New Suicide Squad #1

By Sean Ryan, Jeremy P. Roberts & Blond

The Suicide Squad title that had been running since the start of the New 52 recently got cancelled following the wake of Forever Evil, replaced by a all new ongoing with an entirely new roster and creative team. We get the likes of Deathstroke, Harley Quinn, Joker’s Daughter, Black Manta, Deadshot and Amanda Waller in this issue alone as it’s very much a case of laying the groundwork and getting us introduced to the team. It’s by no means a perfect issue, but it’s as good as any and a great place to explore the team as any.

The biggest issue of some fans will be the inclusion of Joker’s daughter onto the title so it’s satisfying to see that Harley Quinn feels the same way about her inclusion, with Deathstroke preventing the two from coming to blows. It’s inevitable that these two will come into conflict with each other further down the line but here was a teaser of what we can expect going forward, as Sean Ryan establishes the purpose of the book and whilst he can’t entirely justify the reasoning behind an all new ongoing when we could have just kept the book with the current numberings, it still manages to be an entertaining read despite this.

The artwork is provided by Jeremy Roberts who will probably be familiar with most of you for winning that Harley Quinn talent search that DC had a while back. It’s good to see that he impresses, delivering a great portrayal of the various rogues from the respective DCU. It’s going to be fun having his pencils on the book month after month and when coupled with Blond’s colours, this is a book that should keep you hooked.

However, everything isn’t perfect and there are a few flaws with New Suicide Squad. Whilst the artwork’s solid and capable of impressing, it’s uneven in places with a few character poses that don’t look entirely right. The story so far is fairly straightforward, but there’s plenty of room to develop the team going forward with lots of room to build and expand.

On the whole, there’s plenty things here to like. New Suicide Squad gets the book off to a solid start and it’ll be interesting to see where we go from here. Needles to say it should be a great read going forward and Ryan is somebody who proves he’s got a good grasp of what makes these villains tick.