The following is a review of the first five issues of the 2019 Tom Taylor run of Suicide Squad with no spoilers.
I find myself in an interesting position with the new Suicide Squad Book written by Tom Taylor and with art by Bruno Redondo and Daniel Sampere. I can’t say I have ever really read a Suicide Squad book prior to these five issues. The only exception to this would potentially be the Rebirth one-shot to the previous run. So why did I choose to read this book now? The title itself is the namesake to one of the less popular movies in the DC Extended Universe line of films and generally the Suicide Squad book itself isn’t talked about within the wider comic book community. The key is Tom Taylor.
Tom Taylor, a personal writing influence of mine, is touted as having consistently successful and popular runs on every comic book he touches. Taylor’s work on the Injustice: Gods Among Us tie-in comic to the video game of the same name helped lead the title to a five year run from what would have been a short tie-in comic. Taylor has also written what most fans would claim is an issue in any top 10 list of Spider-Man must read comics (Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6). Taylor particularly uses two key storytelling elements to keep his stories fresh and engaging.
One, the concept that any character can be important and any character will be likable. This is particularly showcased here as the crux of the currently released 5 issues of the book is the team The Revolutionaries. Created for this story, The Revolutionaries join our already familiar characters of Harley Quinn, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang. Within the first two to three issues you as the reader can feel the weight and importance that the characters of The Revolutionaries will bring to the book.
Two, the concept that any character is disposable. Flying in the face of the first point, Taylor engages the Game of Thrones method when it comes to storytelling and requires you to not get attached to anyone in his books as anyone and everyone is disposable. Generally this is done in books that are done outside of continuity such as Injustice or DCeased. This means that when characters are killed, it does not effect the mainline continuity of characters for DC Comics. This is not the case as this new series is well and truly inline with current DC continuity. Which means that either characters will be all at risk or we risk the writer needing to hold back so that the likes of popular characters such as Harley Quinn are not at risk of not showing in other books - the latter being a strong possibility in my mind given how bankable certain characters are that Taylor is playing with.
With the conclusion of issues #1-5 of the new series (with new issues coming out soon), I can see clearly that Taylor has been given the freedom to use his two touchstones of simultaneous importance and disposability of the characters within the book to create an engaging story which will cause long time readers to have a powerful reaction and cause new readers to want to research characters and dig into the book further.
Read Suicide Squad by Tom Taylor on Comixology