Why Suicide Squad Might End Up Being Trash....

So, I wanted to talk very briefly about why I'm less and less excited about Suicide Squad.

I'm not even going to touch on the problems with making a movie based on a comic that has probably been rebooted no less than three times and has likely sold about as many copies in six years.

When the trailer first debuted, it looked fantastic even though it's not really fooling anyone into believing that it's anything other than a vehicle to introduce Harley Quinn and Jared Leto's Joker. And it seems to be doing a lot of things right. It's a diverse cast taking the DC universe in a direction Marvel hasn't explored yet (even though I would pay ungodly sums of money to see Marvel do a Thunderbolts movie). But now that Batman v Superman has come and (thankfully) gone, it's brought a bit of context to the kind of world we're being sold. Check it.



"What if Superman had decided to fly down, rip off the roof of the White House and grab the President right out of the Oval Office? Who would have stopped him?"

First of all, depending on how this election shakes out, I doubt anyone would have a problem with that so that's not the scariest imagery one could invoke to establish Superman as a threat (which is the main thing wrong with BvS, but I'm not having that discussion anymore). Second, if Superman did go rogue and attack the White House, what in the WORLD WIDE FUCK are Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Katana going to do about it aside from die screaming? The problem with these "hit squad to stop the most powerful people on Earth" scenarios is that they always involve recruiting people that stand NO CHANCE of stopping the most powerful people on Earth. I mean, sure, it's a good move to feature Batman in the movie to show off how badass the Suicide Squad is up against A-listers, but let's be honest, y'all. The ONLY reason Batman was able to contend with Superman in Yawn of Justice is because the script required Superman be an unfathomably stupid chump to even be goaded into a fight in the first place. So, right there, you're not going to convince me that Killer Croc is the go-to guy if Superman decides to say, "fuck it."

Most importantly, the Suicide Squad's whole thing is that they're badasses willing to do things the good guys either can't fathom doing or don't have the balls to do. But the first two movies have Batman and Superman, DCs two standards for how heroism works in their universe, going about as far as you can go....which is murder.

If Superman isn't above murder and Batman isn't above murder (because OH SWEET JESUS, HE MURDERS SO MANY PEOPLE), why does it matter that the Suicide Squad's bread and butter is murder? I'm not saying this movie doesn't still stand a chance of being fun to look at or that we won't get some epic moments from some key characters. I know I'm pretty excited about the prospect of a Batfleck/Joker car chase. But I'm cautious about a movie that has negated all of its most obvious stakes and reasons to care before the thing even started pre production.

Just something to think about.

The Week In Geek 10/16/14

Since I didn't do a week in geek last week due to time constraints and the Day Job, I'll backtrack a little bit.

-The Flash premiered last week and I can tell you without going into a whole fleshed out review since there's a perfectly good one that I kinda disagree with over at BNP....it was incredible. Honestly, if DC is keen on creating a primetime television universe (excluding Gotham because it's turning out to be a shit show that will probably on get a second season before completely tanking), this was a step in the right direction. The show really serves as the perfect counter to Arrow, which comes on the night after. Whereas Arrow has made its name on being a much more intense "ultimate" version of the Green Arrow mythos (because the idea seemed to be it to be a primetime Batman surrogate), Flash is Arrow's more earnest counterpart which, incidentally makes for hugely entertaining television. And Jesse L. Martin does this show ALL OF THE FAVORS. I mean, sure we've seen Bill Sadler and Tom Cavanaugh do pretty well, but Martin's performance does laps around the whole rest of the cast. And they've wasted no time teasing us with the promise of assembling the Rogues and even Professor Zoom. This show is definitely going to be the one to watch this season.

-Last week, Marvel announced that it would be bringing back the Secret Wars next year. They put out this epic poster done by Alex Ross (The GAWD) that features what looks like this epic showdown between heroes and a lot of their alternate versions with nods to the Ultimate Universe as well as Supreme Power. Now, I'm not going to comment on the "Marvel has run out of ideas" fanwhining because that's just a degree of circular logic where nobody really wins. However, I WILL point out how funny it is that there was NO sign of the Fantastic Four or the X-Men in the poster. With Fantastic Four having already been cancelled, this really just adds to the rumor that Disney bigwigs are attempting to completely snub Fox, who owns the movie rights to both (FF, of course, has that movie reboot coming up in....you guessed it...2015). While it hasn't exactly been an official mandate by Disney OR Marvel, the signs certainly point to some truth in the rumor more and more as time goes on. And, sure, Marvel pours too much money in to X-books to every cancel those outright, the timing for them to kill Wolverine off seems extremely convenient as well. At this point, they couldn't get anymore overt if they had Leonardo Da Vinci himself paint Wolverine giving Fox the finger while slicing through a picture of Michael B. Jordan.


Anyway, my comic reviews for the week are available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. Also, check out my reviews for episodes 2 and 3 of Nightwing: The Series as well as my opinion piece on the announcement of a Suicide Squad movie slated for 2016. This week, I took a look at.....

Batman Eternal: Okay, I glazed over this point in the actual review, but....Batgirl has become downright thuggish and I LOVE it. You can also tell DC is really making an effort (for whatever that's worth with DC) towards retooling the gender politics in their universe when you have a dope moment like Jason Todd openly admitting that Batgirl has always been the most formidable of Batman's proteges. Dope moment. As far as progress goes, you have to give credit where it's due.

Uncanny X-Men: So, Bendis had to take a departure from the familial shenanigans in favor of advancing the plot a bit faster since there's another "MostPowerfulMutantEverUnlikeAnythingWeveEverSeenExceptForTheLastTimeAndTheTimeBeforeThat" at large, but it's still a really strong story arc happening. One story I noticed they seem to be conveniently glazing over is the revelation that Charles Xavier was married to Mystique and, evident from the All New Brotherhood's attack in All New, had a kid. Are we going to sit down and have a talk about how Raven Darkholme is apparently comics' most notorious rolling stone? Seriously, man....it's just getting weird at this point.

Is Harley Quinn The New Deadpool?

So, the Suicide Squad recently got rebooted AGAIN. At this point, I think it's hot on the Legion of Superheroes' heels for "most times canceled by DC Comics." In fact, I'm pretty sure they're both at least one more cancellation away from a free Firehouse sub. I was really ready to give it a chance and decide on it myself except 1). I think I'm getting to the age where I don't have to test out every single thing that shows up out of curiosity (I still haven't seen Battleship because I KNOW it's trash) and 2). I've never seen a book that was voted off the island so unanimously. I mean, I haven't seen or heard a single positive thing about Suicide Squad this time around. And now, it's got me wondering: What is it that DC is getting SO wrong about the Suicide Squad? Honestly, the team seems to get generally positive responses in their appearances on Justice League Unlimited and, recently, Arrow. But the book never catches fire for very long.

It so happened that, as I was contemplating this, I ran into one of my readers (Yes, on occasion, I do indeed run into people who read the blog and engage them about what they've read) who'd noticed the same thing I had that the book just can't seem to get lightning to strike for some reason. Now, both of us are stumped on the franchise in general, but he had an idea about this incarnation in particular: Harley Quinn. I don't read as much DC as he does to have noticed it, but hypothesized that Harley Quinn is slowly becoming the new Deadpool. And he kinda had a point. I remember reading issue zero of her solo series and most of it was basically her breaking the fourth wall interacting with the readers and the writers, very similar to Deadpool's knowledge that he's a comic character in a fictional world. In DC's need to give her an identity aside from being the Joker's girl Friday (since Joker has been intentionally absent), she's become sort of a gag character. On one hand, if this is a mandated plot on DC's part, there is a chance it's not going to fly because the problem with DC's mandated plots is that they usually feel like mandated plots. It's as there are a bunch of old white men sitting in a boardroom listening to an intern talk about way to increase their humor quotient by 35 percent (Because let's face it, DC is the GOP to Marvel's Democrats).

On the other hand, DC could use some levity. I've remarked before that the problem with the New 52 from the start has been that it's not nearly as fun as it could be. Lobo used to be their joke character, but in keeping with the whole "the New 52 is because because it's all hardcore" thing, they've taken Lobo and allowed him to win enough pokebattles to evolve into Chris Cornell, so he's out of the "fun" column.

He just looks like he's saying,
"Lobo will sex you now."

So, in truth, there's the possibility that Harley Quinn COULD be DC's answer to Deadpool as long as they remember to value the character for actual gags and over just being there. The problem with Deadpool is that Marvel rarely uses him for actual jokes anymore. His just being on the cover of a book he has nothing to do with or appearing in the the book to break the fourth wall is joke enough for the writers even when Deadpool isn't actually doing anything funny. From what little I've read (and I invite any of you who've read more of her stuff to fill me in a bit more), it seems like she could go this route if left unchecked and, in turn, become unfunny really quickly.


They also have to put a cap on oversexualizing her. The amazing thing about Deadpool is that he is (or has the potential to be when he's not Marvel one trick pony gag) a hilarious character despite a rather depressing backstory. (Granted, Spider-Man is pretty funny despite a laundry list of horrible shit happening to him, but you can always fall back on the idea that he's laughing to keep from crying or pissing his pants that he's fighting a guy who throws exploding jack-o-lanterns. Deadpool is laughing because he's just plain crazy.) DC caught a lot of bullshit because of a fan art contest a while back where you had to draw Harley Quinn dying in these horrible ways. Never mind that DC was making light of suicide at one of the worst possible times of this generation to make fun of suicide. That's a whole other post. The problem was the context. Usually, you can get away with this shit when it's done under the "crazy" umbrella, but it wasn't. The main context was that Quinn is a ditzy blonde who giggles and squeals and doesn't know much better (although, the Bruce Timm version from Batman: The Animated Series was a big contribution to that, but that's also another post). Play up the crazy and it might work out, but we all know how horrible DC is with gender politics.

Is Harley Quinn becoming the new Deadpool? Not yet, but she could be. Then again, I could be wrong.