Suicide Squad #24

Will this be another Forever Evil tie-in where we catch a glimpse of the eclipse? The somehow permanent, world-encompassing eclipse?

The advertisement on the back of this issue just looks like a joke show from NBC about Dracula coming out this fall. But even better, look what happens when you cover up a little bit of the image:

At least Dracula's catchphrase can still begin with "I want to suck you..."! I also added some pubes for effect.

I'm leaving that in for my Blogspot readers since I couldn't wait to share it with my Tumblr readers and have already posted it! Now I'll read about Deadshot getting manhandled by Power Girl, Captain Boomerang getting his shit smashed to pieces by Steel, and Harley Quinn looking super fucking cute in her Harley Quinn Winter Attire.

The issue begins with Amanda Waller using a new piece of bait to get Deadshot motivated to do one last mission for her. I thought she had just given him ten million dollars to come save her but when she contacts Deadshot, he tells her he and Harley are busy doing her mission. So I guess she felt fine trapped in Belle Reve with her Team 7 training and her huge fucking sack of bad ass courage. I don't mean sack as in testicles. I mean sack as in a bag in which you carry things. But now she has a new mission for him and to get him to go, she tells Floyd she has intel on a girl Floyd has been seeking. I'd guess that it was his little girl but we already saw that he gets visits from her when he does good. Maybe he lost contact with her due to the eclipse and the power outage. Or maybe Floyd just couldn't find his junior high school crush on Facebook so he told Amanda about her in the hopes Waller would seek her out for him. But now Cobra is about to get their hands on the Weather Weapon and she needs Deadshot to get a team together, head to Colorado, and find the weapon first! Shit, Amanda. No problem! The power is only out everywhere and nobody Floyd knows has the power of flight or teleportation! I'm sure he'll get right on that!

Surprise! Their first recruit is Broome Beer! I mean, Boomer! Also note that Carmine Infantino has his own ale.

Deadshot recruits Boomer for his "general underhandedness" and because he can somehow use that to get them to Colorado by the next day. Perhaps he has a Boomerang ship! Except that would just get them back to Gotham.

The guy tending bar looks kind of like Sean Noonan! But the bar is named The Manhole which, I think, is also the name of the third episode from season one of Star Trek!

Meanwhile on the roof of Belle Reve, The Thinker has a crew of ex-super-inmates working on some Super-Villainy device. King Shark is the taskmaster and if you slack, you get eaten! Jim Gordon, Jr is curious about this device, so he kidnaps some guy named Hippogriff that I've never heard of which means, being the pages of the Suicide Squad, he's in big fucking trouble.

Oh. And much sooner than I expected!

Gordon mentions that he knows why he stays while he chops up Hippogriff. This is such better motivation for him to hang around Belle Reve than because he's in love with Amanda Waller. Although he could be referencing his love for Amanda as the reason he's hanging around and he just happens to be killing a guy at the same time. I choose to believe that Matt Kindt will be doing some subtle shifting of characters around here since Ales Kot really didn't seem to give a shit about who the characters had been and just wanted to inject his ideas and story elements into them. His run wasn't bad but his characters were way off base.

King Shark is helping The Thinker and sticking around Belle Reve so he can hunt down Amanda and eat her even though he was just recently on a path of spiritual enlightenment and kombucha. So hope that shit is over and he goes back to saying very little and eating very lots. But Amanda Waller doesn't seem as stuck in Belle Reve as it seems.

See? Out on the streets recruiting some shitty little Extreme to the Max Dude, Warrant.

Amanda seems to be setting up her old team which means there probably isn't a weapon and she's simply using this chance to get control of them again. Who do they fucking think they are, running loose and free and acting on their own wants and desires? Fuck that! Their souls belong to Amanda and she will devour have them!

Amanda has also been in Australia recruiting Steel! How is she doing it?! How can she...oh yeah. The Unknown Soldier still works for her. So is that really Power Girl on the cover?! Or is it the Unknown Soldier in disguise?

The Unknown Soldier meets Steel and Warrant atop a snowy mountain because why meet in an easy location? If a hero can't get there, they aren't much of a hero, are they? When The Soldier announces that he's the leader, Warrant suddenly acts less interested in being on a team if he has to follow orders and shit. "Fuck you, Cherry Pie! I'm going to go..." Hmm. That's all the dialogue I could come up with since "Cherry Pie" is the only Warrant song title I know and why bother with the rest of the dialogue if I can't make it all about Warrant songs? Wasn't there one about a well or something?

Both teams arrive at the same time and I realize I'm just as a big an idiot as The Unknown Soldier.

We've actually seen Waller in Belle Reve speaking to Deadshot, so I believe the real Suicide Squad is working for the real Amanda. The newly formed group working under The Unknown Soldier (and me!) must have all been duped by a shapechanging Crime Syndicate member. And everybody is after OMAC! Stupid, fucking, lousy, shitty OMAC. Why such love for OMAC? Has Dan DiDio declared OMAC must be found a place somewhere or every writer at DC is going to pay by having to use plot ideas by Scott Lobdell? Was it the original OMAC comic books that brought the only joy to a young DiDio's life, ruined by bikers and clowns?

Oh, and then the page after the two Suicide Squad's rush in to kill each other, we find out that The Thinker is The Unknown Soldier's Amanda Waller. So maybe it still was the Soldier acting as Amanda but on The Thinker's orders. He probably thought Amanda was stuck in Belle Reve so he took over her job (and face) as recruiter. Amanda is stuck in Belle Reve because The Thinker's thugs have managed to get one of Amanda's collars on her. So her head will explode if she tries to leave Belle Reve. And King Shark is going to begin hunting her while Amanda's only ally inside the prison is James Gordon, Jr.

Suicide Squad #24 Rating: +3 Ranking. So far, I like the change! Forever Evil actually helped this book to easily adjust between writers. Villains Month and Forever Evil gave a nice bit of story for this thing to jump off where the Squad has been disbanded and things are really starting over from scratch. Also, is The Thinker building a new Brother Eye? What happened to the old Brother Eye? Will the Brothers Eye fight for control of OMAC?