So, Suicide Squad
is on the way and we’re starting to get a pretty good idea of what to
expect. After the unmitigated
disaster that was Batman v. Superman
following up a 2 year silence in the wake of Man of Steel’s soft landing with audiences, DC/WB really need a big
hit with Suicide Squad if they’re to
remain a solvent business going into the tail end of this decade.
As such, Suicide Squad seems to be trying to pull off an incredibly tricky
double act of existing within/expanding the established DC cinematic universe
of Man of Steel/Batman v. Superman
while also trying to add serious amounts of personality and levity to one of
the grimmest worlds in cinema today.
We’ll see if it actually pulls that ambitious goal off in
the end but for now I figured I’d give you a guide to the various members of
this cinematic Suicide Squad, owing
to how little we’ve learned about them from the trailers. The only folks I won’t be covering are
Harley Quinn and the Joker as I suspect they’ve been around long enough and visible
enough for everyone to already know what their deal is.
AMANDA WALLER
Meet the head of the Suicide Squad and one of the most
badass women in all of comic books: Amanda Waller, affectionately nicknamed The
Wall. If Storm is the first word
on women of color in superhero comics Amanda Waller is the last word, she’s a
government head of security and leader of the squad. The entire concept of using super villains as disposable wet
work black ops teams was her idea.
She got the funding, chose the members, and runs every mission, even
moving out into the field on occasion to actual get into the action. She’s a powerful political mover and
shaker and a deadly tactician who’s completely detached and ruthless. She doesn’t have the luxury of optimism
or believing in a happy ending, her job is to prepare for the worst no matter
what and be ready when it hits.
What makes that more than just a cliché is that she’s also
someone who genuinely believes in a lot of the things she plotting
against. She’s the kind of lady
who thinks Superman is a good and necessary force but maintains a multitude of
contingency plans to take him down if that’s ever needed. Similarly, even though she worked out
Batman’s secret identity she doesn’t shut him down because she feels he’s
actually doing good, she just needs his identity as insurance. She’s a great, morally complicated and
well written woman of color holding a rare position of power in a medium where
they’re sorely under represented.
DEADSHOT
Get ready for some weird history on this one. Deadshot was originally a Batman
villain who looked nothing like he does here. His original costume wasn’t really a costume at all but
rather a Victorian Gentleman’s garb as he was conceived as a weird
quasi-opposite to Batman. Real
name Floyd Lawton, the original Deadshot was a rich dandy who used his money to
hunt Gotham’s citizens with antique gunpowder weapons.
This idea got scrapped pretty quickly
but the Deadshot name and secret identity were later revived for with a new costume
and MO. This new Deadshot became
the modern incarnation of the character and his most iconic version. Here, he featured hand mounted assault
guns, a full-face mask with a target scope, and boasted of being the world’s
deadliest assassin.
Deadshot was still a Batman villain at the time and remained
strictly D-list before he got scooped up along with a bunch of other lower tier
villains in 1987 to be part of the Suicide Squad. That role catapulted him to the villain B-list and earned
him a ton of adaptations. He
appeared in the Bruce Timm Justice League show, on Smallville, in Arrow, and
in Batman Begins spin-off animated
film Gotham Knight.
RICK FLAG JR.
Rick Flag Jr. is one of the stranger characters on the
Suicide Squad, not because his functional identity is bizarre but rather
because his origin is intertwined with the teams in a meta way. See, though the idea of putting a bunch
of super villains together into a team for black ops purposes didn’t pop up
till 1987, the idea of a team of experts going on high risk missions and
nicknaming themselves the Suicide Squad had already existed as a DC comic in
the late ‘50s.
This Suicide Squad
was a team of normal people who went on weird adventures to dinosaur island and
other bizrre parts of the DC universe that would be folded into the main comics
later on. The team didn’t last
long, about 7 issues total, but when author John Ostrander chose to reboot the
comic in 1987 he decided to pay homage to the original team and title by
casting the son of the original team leader as a main character, hence: Rick
Flag Jr.
Rick Flag Jr. is the Suicide Squad’s in-field good guy. He’s the core team member with a moral
compass and a desire to serve his country, essentially making him Waller’s
eyes, ears, and gun in the field.
He’s there to keep everyone in check and keep the mission running
smoothly. In the comics this role
is usually split between him and Bronze Tiger, a black martial artist, but
Tiger didn’t make the cut for the film.
There are a few other heroes on the squad but for the most part Flag is
the rational leader and one person Amanda Waller can definitely count on.
CAPTAIN BOOMERANG
Oh Captain Boomerang, you’re always such a delight. Originating as a Flash villain, Captain
Boomerang is one of the many bizarre ways Flash writers came up with to try and
fight a guy with super speed. In
Boomerang’s case, the idea was that because his deadly boomerang weapons would
return to him they’d catch Flash off guard from behind.
It was a junky notion then and even
junkier by the mid ‘80s when they decided to throw him to team Suicide
Squad. Boomerang’s dopey gimmick
and Australianness (sorry Australia) make him a damn funny comedic relief
character, although he can often break out some deadly Boomerangs when the
comics want to shock us with his competence.
The only really cool part of his identity is his collection
of trick Boomerangs as they’re essentially villainous specialized batarans
capable of delivering acid, fire, ice, electricity, and explosions. In the books Boomer also has a son
named Owen who happens to have limited super speed. I’m not sure if we’ll see Owen in the movies but it’d
certainly be pretty cool if he did show up, though at the same time he was the
product of a union between Captain Boomerang and a relative of the Reverse
Flash in the future so I wouldn’t hold my breath.
KATANA
Katana is one of the few non-traditional Suicide Squad
members to join the team for the movie, only joining the comic book team during
the New 52 era post-2011.
Traditionally Katana has been a straight heroic character, working
closely with Batman through his special superhero team the Outsiders. She’s one of several
kung-fu/samurai/ninja characters who popped up in the ‘70s during the martial
arts movie boom. She’s strictly
D-list as far as heroes go, though she did appear briefly on Arrow and as a major supporting
character in the failed CGI Batman show Beware
the Batman.
Though she doesn’t have any super powers she does wield a
mystic weapon of incredible ability, making her the first member of this
assembled team to actually have genuine abilities. Usually the Suicide Squad goes pretty heavy on super-powered
beings like Count Vertigo and Nightshade but I guess they want something more
reserved for the movie.
Anyway,
Katana’s mystic edge is her weapon: the soul-taker sword, a samurai sword
capable of absorbing the souls of whoever it kills. The souls act as a power source, giving Katana greater
strength and access to their skills.
Combine that power with her formidable fighting prowess and she’s a
serious force to be reckon with.
KILLER CROC
Another Batman related character, the third on this list and
5th overall for this reimagining of the squad, for unaccountable
reasons. In all seriousness, I’m
not surprised WB/DC is positioning Suicide
Squad as more adjacent to the Batman franchise than anything else, given
the success they’ve had with Batman it’s just them hedging their bets though I
do wish their take on Killer Croc was closer to the comic.
Killer Croc is one of the late great
Batman villains, first appearing in 1983 and continuing to evolve in his visual
appearance since then. His
original set-up was that he had a skin condition that made him appear
crocodilian but also gave him greater strength, which eventually persuaded him
to take up a life of crime as a petty thief and enforcer.
The extent of Croc’s condition tends to vary as does his
humanity. In his earlier
appearances he was a scaly monster with a hideously creepy face and teeth but
still mostly human sized and with only moderately enhanced strength. As time progressed he got bigger and
bigger and more and more monstrous, though for a brief time they downgraded his
mutation to an incredibly boring look where he was just a little crusty. The “crusty skin” look seems to be the
version of the character the movie is adopting, which is a shame given that
it’s the least interesting take on a pretty cool character like Killer Croc.
SLIP KNOT
Ah Slip Knot, you lovably G-list bad guy you, how did you
ever end up here. If you’ve never
heard of this guy there’s a good reason for that; he’s about as no-name as you
can get in terms of super villains, right up there with spymaster and the human
shrike. He doesn’t have any super powers
or unique weaponry, simply a love of tying knots and ropes that he decided to
take to the next level by becoming a rope/knot themed super villain.
Seriously, I’m not leaving anything out
when it comes to that description of Slip Knot, there really is that little to
this guy, he’s just some random jackass that loved tying things up so much he
decided to go to jail for it. I
will say that I like that the movie has recast the role with a First Nations
actor, that’s pretty cool even if he is the character most likely to die early
on to raise the stakes.
EL DIABLO
Another bizarre instance of the New 52 reworking a classic
character to be part of the new Squad mythos only now with a legacy twist. The original El Diablo was a cowboy
hero from the ‘70s named Lazarus Lane.
A product of DC’s Weird Western
comic, El Diablo sort of lived up to his own name as he seemed to have
supernatural demonic powers.
This
idea was fleshed out later on during Jim Palmiotti’s Jonah Hex comic where it was revealed El Diablo was a spirit of
vengeance that happened to reside within the form of Lazarus Lane and
manifested while he was asleep. It
was a curious concept but a pretty cool one, essentially making him an old west
Ghost Rider/Spawn. However, modern
authors started wondering whatever happened to the spirit of vengeance within
El Diablo after the west was won.
This is where the modern iteration would seem to come
in. He’s a Hispanic gang member
who becomes possessed by the spirit, though he and it have a bizarre
relationship. How much the spirit
manifests itself tends to vary and his control over it is pretty limited as
well. If there’s a wild card in
this iteration of the Suicide Squad it’s probably him owing to the fact he
carries a mystical spirit of vengeance within his form that’s just aching to
escape and bring everyone to task for their previous crimes.
THE ENCHANTRESS
And one more classic Suicide Squad member to round out the
group, albeit re-imagined in a really bad visual design. Enchantress is a weird character in
that she never really found her place at DC. Originally she was a bizarre Bewitched type character in one of their horror books and appeared
so infrequently she was counted as one of the Forgotten Villains. Later she joined the Suicide Squad as
their resident magic user. She
still had her witch shtick at the time and it served as her most visible period
but it wasn’t too long before she slipped right back out of the collective
consciousness.
Later, she returned again during DC’s mid 2000s upheaval as
part of the mystic superhero team Shadow Pact. Though she was a cool member and very much in the spotlight
once more her time in Shadow Pact didn’t really elevate Enchantress as the book
took her through an array of character redefining stories that changed
everything from her persona to her costume.
More recently she appeared as a member of the mystically
themed Justice League Dark only to die in the first few issues. She’s a really cool character, a
powerful sorceress whose magic is grounded in an aesthetic of cool spookiness,
but nobody seems to want her around, not even Suicide Squad given that they’ve changed so much of her character
she’s barely recognizable as Enchantress anymore.
Suicide Squad is
scheduled for release on August 5, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment