New Suicide Squad #12

In which Harley discovers the Joker's stash of Harley Quinn Real Dolls.

This issue begins with the Reverse Flash lost in the desert. Normally you wouldn't think that would be a problem for somebody with super speed because they could just be out of the desert in three seconds. But Reverse Flash didn't eat his Wheaties because Harley Quinn probably pissed in them. And now he's winding down like a top like in those commercials from the late 70s or early 80s that kept trying to remind kids that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. I wouldn't know if that was true or not because I was raised by a single mother who was too fucking busy to feed the kids in the morning before going to work to make video games. I understood that she had one of the most important jobs in the world ever, so I never resented not having breakfast. Plus if I really needed breakfast before going to school, my grandmother lived just a few houses down and she was prepared to make anything I wanted at the drop of my emaciated body on the steps of her front porch.

Now you're probably wondering what video games my mom made, aren't you? Well, it was the seventies so take a fucking guess. She worked at Signetics where they made chips for Atari cartridges. So as a kid, I owned just about every Atari game ever made. I mean, I owned the chips they were on. And I owned these two little green receptacles which you would slide the chip into and push a lever to hold them into position. Then the little green thing slid into the cartridge slot after which you'd turn on the Atari to see which game you were about to play. You needed two cartridge things because one was used to play low memory games like Brain Games and Poker while the other one was used to play less low memory games like Adventure and Combat. My mother eventually sold the whole shebang at a garage sale to some lucky asshole who now owns my childhood. Mostly she sold it because she lived in a constant state of fear that the FBI was going to raid her house and arrest her. Also, the previous story was a total lie and none of it actually happened if the statute of limitations is somehow longer than forty years old for this kind of workplace theft.

Pretending the previous paragraph were true even though it isn't at all and nobody can prove it anyway, I may have been one of a very few who played Atari's E.T. without having to pay for it so it didn't seem, you know, that bad. I also didn't have any instructions for it so I had no clue what I was doing.

The Parasite has been captured by The League and is now being experimented on. He is still alive just like every other member of the Suicide Squad which makes me wonder why anybody thinks "Suicide Squad" is a good nickname for Task Force X. It's not like anybody ever dies! It's been a full year since the Squad was rebooted and all they've lost are a few Man-bats and those hardly count. So I'm expecting at least one death this issue, Sean Ryan! Don't you disappoint me the way I'm constantly disappointing myself!

I know, right?

Harley Quinn is currently being kept locked up with all the children who aren't allowed to play soccer. That seems like a bad idea since Captain Boomerang just recently got sentenced to death for corrupting the youth. What do they think Harley Quinn is going to do to them? Although she does try to teach them some English.

This is a lot of fart talk. No wonder this comic is rated Teen Plus.

Harley Quinn makes farting noises for the kids and they laugh and laugh. She's the best clown ever! She's also corrupting the youth! Now The League is going to have to deal with a bunch of kids running about making constant farting noises!

I used to clean the floor of a 7-11 where the night clerk was a Nigerian fairly new to this country. He was taking English classes but they weren't teaching him the words he really wanted to know. So every night I was there, he had a new English word he wanted to learn. He wanted to know words like pussy and fucking and shit and cock. You know, things like that! So one night, he came over to where I was sweeping and asked me the usual, "How do you say...," followed by some description of the word he wanted to know. His accent was thick so between it and his sometimes crazy description of the word, it would occasionally take a few tries before I understood what he wanted. This time he said it a few times and I couldn't quite grasp it. Then he made a motion as if something were coming out of his ass and I got it. He wanted to know what you call "the air from your butt." So I taught him a rather polite phrase first: "to pass gas." Then I taught him fart and a whole host of other ways to say fart. His favorite was "to break wind" which sent him into a huge giggle fit. I wonder if I should have charged extra for giving that 7-11's employees English lessons?

Meanwhile, Black Manta has become quite close to Saladin, the leader of The League. Deadshot is worried Black Manta has flipped on the Squad the way that Deathstroke flipped on them in their first mission. But he's just doing his job really well. He knows exactly where to stick his tongue to get Saladin to reveal his secrets. And it's finally going to pay off! Saladin is prepared to show Black Manta how The League plans on changing the world!

Saladin is a bit literal minded, I guess.

Amanda Waller has lost contact with the Squad and now needs to figure out somebody to send in to help them out. Vic Sage is trying to be helpful which is suspicious. But I still think Bonnie is probably the real traitor! Especially since she's the one who maintains they've lost contact with the Squad even though Reverse Flash can hear their radio messages and tries to report back. I think she's just ignoring him!

Deadshot gets a moment to catch up with Black Manta and finds that Black Manta really has begun drinking the Death to the World Flavored Kool-Aid served up by The League. I think that means Deadshot is going to have to kill him before Black Manta chooses to kill Deadshot first. Plus, somebody needs to die in this comic book at some point, right?!

Amen, Brother Deadshot! Preach!

Reverse Flash hears Bonnie and Waller call him a useless piece of crap which motivates him to get his ass in gear. Probably because what happens after Waller thinks you're a useless member of the team is your head explodes. So he goes rushing off somewhere else in the desert. I guess he was just being a lazy douche. Although it's night now so maybe he just didn't want to run in the heat. I get that. Hot weather sucks.

After Deadshot left Black Manta, he went out to smoke a cigarette with that kid from when this story arc began. Yay! We've finally caught up to the moment that didn't make me interested in this story like it was probably supposed to since it was Ryan's choice to introduce us to this story! After Deadshot finishes his cigarette, he decides to go back and rescue Captain Boomerang, Parasite, and Harley, although Harley has already saved herself.

The issue ends with Black Manta confessing to Saladin that he came to The League to destroy it but has changed his mind and would like forgiveness. Saladin doesn't respond but he does smile one of those smiles that says, "Woo-hoo! I'm getting a blow job!"

New Suicide Squad #12 Rating: +2 Ranking. Ever since the break due to Convergence, this book has finally found the story it has been needing to tell. The characters on the team are no longer just names chosen to attract the most people to the book. They're still partially that though. You can tell because Harley Quinn is still on the team. But Sean Ryan has found voices for the various members that have made them interesting. This is the first time the book has felt like the team I remember reading when Ostrander was writing the series decades ago. If the Annual offers a satisfying end to this story arc, I might even raise the ranking of the book due to the Annual which is basically going against my usual rules. The only thing this book lacks now is some characters that can be killed off. Hopefully next month, some new members will be added to the team and they won't be more characters who obviously won't be killed off. Let's see some fodder next month, Mister Ryan!