New Suicide Squad #3

I know DC Comics wants to sell lots and lots of issues of Suicide Squad, but Harley Quinn really shouldn't be on the team. Neither should The Joker's Daughter. Or Deathstroke. You know what? This whole roster sucks.

Last issue, Deathstroke was busy proving why he's the wrong man for a covert government black ops team. He's too skilled for government work. People will pay gross national product sums of money to hire him to kill and Deathstroke has no qualms about dropping a job to begin working for the next highest bidder. At least, he doesn't when he's not currently concerned about his reputation. You see, sometimes he's more concerned about how the assassin community views him than he is about money, and then he can't be bribed with a higher offer. But I don't think he gives a shit about the Suicide Squad. Besides, they're covert! Nobody knows he's working for them so nobody will know if he drops the ball and switches teams.

I don't even know why The Joker's Daughter was asked to join. I think because DC Comics realized she must have a fairly fanatical fan base seeing as how the Lenticular cover Villains Month issue of The Joker's Daughter sells for around $25 or more even though it's the worst written issue that came out that month. Holy shit is it garbage! It's just awful! I don't think I'll ever enjoy anything with The Joker's Daughter in it ever again simply because of that issue.

Harley is obviously on the team so the book actually sells. Deadshot is on the team because he's always on the fucking team. And Black Manta is on the team because the team needed a little diversity. He's certainly not on the team because they're going after sunken treasure or Aquaman's life.

Well, Black Manta, you're going to have to unless you think the corpse of The Joker's Daughter will be an effective teammate.

Is this match-up supposed to get me super excited? Even if The Joker's Daughter was my favorite character of all time and I was completely biased, I couldn't pick her to win this fight. She's just a fucking kid that ran away from home and shoved a rotting piece of flesh on her face. Harley has experience! She has anger issues! She has a reason to kick the shit out of this girl wearing her ex-boyfriend's face! The Joker's Daughter really should just shorten her name to The Joke.

Also, in that panel above, can you see that little box with the words you can't read? It explains that the Suicide Squad is a team of "incarcerated super-villains." Really? When has Deathstroke been incarcerated? When did The Joker's Daughter get put into juvenile detention? And what fucking super-powers does she have, anyway?! At least Harley seems to have the super-power of making cartoon violence look absolutely adorable. The Joker's Daughter is just a whiny asshole.

Now that The Joker is back in Batman, does he have a new face? I'm sure somebody in the DC Universe has the ability to grow him a new one in a lab. He should get Element Girl on his payroll to make new faces for him every week.

Harley Quinn and The Joker's Daughter continue to fight with each other as Vic Sage, Amanda Waller, and Black Manta bore the fuck out of me. None of this dialogue serves any purpose! Stop wasting my time, Sean Ryan! I have a feeling Ryan's entire pitch for the new Suicide Squad was this poorly thought out team and an idea that Vic Sage should be in charge. The Editors came in their pants over that idea and forgot to ask him if he had any ideas for a plot. Although he did make sure to have the most skeletal of plots ready to go: "The Squad invades Russia because, um, Putin! And Rocket Reds!"

Although, I have to admit that I enjoyed the resolution of the Harley vs. The Joker's Daughter fight (which Harley won, of course, by beating her senseless):

Harley was also helping herself get over The Joker by punching his face again and again and again.

The issue ends with the team searching for Deadshot who's busy being tortured for information about where the rest of his team have gone. Why would they think he knows that when they pulled him from a pile of rubble with a serious head injury? Plus, shouldn't they be more concerned about why these super-villains were stealing state secrets? Oh wait! They have Deathstroke to answer those questions for them now that they're paying him. Speaking of Deathstroke, he comes in to "torture" Floyd for the Russians. I put torture in quotation marks because we all know that Deathstroke was just pretending to work with the Russians to gather additional information (or to complete the real mission that none of the others knew about) and now he's actually going to "save" Floyd. I put save in quotation marks because he'll probably feel like torturing him at least a little bit.

New Suicide Squad #3 Rating: -1 Ranking. It really is mostly boring bullshit. I suppose Sean Ryan is still trying to come up with a reason why he stuck Vic Sage in command alongside Amanda Waller when she's been doing the job well for years. Although she did work alongside Frank Rock and some other teammates for a few issues back in the early Naughts. So far this book is sans plot just to make the clowns fight and to see the guys with "dead" and "death" in their names struggle for power. I'm pretty sure that was the whole premise of this crap.

New Suicide Squad #1

Even if she's not being written by Ann Nocenti, I don't see any place on this team for The Joker's Daughter.

I didn't really feel Harley Quinn belonged on the Suicide Squad and now they're bringing an even crazier person onto the team. Obviously Harley was just added to the team to increase sales. It's quite possible that's why The Joker's Daughter is also on the team. She seems popular although it can't be for the way Ann Nocenti has been writing her. It must be from her Preboot and DC Animated Universe versions of her. I know she sells comic books though since The Joker's Daughter #1 with the lenticular cover might be the most sought after book of The New 52. It's a shame people are actually purchasing it for over twenty dollars just to find out that the story is shit and the character is a trainwreck.

I don't have a problem with Harley and The Joker's Daughter being the main characters in a comic book. But they're psychotic! They just don't seem right for a government black ops team. Maybe that's exactly why they're on the team. So that when the conspiracy theorists point out how these super villains seem to be helping the United States Government, more rational minded folks can point to the loony tunes on the team and say, "Really? That person was trusted to complete a secret government mission?"

The first new surprise is that The Question is in charge of the team.

I have a question! Why don't colorists ever look at an actual American flag before coloring in the stripes? Also maybe count the stripes? Maybe? No? Too much effort? Okay, sorry I brought it up.

I'm three pages in and I'm already not liking Victor Sage. He uses "meh," he says Amanda Waller sucks at her job, he likes Black Manta for the team because "he looks cool" and he has "black in his name." But the most unforgivable thing he says, the truly mind-numbingly stupidest thing the leader of the Suicide Squad could think, is that they have to lose Captain Boomerang! Get out of here, you hack! Sure, Amanda Waller always hated Digger and barely wanted him on the team herself! She even came up with some zombie attack horror show to scare the shit out of him and try to get him to behave so he'd stop hitting people in the face with pies! But he was essential to the team! The team needs a laid back jerk that can't keep his mouth shut! The fucking Suicide Squad needs me! Um, I mean, needs Boomerang!

Oh my god how I hate you.

I'm really trying hard not to attack the intelligence of Sean Ryan's father's sperm right now! I have to believe Ryan is currently just writing a really unlikable character and not all of his characters will act like rejects from a 90s Image comic book series. I'm also trying really hard not to bitch about another thoroughly incorrect American flag! I'll just pretend that Vic Sage got that flag pin out of a quarter toy machine at the grocery store and the thing was made in China where nobody should give a shit which stripes are which color and how many there are in total.

I guess modern lines and stark white walls make people forget that they'd rather be free.

The New Suicide Squad is currently in Moscow to basically annoy the Russians. They're going to destroy the 26th floor of some building where they come up with secret projects. So that's going to be annoying when the secret project guys have to access their files from the 25th floor come Monday morning. And Deathstroke is going to assassinate the CEO of Russia's largest oil company which will cause the company to have to promote some people and change the names on a bunch of office doors. Ugh! If only someone could stop the Suicide Squad before they cause a lot of destruction and some really insignificant problems for the short term!

My initial guess is that, once again, the leader of the Suicide Squad (Victor Sage) is lying to his squad about their real mission because the missions Deathstroke details are bullshit. I suppose Black Manta's job to recover any intel the United States can use might be helpful. But it's also possible this is just a way to see how the team handles having two clowns on it, and if the team is good enough to support two people with names revolving around death. Black Manta doesn't have to worry about his spot, though. I'm sure having Aquaman's rival on the team will have everybody quaking in their boots.

Vic and Amanda watch their new Squad perform as they discuss the pros and cons of the team. Most of the cons are the thing about having two clowns and two death guys. Most of the pros are nonexistent. The team is kind of a mess. I think it was put together simply to sell issues! It'll draw in Harley fans and Deathstroke fans and Black Manta fans and Joker's Daughter fans and Floyd Lawton fans! Bah! Give me a team with a bunch of C-List Villains over a bunch of popular assholes any day!

Eventually, like every Squad mission ever, the shit hits the fan. Or as they say in Russia, "The man farting to create a breeze to cool down his family shit himself."

Rocket Red Sentinels!

New Suicide Squad #1 Rating: This comic book has a lot to prove. I'm not terribly excited about its beginnings so it's going to start at Rank #40. Prove to me I'm wrong, Suicide Squad! I so want to love you!

Fuck you, Comicsverse! I know you're trying to steal my intel! Stop reading my commentaries to see how reviews should be done! Ew, I'll defeat you yet, Comicsverse, my nemesis!

Stormwatch #30

Who are these people?

Stormwatch in the Magenta Timeline ended between Issue #29 and Issue #30. After Jenny Soul decided she didn't want a gigantic, all-powerful suppository shoved up her hoo-hole, the team sat around trying to figure out what to do next. That's when Lobo returned to the Universe's Pilot Light which was no longer guarded by the Crayola Timelords because they'd been written out of existence. Lobo lit his cigar with it and then promptly blew it out. Everything ceased to exist. Even Jim Starlin.

So now we're back in The New 52! Although we're all a bit more cynical now, aren't we? Because we've experienced a story outside of the 52 Universes that are said to exist in The New 52. We now know there's more to it than DC has been letting on. Could it be, we think, catching our breath and touching our genitals tenderly, that The New 52 is simply a smaller part of an...this thought comes upon us, almost unthinkable...infinite amount of universes?!

Not like that thought is really anything new. Most of the New 52 titles take place on New Earth but there are enough New Earth stories dealing with alternate timelines and alternate realities that the idea of 52 coherent universes doesn't even fucking matter. Rebooting their characters from time to time seems like a fine idea if you want to keep origins and the history of characters modern and timely. But trying to limit your universe so you can somehow keep tight control of the continuity of it? Forget it, DC. Stop fucking trying. Just let the writers write and let the fanboys point out how Green Lantern never could have been in three places at once last month. Who the fuck cares? As long as all three Green Lantern stories rock my bunghole, I'm fine with dyscontinuity! That's a combination of the words "dysfunctional," "continuity," and "incontinence."

Oh. So they're aware of their brief stint inside Jim Starlin's brain? That's too bad. I bet they dream of Warworld for weeks.

I had to check the rating on the front of the issue before I make my next prediction. The Rating is Teen+, so my next guess is that Apollo will mention how much bigger Midnighter's penis was in that other universe, so it wasn't all bad.

Even though Stormwatch has returned from Jim Starlin's brain-space, it hasn't been returned in the same condition it was loaned out. Stormwatch Headquarters is now called The Carrier and they're once again using Door Technology. Their computer banks even slyly reference The Authority, probably because they live in The Bleed and exist everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. Like cats.

That sounds like a sly allusion to the myth that gay guys will fuck anything! That's obviously a myth since they don't fuck vaginas.

I don't even know if that's a myth! I just made it up because I think Apollo really does want to double team this alien's head with Midnighter. He did say something about mounting it in the bedroom! Also, my friend Kenny, who is gay and thus represents all gay men, once told me a story about how he received oral sex from a stranger while walking through the park. That's almost like fucking an alien in the head!

The next panel which I'd failed to read before making all of my insensitive comments has Apollo mentioning that he brings back these trophies for research purposes. Now he can find out important things like how nice his penis feels inside of it and how it reacts to his super powered sun semen.

Oh! I also wanted to say that I really liked The Engineer's Hal Jordan comment. That was a nice touch there, Mr. Sterling. It probably also helps place the return of Stormwatch back into the New 52 timeline. But I don't follow that stuff very closely so it doesn't matter to me. I just hope Midnighter battles Dex-Starr this issue!

Currently Jack Hawksmoor is on sabbatical because he's lucky enough to have a job that offers sabbaticals. And Jenny Quantum is off trying to kiss a boy. He's kind of a depressed boy so I'm hoping he's the boy that now houses Etrigan the Demon. Her date is not going very well. Probably because he's full of inner torment and demon penises.

No you won't! You abandon your lovely street burrito as soon as you get the call to return to The Carrier! Dumb dumb!

As Jenny Quantum arrives in Los Angeles to battle a huge City Hall Gobot (it's obviously a Gobot as opposed to a Transformer since it still basically looks like a building when it turns into a robot), she describes Stormwatch and all its members. She even gives a little history because this book has been needing some kind of coherent explanation of the group that the readership can digest. Too bad it's happening in the last issue!

Stormwatch is currently on the run from Planetary The Shadow Cabinet, a group of three mysterious figures (plus the lost Fourth Man (so you know, nothing at all like Planetary!)), that were trying to control them. But Stormwatch didn't like being controlled, so they gave notice and disappeared into The Bleed. And now they're practically ready for a new series! A good series! A series written by Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea! No, wait. That series would suck because the team would constantly be fighting gigantic alien genitalia trying to use Earth as a toilet.

During the Battle Against L.A., The Engineer rehires The Projectionist to help keep Stormwatch a secret. But she doesn't rehire Martian Manhunter, so they can't erase people's memories, just people's video evidence. They'll just have to live with being a seemingly Urban Legend rather than complete unknowns.

The team eventually finds Jack Hawsmoor hugging some alien technology that's turning the city into monsters. Midnighter is knocked unconscious by the technology's defenses, so now it's all up to Jenny Quantum.

Her love of ponies?

Also, Jenny Quantum is going to be might surprised when she finds she has one more year to live than she realizes. Also, everybody has been lying to her and she's actually only thirteen.

Jenny claims "emotional blackmail" is the greatest weapon a fourteen thirteen year old girl has at her disposal. I don't know if that's exactly what she uses here since it seems like she mostly just uses the very real fact that she loves and cares for and relies on Hawksmoor and the other members of Stormwatch to break the alien technology's hold over Jack. Maybe she doesn't actually like any of them and she only cries crocodile tears. It's possible she's just using them all to gain more power which means more freedom so she can ditch their old asses. I think that might constitute emotional blackmail.

Stormwatch doesn't discover that the alien technology they just destroyed was put there by The Shadow Cabinet trying to trap them. Also, Adam One seems to now be a member of the Shadow Cabinet. So he's the Fourth Man although the panel with the Shadow Cabinet only shows three men. That means Jakita must be in the bathroom at the moment.

After Jenny Quantum uses door to return to her date, kiss the boy, and break up, a fleet of alien ships come out of The Bleed saying in their alien Runespeak Old Portugese [sic} language, "Finally, after all this time, we've found it...EARTH." But that's about as far as their invasion goes before Stormwatch finally, after thirty issues, begins acting like fucking Stormwatch!

Stormwatch is finally here! The end.

Stormwatch #30 Rating: I'm not changing the ranking at which I've already retired this comic book. But this issue is a good sign for a future return of Stormwatch. The team felt right here. The team was doing what they're supposed to do. And they fucking were getting along with each other. I don't mind if they squabble or get pissy with each other; heck, I demand that! But enough with issue after issue of physical violence between team members. I guess that's an old complaint though. I think the Fake Stormwatch got along okay in their alternate reality. But all the characters sucked in that reality, so I wouldn't have cared if they wound up punching each other in the face over there. Anyway, thanks for letting them go out on a good issue, Mr. Sterling.

I know it's Mr. Gates! I just like saying Mr. Sterling!