Convergence: Suicide Squad #2

Thanks, Comic Book Store, for giving me the most beat up cover in the batch!

Speaking of beat-up covers, I dug out my copy of Walking Dead #1! Wait, I phrased that wrong. I meant that the cover wasn't beat up at all. In fact, it looked flawless! When should I sell it? Has the show jumped the zombie shark yet? Oh man. I hope at some point Rick jumps a zombie shark to prove to some other gang of survivors that he's the coolest. And then the term "jumping the shark" would have to begin meaning the opposite of what it means now!

I was going to reread the Baxter edition of The New Teen Titans from the eighties next but I think I need a break from that decade. Instead, I'll be heading into the mid-nineties and rereading one of my favorite series of all-time, House of Secrets. I went digging around the Portland Comic Book Hoarder Store, Future Dreams, and found issues #1-5 packed up for ten dollars. I picked it up because my run of House of Secrets begins with #6. I have the trade collecting the first five issues but now I have the complete collection! Which isn't even worthy of kissing the feet of Walking Dead #1. In terms of value! I love House of Secrets more than Walking Dead #1!

This issue begins with a "NOW" tag but Amanda isn't lying on the floor bleeding out, so it's at least prior to the events which began Convergence: Suicide Squad #1. Frank Tieri is just trying to be confusing now. Unless now is twenty four hours ago. Then he was confusing yesterday.

Can fat people not turn their heads? Or open their eyes?

I totally don't know the answer to that question in the last caption. At least, I can open my eyes and turn my neck so I guess I'm not Amanda Waller fat! I mean, I'm so thin that if this were a picture of me shooting a gun, I would be staring at the floor because I'm too skinny and weak to hold up my head.

The "now" part of the story lasted two pages simply so Frank Tieri could get a splash page featuring dozens of costumed characters. Supposedly this makes the reader want to read the rest of the book. It's too bad the page following the one featuring dozens of characters is a scene from a middle school conflict at lunch. We've got Captain Boomerang making fun of other villains' names (not that he doesn't have a good reason for it! It's just that it paints the middle school fist fight mood). Bane retorting with the scathing "No, you!" elementary playground comeback. Deadshot and Deathstroke in a half-hearted fist fight (it must be half-hearted or Deadshot would be dead before the first panel. It's a fistfight! Deathstroke wins! If Deadshot were to win this fight, the brawl would have been over before Deadshot was within 100 yards of the room). Somebody calls somebody else "garbage." The somebody else claims they aren't garbage at all! I think the cover was misprinted. It should have read Convergence: Degrassi Junior Suicide Squad.

The conflict between Old Suicide Squad and New Revamped Flashier To Hide The Poor Writing Abilities Of Frank Tieri Suicide Squad happens aboard Kingdom Come Lex Luthor's ship which is headed to New Oa. The ship crashes through the side of it and the exciting battle begins!

No, really! It's going to be super exciting! Because the combatants are Deadshot and Deathstroke and Cyborg Superman and Bronze Tiger and Captain Boomerang and Poison Ivy and Bane and Count Vertigo and Black Manta and Amanda Waller and Kingdom Come Lex Luthor and Kingdom Come Hawkman and Kingdom Come Kid Flash and Kingdom Come Atom and Kingdom Come Power Girl and Kingdom Come Batman and Kingdom Come Speedy and loads of other Kingdom Come people that I don't recognize due to my ignorance or Tom Mandrake's style! It's practically a Royal Rumble! If you're not super excited about this match-up, maybe you should be reading The Importance of Being Earnest. I believe that features a tea party and cucumber sandwiches! Dullsville, baby!

Let's see Oscar Wilde write dialogue like that!

During the fight, Cyborg Superman takes over Kingdom Come Robotman and Kingdom Come Alloy (unless that would just be Alloy?). He immediately begins using them to attack other members of the Suicide Squad. But since Amanda Waller insisted on being part of the action instead of overseeing the group to make sure none of them did anything stupid like this, she doesn't notice and therefore cannot blow the nano-bomb in his face before he's able to deactivate it. This is why Generals don't insist on fighting in the front lines, Amanda! Do your stupid job correctly next time.

Star Sapphire takes it upon herself to become a nano-bomb since Amanda wasn't doing her job correctly. She wraps herself around Cyborg Superman and is all, "This is for ruining my business and dropping the stock prices through the floor and making me meet with the stupid fucking shareholders that don't actually do anything for anybody except make the world a worse place!" Then she blows up taking out nearly everybody. But not Green Lantern! Or Lex Luthor! Or Captain Boomerang! Because they're too cynical to be knocked unconscious by a stupid love explosion!

It's hard for a writer of average intelligence to come up with the motivation for a genius.

Speaking of geniuses, did anybody watch that week long 500 Questions game show? Was nobody at all surprised that the majority of the contestants were nerdy white males? Not because of any inherent sexism in casting! But because it's nerdy white males that generally need some sort of claim to being a genius. So however the casting call for the show went out (I'm assuming some kind of push via the internet? And I'm sure there are "game show agents" nowadays too (which nerdy white males who think of themselves as geniuses would acquire!)), I'm confident that 95% of the people who replied were nerdy white males.

I love game shows so I watched the entire thing. I also love train wrecks which helped me to watch the entire thing. Because there is nothing train wreckier than nerds (actual nerds. Not "I love things in pop culture so therefore I'm a nerd" nerds!) trying to act the way (and I'm not judging anybody as better or worse here! It's just that people are different and have different strengths and weaknesses) they think socially competent people act.

The show claimed to be the hardest quiz show ever because it doesn't have multiple choice or lifelines. But seriously? Hardest? It might be difficult approaching it from an endurance point of view. But contestants only have to answer 166 or 167 questions correctly (what am I? A genius? You do the math betterer!) to make it through the entire game show. Plus they get to shout out multiple answers for ten seconds hoping that one of their guesses is correct. That's not hard at all! The main thing going against a contestant is that over time, the likelihood that they will get three questions in a row that they can't answer increases. So to get through to the 500th question is difficult but it's not like they actually have to answer 500 questions correctly. Geniuses my asshole!

Oh! I was distracted so I forgot to mention that the person putting the bullet in Lex Luthor's head in the panel above was Captain Boomerang. That's why I mentioned him as one of the people too cynical to be felled by the Love Explosion.

Captain Boomerang discovered recently that he had cancer and that it was probably due to one of the Suicide Squad missions he went on. So he decided to screw up the mission and take the entire team (plus The Wall!) with him. Captain Boomerang tries to shoot Amanda in the head as well because he forgot his name is not Captain Gun. But Green Lantern stops the bullet and declares the battle over. Kingdom Come has defeated the Suicide Squad! Amanda Waller gets to live!

No wait. Scratch that. They all lose and they all die. Suicide Squad!

The "whatever that was" Amanda mentions was the earthquake. Which somehow shook the floating city of New Oa because Frank Tieri was mandated by editorial to include it in his story. Plus, you know, it's more like a Telos orgasmic shudder which probably rattled the atmosphere as well.

Convergence: Suicide Squad #2 Ranking: I suppose it's fitting that Amanda Waller gets to commit suicide and destroy the entire Squad on the last mission. At least, it's fitting for a pitch meeting. "Picture this! The final issue of Suicide Squad! Amanda Waller...wait for it...commits suicide!" Gasps! Shocked utterances! Accountants scribbling on pads trying to add up all the money about to be made! Frank Tieri carried from the room on the shoulders of his superiors! Champagne corks flying across the room! Cocaine being snorted in every bathroom! Female and male hookers fucking everything that moves! Meth being cooked in the snack room! Russian Roulette being played in the lobby! Jizz flowing in rivers down the halls! A new age of decadence has begun and thy name is The DC Age! Four Suicides out of Ten.

Divergence: Aquaman
"A new look and a new direction as Aquaman finds himself on the run and Atlantis wants him dead!"

Fucking dickholes. Cullen Bunn on another book? Can somebody help this guy win the lottery so he stops turning all of the comic books I'm reading into boring, trite bullshit filled to the brim with horrible Narration Boxes?!

Oh wait! He's trying something different in Aquaman! No Narration Boxes! Maybe this will work out after all.

Aquaman is being hunted by Atlantis (as the "Here's how we've made the comic book worse!" blurb mentioned) because, I suppose, everybody was pissed off at him for finding his mother.

Oh. He doesn't need Narration Boxes because he talks to himself now. I hope he's talking to somebody via radio or else he's gone nuts.

The Atlanteans attack Aquaman with space ships because I don't know. Whatever. But look at this! Here we go again! Has the comic book reading world been asking for Bad-Ass Aquaman again?

This ain't your father's Aquaman anymore! Actually, being that teenagers and young twenty-somethings are probably reading this, this actually was your father's Aquaman for awhile.

Of course, Mera is hunting him down. I guess he finally slept with Ya'wara and she's pissed.

I hate this comic book so much already.

Convergence: Suicide Squad #1

This is a worse Squad than the current New 52 Squad!

I suppose this Suicide Squad is somewhat believable if all the members have bought into the supposition that they are fighting for their very existence. Otherwise why the fuck would Cyborg Superman be on the team? I'm fairly certain a nano-bomb implanted into his neck either isn't going to blow up when detonated, or isn't going to be implanted for long, or isn't going to really hurt him much when it does blow anyway. And, as I've said before, why the fuck would Deathstroke be on the team unless he was getting paid a ton of money? And isn't one of the selling points of the Squad to the government that it's a cheap method of solving politically problematic problems?

Also, Amanda Waller isn't fat enough! It needed to be said!

I actually don't care if Amanda had suddenly lost a lot of weight during the year under the Dome. The biggest grievance I have against The New 52 Amanda Waller is that she was turned into an action hero. That undercuts what makes her interesting by taking away her real power which is her tenacity, stubbornness, and strength of will. Instead of facing down super villains because she was just that bad ass and threatening, The New 52 Amanda faces down super villains because she can actually physically kick their ass. I don't know about y'all but that takes a little something special away from her character that I've sorely missed.

The issue begins with Amanda Waller dying. Which means it will soon go to 24 hours earlier. Because comic book writers don't truly understand the term "in media res." While Waller is dying, she's speaking with Kingdom Come Green Lantern about how she failed. Then a mysterious person with a gun appears and shoots somebody. Probably Green Lantern since the reader is expected to believe the person has betrayed Amanda and is shooting her.

Oh, excuse me. It's forty-eight hours earlier and Toyman is having dinner with Floyd Lawton.

How is Lawton supposed to find the real Superman if he's not flying around in red and blue?

While the deal is going down, Planet Brainiac removes the dome and a guy at a nearby table turns into Atomic Skull. That causes Toyman to try to back out of the deal since he could spend his million dollars on a better assassin than Deadshot. But that just gets Toyman shot in the head and killed. Toyman didn't die on a mission for the Suicide Squad but it's nice to see at least one C-lister die in a Suicide Squad comic book! That New 52 Squad just can't seem to pull the trigger. But what do you expect from a team that stacks itself with characters you know DC Comics will never kill.

With the dome down, General Lane calls up Amanda Waller to get the Suicide Squad back in operation. The first thing I notice is that Tom Mandrake has no idea how to draw fat people. I'm not a fan of his art in general. I remember reading Ostrander's The Spectre way back when and really being disappointed by the art, even though it kind of works in that book.

The Suicide Squad's current target is Kingdom Come Green Lantern. Surprise! He's made a city called New Oa floating over the Metropolis of Kingdom Come. That's where the Suicide Squad needs to attack him. Or maybe they can just approach him and say, "Hey! If you can make this, can't you make a ship to take everybody out of here? And could you maybe get Magog to strangle Planet Brainiac and/or shoot him in the face with his stupid gun?"

I'd like to amend my previous statement about Tom Mandrake's art! "Tom Mandrake has no idea how to draw fat people."

I know, I know! It's his artistic style! Well, I don't like it! But I'm not saying other people might not love it. One of the reasons I have a hard time commenting on the art is because I love a lot of styles of art that other people can't stand. And some styles that I hate, other people love. Although it's nice when an artist truly can't draw because then I get to bash Marat Mychaels to my heart's content!

Amanda Waller insists on going on the mission which is just fucking stupid. Fuck you, Tieri. Amanda going on a suicidal mission is stupid. Unless the main part of her plan is to be a victim so that they can catch Green Lantern unaware, then this is bullshit. So I'm going to believe that Tieri knows what he's doing even though he has done nothing in The New 52 to prove that he can write a decent story. If he has, I don't remember it and that alone is proof enough for me that he hasn't.

Carol Ferris is also going to go on the mission as Star Sapphire. The other members of the team? Look at the cover! Bane! Black Manta! Deathstroke! But those are the new members! The old members are the ones I'm excited to read about! Count Vertigo! Deadshot! Bronze Tiger! Poison Ivy! And Captain Boomerang!

I hope Deadshot kills Count Vertigo while on the away mission!

Cyborg Superman is also on the team.

Hey, Sian Mandrake! Why'd you make Carol black?! Yes, that's supposed to be Carol in the second panel.

Meanwhile Oracle is reaching out to Kingdom Come Lex Luthor to see if he'll betray his world. He's up for it. I suppose that means he's the guy with the gun at the beginning of the comic book?

Convergence: Suicide Squad #1 Rating: Look. Any version of the Suicide Squad after John Ostrander's version is going to suck Superman's balls. So I didn't have high hopes for their return in Convergence. At least putting a mediocre writer on the book kept me from getting my hopes up. And now I wasn't disappointed! It really wasn't much of a story to critique anyway. The best part was Deadshot and Toyman's scene at the beginning. The rest was just pre-game bullshit and player introductions. I don't mind if next issue is bad. I just want to see a lot of characters die because this story doesn't really matter, right?