality to the violence in this art; where Jonsson could amp up the gore and linger on the blood and guts, instead he just treats it as part of the general tableau. So this is an issue with decapitations, cannibalism, bullets to the face and exploding eyeballs, but it’s not nearly as shocking or disgusting as it could be, as Jonsson just seems to treat it as part of the background. It’s actually a pretty impressive accomplishment, and when you combine all this with pretty clear storytelling and action sequences, and I’m willing to forgive the heavy hand with the fine detail lines.

Suicide Squad #17 isn’t going to make you any smarter. It’s not going to make you introspective, and being seen reading it won’t make the librarian type of girl horny for you. But what is is going to do is entertain you. This is simply an issue of almost wall-to-wall action, with enough casual violence to satisfy everyone from a regular superhero fan to a Fangoria nut, and a lot of fun and funny dialogue. This is an old fashioned Stuff Explodes And Dudes Get Kicked comic, one that’s full of fun and which doesn’t take itself all that seriously. It ain’t fine art, but it’s a blast to read. Give it a shot.