Suicide Squad Most Wanted: El Diablo and Boomerang #2

Parasite stars in way more comic books than he should because he's an easy villain to use if you don't want to think of a specific way to negate the powers of the protagonist.

The El Diablo Commentary!
• When you're in a hurry and you accidentally restart your laptop instead of shutting it down, what do you do?
A. Smash it with a hammer.
B. Smash it with a brick.
C. Kill yourself.
D. Burn everything.
E. Wait patiently because you're a good person who everybody fucking hates because how does it not make you instantly furious, you pathetic worm?!

• You may have guessed that I recently restarted my computer instead of shutting it down. Shouldn't the computer at least ask you if you're sure you want to restart before simply restarting? I mean, the two choices are right on top of each other! They're practically the same option when you live a swingingly chill lifestyle like I do! I can't be that accurate when shutting down my laptop! What am I? A boy scout?! I'm more the kind of person who throws a tomato at the keyboard and hopes it hits the off button as I stroll out of the house like motherfucking Jesus Christ!

• That was blasphemy, wasn't it? Not the part where I compared myself to Jesus! No, the part where I swore but it sounded like I was implying that Jesus fucks his mother. Although, I mean, is that really far off? Jesus and God are kind of the same person and God made Mary pregnant which sort of means Jesus made Mary pregnant which, if you said it crudely, might be something like "Jesus fucked his mother." You can't argue with logic! I mean, you can but why would you want to? Logic is a good thing!

• El Diablo has recently left the Suicide Squad to be part of a less exciting government black ops organization called Checkmate. You know they're less exciting because they based their entire organization around the game of chess. I know some of you are thinking, "But Tess, you ignorant slut! Chess is an exciting game that pits two people's minds against each other because luck does not factor in! It's all skill and mental acuity!" Of course, those same types of people thinking that will probably give you a fucking impossibly hard time if you want to take back a move in a casual game immediately after letting go of the piece. So, in a way, they really don't want to play against somebody playing their best. They really want you to make early errors so they can destroy you and push their glasses up on their nose and snort in derision at your feeble mental abilities.

• El Diablo is a horsey piece. That's a great piece in chess because it can leap over other pieces. In my Chess House Rules, you have to roll a six-sided die when the horse moves over one of your own pieces. On a six, the piece is trampled to death.

• El Diablo is on a mission inside of LexCorp Tower which has to be scrapped because he's run into Parasite. That's on the first page! Which means I still have like thirty-nine more pages to go! I've already been at this for an hour. Stupid internet! I'm always getting distracted.

How is this a proper response to that?! I guess he's trying to say "You can't always get what you don't want."

• The person speaking out of Parasite's face is Amanda Waller. Somehow El Diablo recognizes that it's her. I guess Amanda is constantly telling everybody in Belle Reve how much people in hell want ice water. I would think getting ice water would be the last thing on their minds. I would probably want my mouth not to be full of shit and maybe to be ass raped by demons with smaller and less barbed penises.

• Amanda is using some Jervis Tetch technology that enables her to control Parasite as if she were wearing him like a suit. For some reason, she doesn't want Parasite remembering this mission which is why she's taken control. You know, she's such a control freak, why doesn't she do this on every mission? Just stack five or six mind-control helmets on her head and then control the whole Squad!

• Amanda uses Parasite's powers (unless it's the Jervis Tetch Tech since I've never known Parasite to have psychic powers (unless he just recently drained them from somebody (like maybe the scientist at LexCorps!))) to infiltrate El Diablo's mind. She wants information on Checkmate and their recent goings-on. The way Amanda reads minds is by projecting a ghostly version of herself inside El Diablo's mind and then El Diablo creates a version of himself inside his mind so that they can stroll through his memories. That doesn't seem overly complicated.

• The original El Diablo winds up following Amanda and El Diablo through El Diablo's memories. That's overly complicating an aspect of this story that was already overly complicated!

• Once the stroll down memory whatever is done, Waller learns more about El Diablo than she expected.

El Diablo has an Old West DC character living inside his chest who emerges to punch people in the face just before they kill El Diablo?

• After putting Parasite down with his Cowboy Chest Punch, El Diablo meets a woman named Azucar. That's either "Sugar" or "Help!" or maybe "Rice" in Spanish. She's dressed like a Day of the Dead sugar skull so it could be any of those.

• Azucar tells El Diablo that both Checkmate and the Suicide Squad are using him. I expect him to say, "Duh!" Instead, he quits Checkmate and joins with Azucar to find out the truth! I don't know exactly what truth they're going to discover. I'm pretty sure the main truth is that El Diablo is a criminal with fire powers who people just want to use for their own ends. But I suppose there's another truth about why Checkmate needed El Diablo to catch the invisible metahuman Xolotl.

• El Diablo asks Arroz how they're going to get out of LexCorps without being caught by the Metropolis police. She says, "We have to play dead." He says, "I can't die." Who the fuck cares if you can die or not?! Can you pretend you're dead?! She said you have to play dead, not be dead! Fucking idiot. Anyway, Ayuda does her magic killing thing and the first half of this issue ends.

The El Diablo Ranking!
0! I know I don't have to believe everything that happens in a comic book can really happen but sometimes comic books do such outrageous things that I dismiss them outright. That whole bit with Amanda Waller walking through El Diablo's memories while being followed by a cowboy who wasn't part of the memory was too much for me! I did like when Lazarus Lane popped out of El Diablo's chest to punch Parasite in the face though. I have no fucking idea what that was about but any time a DC character from their western genre can get in on the action, I'm all aboard. Except when he's wandering around in somebody else's memories. That was dumb.

The Captain Boomerang Commentary!
• These comic books that are two comic books in one are a pain in the ass to do commentaries on. I don't have this long of an attention span!

• Captain Boomerang has been drafted by some kids living in a South American jungle to help them overthrow El Jaguar. That shouldn't be too hard since that was why he was there in the first place with the Suicide Squad. It's just now he gets to do it with kids instead of insane monsters micromanaged by an even bigger, more insane monster.

• While Boomerang plans the mission with his new team consisting of Breaker, Volt, Wave, and Boost, Amanda Waller tells the Suicide Squad that they need to go back to South America to rescue Captain Boomerang. I was sort of hoping they wouldn't show up again until the end of the story. How dare they take away any of Digger's limelight? This is his solo story!

• Remember Lime and Light? I still can't believe DC killed of Lime before Light. I'd much rather have had some idiot running around named Lime.

• Breaker screws up Captain Boomerang's plan to sneak in and assassinate El Jaguar. That's what happens when teenagers don't follow the orders of adults! I know as a teenager, you might be thinking, "But who would think a drunk, sort-of racist asshole like Captain Boomerang would know what he's doing? Fuck that! I'm going my own way!" And to that, I say, "Yeah. That's probably the right choice 99 out of 100 times. But this time, Breaker fucked up! She should have listened to the adult!"

• Anyway, now Captain Boomerang and the kids wind up in a huge battle that will probably burn about five or six pages. That's good because I never have much to write about comic book brawls.

What a jerk! Doesn't he know what a boomerang is? You have to dodge it twice before you start acting like a big shot!

• The epilogue features Breaker exploding El Jaguar and the Squad returning to pick up Captain Boomerang. And it's cute and adorable and just makes me love Captain Boomerang even more. Even Katana, who I've loved for as long as I've pretended Ann Nocenti didn't ruin her, has a cute moment with him. And then it's over! The story is over! So I guess Issue #3 will be El Diablo and Somebody Else. Unless Captain Boomerang is just going to begin another story. I'd be super cool with that.

The Captain Boomerang Ranking!
+2! Digger Harkness is one of the greatest comic book characters ever created by a creator in an act of creation. And he lives up to his greatness in this story. Also he's kind of dead in the regular Suicide Squad as of Issue #2. I'm still hoping it was a great big fake-out! Maybe I should read Issue #3 out of order so I can see how Digger survived being heat visioned by General Zod!

Suicide Squad Most Wanted: El Diablo and Boomerang #1

I'm sad that DC has decided to lose Captain Boomerang's rank. Now he's just a normal, civilian shlub like the Marvel version.

The Commentary on El Diablo!!
Hopefully these Suicide Squad Most Wanted books won't just be about the members of the team who have plot immunity to death. I mean, I know El Diablo died recently and then died in the movie as well, but he's the kind of guy who will almost certainly escape from Hell to return as a bigger bad-ass than before. But this is where comic book companies don't think enough outside of the box because their main goal seems to be creating a character popular enough to sell a book no matter how shitty it is written. But they have an opportunity here to have a really exciting story about a villain who gets caught up in crime way over his or her head, winds up in Belle Reve, and thinks maybe he or she can take the chance to join the Squad and turn his or her life around. It could be a real tragedy where we learn all about the villain's humanity and missteps and his or her chance at redemption. And then he or she could die. And I don't think he or she should die heroically but cowardly and unredeemed and in a way that shows the character we have been conditioned to root for actually was a complete piece of garbage all along.

Maybe that'll be El Diablo's story!

Here's how the story begins! Guess who's going to die!

Zoomax doesn't die yet! That would be a waste of a character with a stupid name! I'm sure he'll be a thorn in El Diablo's side which will be his downfall because this isn't Suicide Squad Most Wanted: Zoomax and Boomerang #1. Although if it were, I might be more excited about it! Who is Zoomax?! He's bound to die, right? I'm so nervous! But since his name isn't on the cover, I'm not nervous at all and I know he's going to die. Although I'm still curious about who he is. Maybe.

The chaplain at Belle Reve tells El Diablo that God is pleased by the works El Diablo is doing for the greater good. How the fuck does he know?! If he's heard from God, he's crazy and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these convicts. If he isn't crazy then he hasn't heard from God and he's sinning just by presuming to know the will of God! The chaplain tells El Diablo that he can leave Belle Reve at any time. I don't know why he says this without checking with Amanda Waller first. Does this chaplain think he can go over her head? Maybe he's going to be the one who dies. Probably at El Diablo's hands.

Amanda Waller, of course, denies El Diablo his request to be sent home. Since she has all the power, she offers El Diablo the choice to remain locked up or to go on one last mission. Of course if she has all the power, where's the guarantee that the one last mission will be the one last mission? I mean, aside from the guarantee that everybody on the mission will die! That's probably the only way Amanda will let El Diablo go. And it seems like the choice she's making because she's sending him to lead a team of new recruits who have less discipline than Captain Boomerang.

Amanda sends in the team El Diablo would have been leading to beat his ass. A guy named Behemoth and a guy named Leviathan. El Diablo is only saved by the interference of an agent from Checkmate come to pull him out for one of their missions.

El Diablo on the Freedom Fighters? Why not? They need somebody to light the fireworks.

El Diablo is offered the chance to join Checkmate or to just go home. The issue is called "Home Again" so I bet he chooses home and plays Xbox for the next five issues. Or maybe he'll go home and change his mind when he realizes there aren't any real great opportunities with a record and face tattoos. In any event, if he joins Checkmate, he gets to pretend he's doing something good when in reality he'll be just another cog in systemic oppression!

El Diablo does choose to go free. But he'll be back when he realizes his life is shit and nobody really wants him around!

Especially this guy: Bloodletter! Does that mean he writes letters in blood?

Bloodletter is protecting the neighborhood for a fee. But he's the guy everybody needs protecting from! So I would say he's not earning his money. Also, I think he's a Twi'lek. It doesn't really matter because he's soon dead.

No, Bloodletter lives to write more letters in blood another day. But he is thrown in prison by Checkmate (probably Belle Reve, right?!) and El Diablo finally accepts their offer because he burned his aunt and uncle's home down, and nobody else wanted to see him. Poor baby.

The El Diablo Review!
I like the introduction of Checkmate, especially since El Diablo will eventually see they're just as bad as Amanda Waller but in their own way. I'm sure however his time ends with them (probably piss of Uncle Sam by burning his beard away), he'll be sent back to Amanda at Belle Reve. But this time he'll probably be there for a few consecutive life sentences, just to show him that he's powerless against the system and that he shouldn't have deigned to hope he could have a good life. At least, I kind of hope it's a sad ending. I need some sad endings in my life sometimes. I'm sick of everything always having to work out! And if things work out even for characters in the Suicide Squad, where am I supposed to get my depressing fiction? Indie comics?!

The Commentary on Captain Boomerang!
John Ostrander made Captain Boomerang one of my all time favorite characters. When I threw my first gaming convention, I really wanted to be Captain Boomerang for the Saturday Night Costume Party. But since I really didn't want to try to keep up a terrible Australian accent all night, I went with my second favorite, Captain Cold. That probably worked out better because I was able to decorate the house like an ice cave. I'm not sure what I would have done for a Captain Boomerang headquarters. Litter the floor with crumpled cans of Fosters? It's Australian for beer, Mate!

This story is called "What Comes Around Goes Around" and, I mean, come on! That's clever, right?! It's so clever that it's probably been used before! The real example of clever is finding something to say that is just a few steps off the beaten path. You don't want to get too far from the path or people will get completely lost by your cleverness and then it's not really clever. At that point, it's probably genius. But you don't want genius when we're talking comic books! Ain't a lot of genii reading comic books! That's the plural of genius, right? If not, my point still stands because I doubt there's even on genie reading comic books. So no way will there be two! You can find something to say that's on the same path as everybody else and still be clever, of course. But that kind of clever is a bit too broad for my liking. That's the kind of clever that makes not-that-clever-but-almost-clever people say things like, "Oh! I wish I thought of that!" Or they'll even nod to their boyfriend and say, "I was just saying that last night! Wasn't I just saying that last night?!" That kind of clever isn't for me! Come to think of it, the just a few steps of the beaten path clever isn't really for me either. I like to find my clever deep in the tangles of blackberry bushes where people think, "Why the fuck is he wading through that shit? He's an idiot, right?" Or am I a genius?! I'll let time and my grandmother determine that!

Boomerang has wandered away from the rest of the Squad to have a beer so Deadshot says one of those right-in-the-middle-of-the-path clever things I was talking about. Basically he's all, "If you're not dead, I'll kill you myself!" But he won't. Unless somebody pays him scads and scads of cash to do so. I'm really getting a lot of use out of "scads" lately! I'm using it like a two-bit whore who I've told "No suck just fuck!" so that I can actually get me some penetration action! Actually, what I was going to say before I thought up the on-the-path cleverness of comparing something to a whore--total mainstream bro humor, dude!--I was going to say you'd think I was renting the word and trying to get as many uses out of it as possible before I had to take it back to that librarian who wasn't very sexy, what with the ponytail and glasses and huge fucking warts and all.

The Squad (consisting of Flag, Deadshot, Harley, Killer Croc, Boomerang, and Katana) is after somebody named El Jaguar.

I'm glad Harley chooses to strike sexy poses while battling. As a male, I wouldn't be able to get through twenty pages of comic books if I couldn't pop at least a couple of boners.

Harley looking like she's casually crowdsurfing while spilling her guts to a psychotherapist (Psycho the Rapist! Fitting? Probably. Fucking mind rapers!) is actually pretty realistic if you think about it. I mean, if you think about it compared to this bit where Boomerang saves Deadshot's life:

I don't know what kind of frictionless grip this guy has but I can guarantee you he's never pleased himself or another man in his entire life.

When I criticize something, you don't have to automatically assume I didn't like what I criticized. That's just making asses out of yourself and yourself when you think of yourself as me. Leave me out of your assuming, is what I'm saying. What I'm also saying is, why are there so many blackberry brambles out here? I mean, what I'm also saying is I totally thought that bit with the boomerang knocking the gun around was super cool! Totally don't care if it's ridiculous because I'm sure in the right circumstances, it could totally happen. Also a woman could fall in a vat of chemicals that bleach her skin white and she doesn't die and a katana exists that can suck the souls of those it kills. Comic books are the best!

Plus, whenever I read a passage that destroys all the credulity in the universe, I just remember that I once read a comic book where Dick Grayson rides a motorcycle up the side of a skyscraper.

The Squad is overrun by metahumans they weren't expecting and Waller calls for their retreat. Did she forget about the "suicide" in "Task Force X"? Oh wait. Okay, I get it. Um, she sends El Diablo in a helicopter to pull the other jerks out of the jerkfire. He's all, "Checkmate is the best, motherfuckers!"

I wonder if Deadshot has ever missed a shot because he was rolling his eyes at something Boomerang or Harley said? I know I rolled my eyes for two weeks straight when Harley Quinn called her vagina a clown car way back in an early New 52 issue of Suicide Squad. I also jerked off thinking about it. So much seltzer water!

I wish Bronze Tiger were part of this team again. Why couldn't he have been in the movie?

The Squad escapes but they forget to pack Boomerang up on the helicopter. Now he's stuck on El Jaguar's turf until the team comes back to finish the mission. Or until they come back to find Digger has finished the mission for them.

I love you, Digger Harkness.

I liked the line in the previous panel but that was before Digger said in a panel to follow, "What you people--Mexicans or Mexican'ts?" Of course, they're South American. I think that means they're not Mexican? I don't know why the little lady who tells Boomer they're South Americans isn't all, "We're Chilean!" or "We're Brazilian!" or "We're, um, one of the other countries! Argentinian, I think!"

Instead she's all, "Check out my belly in this belly shirt while I do equations on this calculator, yo!"

I like his sorta-racist attitude! It's funny! Don't get me wrong! I'm not racist but seeing Digger act racist when he desperately needs help because he doesn't know how to be anything but who he is is funny! I'm totally not the kind of person to laugh at jokes about black guys having penises as big as bread boxes. At least not when there are any holier-than-thou jerkos in earshot!

One other thing I love about Digger that I can't not mention. He's got some great looking boots. I'd suck a pretty big dick for boots like that. Who wouldn't? That's like a win/win situation!

Boomerang is captured by a few of El Jaguar's metahuman thugs but not before putting up a fight that makes me proud to call Digger my favorite. He also stumbles upon the fact that these metahumans are under some kind of mind control due to the armor they're wearing. But, anyway, like I said, he's captured. And he's about to die when Calculator Girl saves the day! Actually, her name is Breaker and she does this thing where she...well she kind of...I mean her body goes all...oh, just read the stupid comic book. Or look up Breaker on the Internet!

For saving Boomerang's life, she expects him to help her kill El Jaguar. It seems he has some kind of Nowhere program going on and Breaker is the South American Red Robin trying to save all of the children.

The Captain Boomerang Review!
This was a good comic of goodness. It was so good and exciting. It was full of goods. If you like good things, you will like the Boomerang half of this comic book. And you might like the El Diablo half too! But how should I know? It's not like you're me! You're probably the opposite of me. You might be one of those people who make sour faces at vaguely racist jokes even when they're made by amoral characters who are just too ignorant to know anybody. You might be one of those people who say really stupid things like, "Saying it's the character is no defense for a writer because the writer had a choice to not make that character a total jerk! Why can't writers make all the characters awesome? Just make some of them bad awesome but they still know better than to say the T-slur or the Q-insult or the F-bomber!" If you are, you might like this comic book in a secret way! The kind of way where you're titillated a little bit at the badness of it but if it were a Tumblr post, you would never "like" it because one of your more-holier-than-even-you friends might notice and call you out on it and call you problematic or--even worse!--gross! But, I mean, this was good, so you'll probably like it even if you are a better citizen than I am!