A comiXologist recommends:
Convergence: Suicide Squad

by: Harris Smith

From 1987 until 1992, once a month, John Ostrander perfected superhero comics.  This may seem like hyperbole, and it totally is, but even so, Ostrander’s five-year run on Suicide Squad is, without a doubt, the most exciting, unusual, underrated and overwhelmingly powerful comic ever published.  Ostrander, along with occasional co-writer Kim Yale and artists Luke McDonnell, Geof Isherwood and Karl Kesel, brought not just serious action and high drama to their stories about a team of low-level supervillains turned government black-ops agents, but, issue after issue, imbued characters like Deadshot, Nightshade and Count Veritgo with humanity, pathos, genuine emotion and, often, wry gallows humor.  Few writers can be as definitively tied, without competition, to characters they weren’t the original creators of as Ostrander is to the Suicide Squad.  

Any time DC brings this iteration of the Squad back, it’s cause for excitement, and the new Convergence: Suicide Squad mini-series is no exception, whether it’s with Ostrander or without.  This new book is not written by John Ostrander, but it is written by Frank Tieri.  Anyone unsure of Tieri’s qualifications to write Suicide Squad need look no further than his 2012 mini-series Space: Punisher, a ballsy, tougher-than-leather and entirely endearing sci-fi take on Marvel’s popular urban vigilante.  The blend of rogue attitude and gallows humor he applied to Frank Castle’s interstellar adventures is a perfect match for the Suicide Squad in their against-all-odd battle with the powerful, godlike superbeings of Kingdom Come in Convergence: Suicide Squad.  This new series also boasts art by the great Tom Mandrake, John Ostrander’s frequent collaborator on comics like the elegiac 1992 Spectre series.

Beyond the excitement of reading a new comics with the classic Suicide Squad team, it’s been awesome to see them emerge as a popular phenomenon over the past several years.  For decades, Suicide Squad was a cult comic, a shared secret among fans-in-the-know (creator Michel Fiffe, for instance, has drawn heavily on Squad lore for his self-published Copra).  With a new ongoing series, appearances in video games and DC animated movies and, of course, a big budget, all-star (Will Smith as Deadshot is perfect, and perfectly unexpected, casting) live-action film coming soon, they’ve been storming the collective imagination the way they’ve stormed so many various prisons, military compounds and shadow dimensions over the years.  Not bad for the quintessential ragtag team of outlaws and misfits.

[Check out Convergence: Suicide Squad on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Neagtive Pleasure on Newtown Radio.