Suicide Squad #21

This is my favorite image of Harley so far. And Amanda's looking a little pudgy there, so that works too.

Even with the potential to blow off their heads at any moment, Amanda Waller doesn't think the Suicide Squad know their place. So she brought in a consultant to help her treat them poorly, James Gordon Jr The Corinthian. While her psychological bullshit may have truly fucked with the majority of the Squad, Harley Quinn trained with the master of the mind fuck. So she wasn't fazed at all. Also Voltaic exploded while being Samsara'd. Hopefully Amanda will have to go back to the stupid plot device drawing board with that program while Squad members actually have to die for a bit.

The non-real beginning begins with a gigantic creature composed of corpses smashing up Las Vegas while the Suicide Squad tries to stop it and keep Amanda Waller alive. Hopefully this King Kong Korpse is a by-product of the Samsara Project and proof that it's not feasible to keep it going. But forget that opening. It doesn't actually matter yet. Let's go back to the present where Harley Quinn is proving what I said last paragraph.

From what I've seen of The Unknown Soldier in G.I. Combat, he'll merely be slightly inconvenienced by that wound.

The Corinthian ditches Amanda Waller to go fuck with The Unknown Soldier while Amanda Waller makes an "I used to be fat" joke with her lockdown password. But the lockdown fails and Harley knocks Amanda out and gets control of the Nanocite Neck Bomb Master Detonator.

Surprise! Amanda Waller has enemies!

Harley frees up Deadshot and while he's cracking stupid and killing guards, Harley decides to do a little analyzing of Amanda. Harley, like me, wants to know why Amanda decided to play all of the stupid games last issue. Harley thinks Amanda is afraid and needs to tighten her control of things so she can control the uncertainty which breeds the fear. I think Amanda was fucking with the Squad to test out The Corinthian and maybe even The Unknown Soldier.

Deadshot meets up with The Unknown Soldier and defeats him in hand-to-hand combat. While I like that The Unknown Soldier seems to be fairly human in that his belly wound has made him vulnerable and that vulnerability causes him to lose the fight, it simply doesn't jive with Gray and Palmiotti's Unknown Soldier from G.I. Combat. But I hated that unstoppable machine, so I'm willing to accept this toned down version of The Unknown Soldier. The G.I. Combat Soldier was like the Suicide Squad backed by the Samsara Project. Too much power with not enough consequences.

It doesn't really matter that Deadshot beats The Unknown Soldier anyway because The Corinthian sneaks up on him and knocks him out. And then The Corinthian comes to rescue Amanda Waller whom he is in love with.

Dammit. Giving him sunglasses which he can flip up and show his normal eyeball just ruins the illusion! Now I can't ignore the fact that it's James Gordon, Jr.

Now that James has a gun on Harley and Harley has a knife on Amanda and Amanda has a job offer on James, they've found themselves in an Insane Asylum Inmate Standoff. They work through it like any other rational business people in the murder industry. Gordon accepts a job as intelligence analyst and Amanda accepts Harley's deal to make the Suicide Squad better. She doesn't explain the deal but judging by Deadshot's belief at the beginning of the issue that he'll be free in eleven months, it seems a little Suicide Squad restructuring is going on.

Suicide Squad #21 Rating: No change. No change just yet although it looks like big and better changes are coming. It seems Harley's deal will get the Squad into a place where the roster will rotate more frequently. I'm sure her deal is one that makes the previous illusion of risking their lives for early release a reality. So with Voltaic's explosion and this King Kong Korpse beast attacking Las Vegas, I think the Samsara Project is probably at an end (next month hopefully we'll learn the Korpse beast is a result of the Samsara Project). That would go a long way to making this book better. And if Harley's deal to fix the Squad really does begin to free up prisoners as they run one or two missions at a time, we'll see more villains in the mix and, hopefully, more deaths! In next month's Squad, they already have a new member: Cheetah with a Death Machine! So while I could have raised the Squad's ranking with this issue based on my speculation, I'd prefer to wait and see what happens next issue.