Suicide Squad #22 - Viva Las Something

We open this issue with a shocking revelation...

Harley Quinn is again a something in a terrible costume with blank eyes on the cover!
This month it's some sort of Vegas drag queen and/or clown whore.

Nice purpley tones here with swirlies action up top for foreshadowing the villain and King Shark maybe doing something. Deadshot looks funny. Well, funnier. He also looks like he's taking an oath or something. I've heard a lot of that goes on in Vegas. 

Panning over Vegas there's some tourist information helpfully posted around Jnr being smacked down by Waller. Someone's doing some hypnotism and they've gotta be stopped! Again, not uncommon in Vegas. The source is confidential!! Or hasn't been written in or thought about much. Again, not uncommon in Ve-. Suicide Squad. 

Anyway, Waller tells Jnr to shut up again while Deadshot and Harley gamble in disguise. That is to say, Deadshot gambles like an ordinary person while Harley clings to him in oversize gauntlets and aforementioned clown whore. She also spouts things such as 'Like a boss!' and 'tiger blood' which is a reference so dated it took me a moment to place it. When were these comics written?! 

Naturally as only one of them blends in with the ordinary folk and the other looks like the serial murderer as seen over the news a while ago, a security person at the casino asks them to come with him. Have they been cheating? Winning too much? I couldn't say, it's the first freaking panel and they're already being escorted out!

Unknown Soldier Boy takes out some random fixing up a suspicious billboard. What's suspicious is that it seems to have too much clothes on for Vegas but hey. Everyone is being all civil and team worky. I don't like it. It's weird. 

Harley tries so hard to explain to Waller what Deadshot is doing to the casino dude like a good trained dog. I get the impression that this was a quick response mission so where did the time and resources come from to make her totally un-necessary drag queen attire? The bare minimum of 'information' is given up by the casino guy for some reason, and Deadshot gets all angsty passive aggressive over the phone about his Waller torture. Jnr interrupts with some random catch up from last issue for no apparent reason anyone cares about and Waller again tells him to shut up. Hostile work environment FTW! 

The other bad guys have some sort of super sad super secret meeting and Harley takes off the whore helmet. That is.. the head-dress comes off and magically so does the fur lining her oversize man gauntlets and corset lacing, plus her corset lacing goes back to normal (AKA medium skank).

King Shark leaps out of a plane that Cheetah pilots and seems to be aiming at the people with spirit animals. Well that's fair. Like only having girls fight girls and so on. Fair but stupid and dumb.

So is Cheshire. What sort of dialogue is that? 'You are smart for a human. Huh huh huh. I'm a kitty! Meow!!'  So what's Cheshire's 52 back story now? Did I blink and miss it?

King Shark has an even better line. 'My name is Trixie and I like to party.' A box below him repeats the joke to make it funnier. Maybe by better I meant worse. Something like this would probably work in the Secret Six, but just seems so lame and out of place here. Especially when King Shark had no idea what he was jumping into and after spouting out stupid action phrases goes into good guy mode and tried to talk the 'Mother' out of it for her own good. 

Is it just me or is King Shark like ten times bigger than usual? Anyway, the team keeps being a team and time goes a lot faster as they don't waste panels on explaining crap that no one cares about like the soldier doing some switch work and Waller telling them all to destroy things. 

Deadshot likes to make sure that his targets are anarchists.. because nothing says anarchy like a blind dude in a diaper, a chimp, a circus strong man and a few dozen coked out models. I mean, without a quick check why, they could be killing the entire backstage crew of a circus act. No, they're pretty responsible these two scamps. No, Harley's swinging a monkey around. Not cool. 

More puns! Deadshot prepares himself for a toboggan ride and Harley finds a way to make it into a retarded sex joke or something. Deadshot doesn't know and I don't know. I doubt Harley even knows. It's just supposed to sound sordid. 

So they jump out the window and slide down the pyramid, another stupid Tarzan reference - of course it's from Harley. Aha! The billboards didn't affect her because she's already insane! The soldier is fine because he totally wears glass eyeballs... or stolen ones. And Deadshot... he likes boobs. 

Which is pretty impressive because only the soldier has really seen the billboard. 

Soldier, Harley and Deadshot rendezvous at the bottom where there's a massive clay face made out of half digested suicide bodies. Perhaps not being at the stomping end of a massive blob of dead isn't the smartest idea but hey. Some idiot gives Harley some ammo and she yells excitedly that she has no idea why she's doing this. You and me both. Deadshot's bored but wants to keep it busy. Oh, you and your buzzwords. 

Deadshot calls on Waller to stop Cheetah from being mean to him. No nano bomb explosion, and Waller tells everyone to save Deadshot because he totally can't be brought back to life or anything. King Shark chews his way to punch town, and *now* Waller cares about the collateral damage.  Deadshot acts less like his age, whining about karma and how dying hurts, man!

Waller almost smiles as the beast it shot down, probably because there was less dialogue then Jnr pops up and makes a thoughtful statement. Waller is straight up - noooope, you psycho! Which of course totally helps the situation. A bunch of umming and aahing scientists appear and break the bad news that maybe just maybe the super life revival potion isn't infallible and will totally kill you all! 

Well it's about time. 

Still, it was nice to see a straightforward issue with no wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff going on. A lot of work to be done on the dialogue... ESPECIALLY Harley Quinn. I know I keep saying it, but I'm going to call it as I see it. The art was fairly consistent, except for Harley's stupid costume mishaps but when is that new? 

The lock down breach from last issue is glossed over, as is the injuries and the deal and where this info came from. Again, I wasn't expecting coherent answers.