New52 Grifter vs Suicide Squad

So for a change of pace, thought I might take a look back at the earlier incarnations of the New52 Suicide Squad and their tentative steps into the world of cross overs. I am not a Grifter fan, in case you were wondering. I don't know anything about him apart from his cheap Spidey-Poole costume, fondness for guns and a code name that implies he's dodgy as a backstreet lung.

Feb 2013

Action packed cover. If you're wondering why the artist forgot to draw a bunch of arms holding those guns, it's because Grifter is telekenetic... because of course he is. Still doesn't excuse his lazy costume.

Opening up on some sort of briefing which we're later shown is a recording being shown to Waller alone, we're shown a red haired girl with green eyes and told this is the target, and she's joined some sort of alien cult because how else would she spend her Saturday night?

Anyway, the first picture of the girl is her in a green singlet, then the rest of the panels show her singled out in the middle of the room, then there are two more panels with a girl with red hair and green eyes, yet sitting at the front here and with a different dress.

Plus the people she's sitting next to are swapped out. Soo.... is the red head the same girl the whole time? Is the first image a stock photo and the rest is the 'live' scene? It's confusing. The art's not too bad though.





Waller gets chewed out for a past mission failure and then we're back into the action, watching Grifter run and monologue at the same time. Oh, and also dodging bullets. I wonder who's shooting at this guy? Could it be....

Yes! It's Shooty Robot, Fire Skull and Emo Levitating clown!
Oh lawd, doesn't Harley's face remind you of that time Dc released all the 'Arkham City/Harley's Revenge' tie ins and promos, and she was just constantly either crying or having dripping eyeliner? Wait, is this a nod to sad clowns? Well, either way her pose is stupid and she looks more wannabe emo than a dramatic-comedic persona. Also, Grifter and Deadshot have the same pose more or less.
Also Harley's quip would probably make more sense if she wasn't from Gotham and had a history of breaking into Arkham herself.

Still, as much as Harley's pose and face freaks me out... it's not as bad as the next page.

Suicide Squad New 52 # 18 - Harley Quinn branches out and Red Orchid pays the price!

"Death Blooms"
May 2013

Yeah, it's going to be one of THOSE issues, doing plant jokes to death. You would have thought that Harley had heard them all before... but then again they haven't even explained if her friendship with Poison Ivy survived the reboot. Probably not, like her on again off again immunity and her being so independent now in her new origins. Well, independent if you look past the fact that she literally has no agency in her own conception anymore or any female friends but hey!

Instead we have this... wait, what is she doing? Is she casually sitting on Red Orchid? Okay and her gentle cupping of Orchy's face is enough to render her powerless? Maybe Orchy's eyes are bugging out in fear of Harley's distinct lack of eyeballs. Wait, why are her feet so elongated? Why does she always lose her belt for these covers? Why is there such wasted potential in Orchy's plant hands?

WHY DO THESE COVERS TORMENT ME SO???


Anyway, where we last left these punks Harley was poisoned (although she's turned back to her ordinary dead clown whites now) and appears to be convulsing. Or showing off her boobs better, one of those. Yo-Yo was like any dude in this situation - thinking "oh no, my sister's killing my friends again!" Deadshot was also poisoned, but he's totally fine. King Shark and Voltaic are also there.

 Now, I can't decide which one I like more... Deadshot's choking face which makes it look like he's actually laughing and trying to get off panel so he can hide it, or Regulus and his ultra jerk smirk. Still not a huge fan of Red Orchid's bug eyes and insect arm eyebrows.


Shit, Digimon did better plant people than this. Although, for once DC didn't make a female character's boobs hang out 24/7. Hmm.... we have a conundrum.

(EDIT: I asked my husband what he thought Deadshot's expression meant and he said that he thought King Shark was giving him a bit of the backside rumpy pumpy. Now that's all I can see, making me wonder if Deadshot's 'joke' about kissing King Shark was actually a joke, and all those times he said he didn't care about King Shark... was it all a ruse for a secret romance?!)

Splat! Promotional Comic: Suicide Blonde - The Suicide Squad prequel

2016
Writer: Tony Bedard
Pencils: Tom Derenick
Inks: Juan Albarran

So here's a review of a promotional comic that DC did alongside Splat!. Splat! is a hair dye brand. Seems like a match made in heaven given Harley's recent.. infatuation with.. changing her hair colour every five minutes. I recall Splat! advertisements in some of my older comics so they've probably been close to the superhero and pop culture scene for a while.

Let's have a look.

Urrrrggggghhh. First page is a full spread of Harley Quinn in her cell at Belle Reve. Do you remember the trailers for Suicide Squad, and the scenes in the movie where she does her little acrobatic act half naked before she gets all Miley Cyrus with licking things, then she head butts her cell because she's frustrated about her sleeping conditions? Well here's more of that! And still no-one questioning why she's essentially making a noose in her cell and giving herself dodgy prison tatts.

Waller comes past and she forces Harley to reminisce on being outside, in the fresh air and sunlight... so, money on the table, I'm shocked didn't include Harley receiving sunburn harder than any given ginger. Oh, my apologies she said nightlife.

I first looked at this and I was like.. what the hell is this? Then I remembered, Suicide Squad Harley Quinn and Joker are #relationshipgoals! Yeah! The one thing I wish my relationships had more of are stereotypical conversations about the girl not being ready fast enough while the girl imagines how a red drape would work on her as a dress. Then the boy can stand around and front about being so gangsta while constantly checking his watch. Yes... relationship goals. Sure..

See, that's the thing about the whole 'gangsta' Joker - he has to have a moll and be seen on the social scene instead of being the classic villain we know that just goes out and does crime that he's planned out meticulously or perhaps made up on the fly because he thought of something funny...
he wouldn't really care if Harley was there or not.

Suicide Squad New 52 #17 Twisted Up By The Red Orchid

April 2013

Oh my gosh that cover though.. I like the tree hands, that is cool but what is even happening with Harley Quinn? She looks a bit like someone made a paper mache version of her as she appears in the New52 Suicide Squad but then went and put Barbie doll clothes on her that don't fit as expected..

Well to be fair that costume never seems to fit her anyway but what I'm getting at is that this cover Harley looks quite a bit munted. As well as that, Red Orchid looks pretty docile and expressionless for someone 'twisting up' an entire Squad. I don't even get the name... have you seen orchids before? They're the most ornamental things ever, beautiful as they are. I guess you have to get in early to get all the good plant villain personas.

The comic itself jumps us into Chinatown where Harley, Deadshot, Yo-Yo, Voltaic and King Shark are busy doing full head shots and what's supposed to be witty battle banter. Yo-Yo makes a weird comparison between King Shark and Chris Rock. I didn't get it then and I don't get it now. It just seems like someone told the writers to chuck in a random pop culture reference. I don't think Chris Rock even did much in 2013 to be thrown in there as a one liner... did he?

The mysteries of the New52. Will we ever truly understand what drugs they were on? Mmmm....no.
Could be the same drugs that made them think that these dipshits could annihilate a bunch of Shaolin style gang members. Deadshot mistakes them for Japanese Samurais directly after referring to Chinatown in Cantonese.. but he's really not doing so well on the cultural knowledge front for a world travelling assassin is he?

Suicide Squad New 52 #16 Death is for Suckers!

Here we are again with the Suicide Squad. Now last time we saw them they were either doing some jungle thing with Basilisk or they were fighting Joker. Not even sure we can count either as proper continuity but whatever. Here they are in hospital at Belle Reve/Reeve. this can only mean one thing... oh no, FLASHBACKS!

Yep, now they're back in Mexico. Harley is all mushy that Deadshot shot himself instead of her and now she's demanding to carry his corpse back to base because reasons. King Shark talks a lot more in this issue but I'm guessing that's only because Iceberg and the others are a little out of it. He's also a bit nonsensical.

Captain Boomerang says one line and King Shark gets all uppity telling him to shut up before he (racial slur about Australians and BBQ's) him. Captain Boomerang's not worried - he lives in the Great Southern Land of the Great White Shark and he's used to sharks. To this King Shark replies that he's a Hammerhead and he eats Great Whites like Tic Tacs. Umm...

I'm not sure if King Shark is pointing out his species change from Great White to a Hammerhead - that we're still not sure why this happened - or if the writers actually don't know the difference between these two sharks.

Cute head, eats like rays and shit

Holy giant teeth Batman!

Yeah, um.. no. I don't think your species is gonna dominate Great Whites any time soon, King Shark. Try throwing your bravado around when it makes sense.
We just get past this nonsense and then Captain Boomerang and Harley have to blurt out some stupid line about spankings which just seems so out of place in the panel, like it was just crammed in there to be like "Oh, they're totally a team just hazing each other! Also, our token female Harley is kinky!" Blegh.

Grey Lora teleports in from somewhere and starts fronting like "I should'a killed youse when I had the chance!" Don't remember Grey Lora? Hey, I wish I was in that boat. She's not even wearing grey... like what the hell? Anyway, that editor I like sooooo much has put in a kind note about what issue we can find her originally in. Not that that explained anything about her apart from she exists and is like.. there.

Suicide Squad New52 #15

#15 Joker puts his back out!

This cover has always annoyed me. For one thing, Harley's pose.. as usual, is awkward as hell and she's wearing that painted on vinyl. Her eye make-up is not it's usual black but that weird blue colour it turns when the artist no longer cares about the image. Joker meanwhile looks like his stupid stapled on face is having an epiphany about how stupid this whole thing is. At least he's in his purple suit and not that stupid mechanic's outfit, I guess.

The headline is "psychos in love!" like any of that is correct, and they're in an oddly shaped circle while playing cards of the other losers fall around them.

Now, if you'll recall the last issue of Suicide Squad # 14 - Harley had just been chain-choked in a dick 'to be continued' moment, and that was just after the events of Batman #14.











Where it actually fits into continuity is beyond me because this means that right after dissing Joker and having a strange heart to heart with Batman - Harley wanders off to where she knows Joker is and has been watching. Then at some stage, Batman blows his way out of the chemical vat but this is neither seen nor heard in Suicide Squad #15 - where both Joker and Harley are revealed to still be chilling at ACE Chemicals. Joker has also found time to juggle having torture porn with Harley and being at the Gotham reservoir taunting Batman?

Speaking of torture porn, Harley is less than two minutes into chain strangulation and chill when she decides to reminisce on how great and historical Joker is while in the meantime a wide variety of rats close in on her half dead body.

Aren't there healthier things to eat, rats? Like.. sewerage debris? Poison? 

Oh, she's not dead just passed out. Enough to be dragged from the bowels of the factory to what I presume is a few stories higher? Since when does Joker have the strength for that?
Anyway, she hallucinates he's the classic Joker while telling him she had an awful dream, and he was there, and she was there, then he reveals himself to be new shitty Joker. His eyes are still acid green, not the messed up half white half blue they are in the other comics.

So... he's got Harley tied to a stretcher, straight-jacketed, teetering on the edge of a convenient hole in the floor that drops down into another vat of acid. Damn, this guy is a one trick pony. Making a sidekick? Vat of acid. Killing Batman? Vat of acid. Killing sidekick? Vat of acid. Relaxing afternoon with the family? Vat of acid. Change the frickin' record!
Why is this even his plan? He couldn't even kill Harley the first time, what the hell is it going to do to her this time around??

.................................................................................um, let's hope and pray not.

New 52: Death of the Family

Alright, fine, I'll read one tie in book in this lousy series! So here
you go.. for my torment and your pleasure - apparently - here is the two tie in books Suicide Squad wanted you to read as part of the Death of the Family Event.

Here we will sift through the wreckage that is Batman #13 and Batman #14.









Soo.... this one had me rolling my eyes already by page one. Yeah, I get that they're hyping up the Joker and having this major comic wide event but... damn.
Check the dramatics on this.

It's GOTHAM. It's always RAINING AND MISERABLE. Oh no, some force of nature backed the river up, better see it as a doomsday sign! Yikes. Then they're going on about a two headed lion. Gotta give Joker props for that, inseminating a lioness wrong and waiting months for the pay off. That's dedication.

We see Bullock and Gordon chatting about newspaper headlines and reading the bones but it's still not super clear if this is something someone's actually printed or what.

Next thing we know, this happens.

Just... straight up.. no chill, walking into a cop shop. So... basically we could have just had him walk in and take his own face back instead of Harley Quinn? Then why did you put us though those stupid Suicide Squad issues?! Gah!

Suicide Squad New 52 #13

These busy covers aren't working for me. Boy, I remember when Harley Quinn used to have eyeballs. Those were the days.

Dead End

Where we last left off, the squad had been infiltrated (off screen, of course.) so Deadshot shoots Black Spider so Harley and he can make a run for it.

They're really pushing the romance thing. I read this and I get the impression Black Spider is being condescending to Harley, but Deadshot sees it as him trying to get all ninja on his pasty vaguely clown-like boner-trigger.

Well, that's a sentence I've only ever used twice before. Interesting.

Harley has gotten a bit better at running (well, she couldn't get worse - surely!) and Deadshot justifies his murdering of Black Spider by telling Harley that it wasn't actually Black Spider. He wasn't sure until he shot him though. I wonder how that'd hold up in court?

Judge: Deadshot, you're accused of shooting Bob Smith. How do you plead?
Deadshot: Not guilty, your honour. You see, I couldn't have killed Bob because the real Bob would have dodged the bullet. Yeah. Totally a Basilisk plant. 
Judge: .....What?

Back to the Amanda Waller Show - Black Spider has been posing for who knows how long with a knife to Gramma Waller's throat, then has the audacity to ask Waller if they're going to bother with niceties or if he's going to actually do his job. What a good question... but not very well thought out given the scenario.

Suicide Squad New52 #10

Judas Rising Aug 2012

Welp, back to the... 'interesting' cover art. It looks like everyone has been sculpted out of lard or jelly. There are so many lines that Jim Lee's probably salivating into his art supplies...
Harley's boobs... yeah bigger than her head. Her pants are up higher than my daggy high school teacher's trousers, she's lost her eyeballs and muscular thighs have suddenly appeared where she's usually had twigs.

King Shark - as usual - is ten times his usual size on the cover. I know El Diablo's in perspective but the way he's drawn looks like he's stuffed his crotch. Iceberg is doing some sort of super jump ballet pose that makes it look like he has no butt whatsoever and Deadshot is a pure after thought. I also don't know what's going on with Harley's judo chop pose.

 Now the first interior art page, I like. Well, the colours anyway. Waller has one giant hand and it doesn't look like her legs are long enough. Meanwhile - Dr. Visyak I presume? She has a fancy hand pose on the right but her left hand... mmm, let's just say it leave a little to be desired. Like, keeping that freaky lefty away from me at all times. Yikes.

Also Deadshot's bitching, AGAIN. Waah waah waah Waller won't tell me every single detail about this misson but whenever she does I just bitch to her face about it waah waah waah. What a sook.
He should be on that toddler page about hilarious reasons why my toddler is crying.

I'm told again by the editor to read Resurrection Man #9. I'm not going to and it wouldn't matter anyway. I'm sure like all the other issues of Suicide Squad it wouldn't explain what they're doing in an elevator shaft or what the mission is that they're either just starting or halfway through.




Deadshot is clearly first in the elevator shaft. Then when it's revealed that Harley Quinn - alive and well is standing in the building they're infiltrating (?) he's the last to exit. Harley does that "Hello, boys..." trope that I hate so much.

Deadshot bitches about this too in case you were wondering. Harley goes all Miley Cyrus on him for some disgusting reason. Then when he throws her away, like a lot of Hannah Montana fans, Harley suddenly has hands that are massively long and spindly, and wide compared to her stick like forearms. Wait, what happened to all the backgrounds here? Did this elevator shaft lead into a colour changing lava-lamp?

Suicide Squad New 52 #8

Nostalgia is awesome. If you asked me for ten cool things about the nineties, I could list my favourite artists, movies, video games, food franchises.... you name it. On the flip side, if you asked me for some dodgy nineties nostalgia something like this piece of... art... would be at the top of the list.

June 2012.

But it's not even from the nineties! I hear you cry. You're right, anonymous voice in my head. This is from 2012. This is not a good thing. That said.... at least four out of five characters are in proportion. What the absolute hell happened to Harley Quinn???

She's lost her eyeballs, gained some ginormous bazungas, changed the direction her hair colours go, her thigh is the same size going down to her knee and oh look. Eight issues in and there's already ANOTHER variation on her costume. Yikes.

Anyway... maybe the art is better on the inside.


Well, it is a bit but the logic is not so sound. Everything is blood stained red and that's pretty cool. Lime's death is relayed in a really awkward pose. Savant is also in an awkwarder pose than what we left him in. King Shark... likes showing off his gams in surprisingly clear sewage water.
Harley Quinn found the strength to roll over after being shot.

Wait, why was she shot? Oh yeah, she trapped Deadshot inside some random room in the Gotham City police station and put the skinned Joker face on him. Remember? There was a whole issue about storming the police station.

Soo.... why does the page say this was in Arkham Asylum?

I feel like ten seconds of fact checking would have solved this problem but no-one could be bothered. Won Fon Hey?

Suicide Squad New 52 #7

This is another issue I reviewed back in the day under my original blog. If you're interested, you can check it out here. What, you haven't got time nor inclination? Well fear not, here's the into to it which I feel aptly sums up what I thought about the cover.

Suicide Squad Seven - The Alliterating Issue
Yes, it’s that time of the month again, so dig out your hot pants, get ready to storm Gotham PD and grab that skinned off Joker face because it’s the SUICIDE SQUAD #7 REVIEW!

Assuming I read like a normal person, let’s start with the cover. When I first saw this cover, I didn’t like it. Now I can see it full size it’s kind of growing on me, like Joker flesh on Deadshot’s face.(Tee hee) The new Harley Quinn logo surprised me, as last time they just stole her old one. You know, the one from the ‘original’ DC universe pre-reboot, post-pre-infinite... ehh... you know what I mean. The one that doesn’t exist anymore, or kind of does in some ways, but only in ways DC can make money off it.. Ehhh, you know what I mean.

Yep - remember how they used the previous Harley Quinn logo on the issue just prior to this one? It's been replaced with a new logo for her, and also doubles as one of the nails in the original Harley Quinn's coffin. Quite useful. Apart from that, the cover also raises some questions about Harley Quinn's costume... well, I mean MORE questions. 

For one thing.. does she wear the cape or not? It seems like every other issue it vanishes. Secondly... before her arm thingies looked like gauntlets... but one this cover in particular they look more like gloves. Also her nails aren't red one hand black the other.

Harley Quinn: Fantasy Figures (Luis Royo)

In keeping with her multiple variations and extended wardrobes... when Yamato decided to release a Fantasy Figure of our dear Harley Quinn they couldn't do just one.

Oh my no.

No - capitalising on her money making potential there are several versions of this figure.

What I do like about this series is that they made the effort to make each of them unique, unlike, say the Christmas painted Bombshells statues where if you have one, you kind of don't need to shell out for the variant. Sure, some of them aren't majorly different but there is enough change that you could shell out for the whole set and you wouldn't look like an idiot.

The statue stats:
First released in 2015
10.5" 1.6 scale

18 x 13 x 11 inches (45.72 x 33.02 x 27.94 cm)
Made of resin (original, Arkham City, web exclusive) or PVC (Arkham Knight)

Sculpted by Shin Tanabe and imagined by renowned artist Luis Royo



This one is the original - she's on a giant beach ball in her Suicide Squad Volume 4 threads but sporting dip dyed hair like her Rocksteady Arkhamverse counterpart. Unlike Suicide Squad, this Harley Quinn is physically more like classic Harley Quinn in the way that she's still got a normal skin tone and just paints her face.

There's a nice amount of detail on this figure, probably more than anyone who worked on the Suicide Squad comics ever invested. There are defined shoulder blades, knee caps look realistic, her hands and fingers are good and the figure actually looks like she's putting weight on the leg she's sitting on.

Given the rest of the statues from the Fantasy Figures I'm extremely glad they didn't make Harley look ridiculously over sexualised or give her ginormous boobs and have her bend over a lot.


Her hair isn't exactly blonde here, more.. like that weird grey hair trend that seems so popular lately. The one detail that really.... really irks me about this statue is the damn shoes.

Suicide Squad New 52 #5

Alright, back to our nostalgic look at the first attempt at forcing this down our throats making Suicide Squad into a comic since the Ostrander days.

Well, there's a lot going on in the cover... but all it goes to show is that everyone in this prison is pretty darn fugly and these people really... really...REALLY can't draw sharks.

Remember that time Harley Quinn set up this awesome prison riot in order to cover her escape? No?
No, well, you don't see that at all. Which is kind of cool in theory but due to all the time skips and limited time spent on plot in this series - to me it just comes off as lazy.

Anyway, here's Deadshot killing a bunch of rando's who have the decency to only look a little shocked or annoyed about it.

Yo-Yo is in the background on the next page and his head is smaller than his feet or hands once he super-sizes... so admittedly I don't know much about this character and his skill set so either the artist sucks at proportion or Yo-Yo can conveniently alter his size on different parts of his body simultaneously.

 Waller comes on for a friendly chat about the mission - saying she's still not sure on who started this or why. All of the guards are in Z Block... for comparison the Squad is around E wing. So are they blocks or wings? Why is this comic so hard? Why are these guards so incompetent?

I mean, sure, all the inmates are super powered, super weird or super psychotic - but all the specified riot guards are contained in one area? If this facility is as long as the fucking alphabet, why are there not other divisions scattered around, or, you know, like any guards where they're actually needed?

Some of the more normal looking prisoners go to the hospital wing to take out some weakened enemies but meet Black Spider who must still be sick because he's vomiting out exposition about himself before he takes a lil' nap.

El Diablo almost goes the same way but the other prisoners are tired of hearing about back stories and not seeing them (much like recent cinema goers... hi-yoh!) so they take him out before he gets too preachy.

Look at this one guy's legs. I think it's the same guy anyway. One hairy ankle, one clean shaven ankle.

Now Waller worries about Harley Quinn while sending a wafer thin Yo-Yo to get King Shark from his drunk tank.
King Shark was on the cover doing actioney stuff but that's false advertising because he is resting his semi-aquatic butt cheeks doing absolutely nothing... apart from eating Yo-Yo.

In his defence... you really shouldn't put your face so close to a shark's mouth.






Waller takes out a scaly creep who wants her to get him off with good behaviour... not sure if he's serious or making a bad innuendo. Meanwhile Deadshot races to the guard tower to get the biggest gun he can find and then gets the plot twist shakes. Yeah, remember that nano-virus hoo-haa?
Well it's still slooooowly taking over his muscles instead of fully converting him. Deadshot is that asshole in every zombie movie who hides his infection. Don't the squad get health/body checks when the return?

Anyway, he screws up and falls from the guard tower but is totally not dead because main character.

Luckily, El Diablo uses that power that he used in the movie that everyone forgot he had in the comic because the comic was boring and forgettable.

He manages to torch everyone alive, save the day, impress Waller and get that funky Incredible Hulk style fashion going on.

Three hours later and Deadshot is in one of those suspended medical things from any sci-fi movie you can think of.

Waller knows about the virus and is working on it, Deadshot asks about the bomb even though it clearly should have gone off by now if it was still active. Why would Waller stand so close if it wasn't safe? Deadshot is brain-dead.





Out of the kindness of her heart, Waller honours their deal and arranges for a catch up with Deadshot's kid. Who looks Asian and is called Suchin. That's fine, but I'm certain she was a Caucasian kid when I last saw Deadshot's family in Secret Six.

She seems nice, but honestly, if this kid made a Wonder Woman (what does that even mean) and is then dumbing it down to do paints next.. I'd be speaking to this school for sure.
This kid also has like really pointy teeth. Is she going to be a plot twist villain? Where's her mum?
Have they changed the entire family again for no reason?

First he had a son (Eddie) that was killed for revenge story reasons, then he found out he had a daughter named Zoe (see above) the name was kept for the movie daughter (yet another race change for poor Zoe - although I'll chalk that one up to people changing roles to fit terrible actor Will Smith instead of vice versa. )

I could be wrong, maybe the new Zoe is Caucasian - but she sure don't look like her previous incarnation. Pretty sure she's part piranha in Suicide Squad.


She even looks different again in the Assault on Arkham movie, and here she looks like she's changed her eye colour and skin tone again.

Why does DC hate continuity so much?


Gah - anyway. Waller figures out it's Harley who's caused the damage because her guards did a head count. Um.. didn't El Diablo literally vaporise at least a couple of guys? Deadshot has his visit cut short and doesn't even tell his apparent daughter he loves her back. Not that she seems especially fazed by meeting her dad in this weirdo place.

 It's okay though, we totally know where she's going guys. She's got like ten million maps and appears to be driving with the windows down so they fly everywhere. Great, good work genius. Maybe Waller could follow your papery breadcrumb trail if it wasn't so obvious you were going to Gotham.

Jeez... she even wears a hat to be incognito in her clown hooker outfit after killing two guards with a Chelsea smile.
Who wrote this crap?

Bonus page:

Probably the only reasonably attractive Suicide Squad cover ever being previewed... right next to Jim Lee's terrible doom inspiring jerk off sketch.

Explain yourself Mr Lee! What the hell were you thinking?! And what the bloody heck is on her feet?! Your Hush Harley Quinn was really good.. how did you screw this up so badly?

If you read between the lines here, it does seem like the
editor is trying to ask for help/blame everyone else for Harley's inclusion/ask for more doughnuts without getting killed by the higher ups.

The Short End of the Jester Schtick

Every time something gets interesting in this series, they either decide to jump cut to somewhere else and just never go back to it or they just start explaining everything to death.

There's very little Harley Quinn in this issue because they're leading up to her big history reveal in the next two issues but with the way the other characters are.. and as much as I hate New52 Quinn - it's boring as hell without her in it. The nearest we have to an interesting character is friggin' Yo-Yo.

And for the record, Yo-Yo also appears to be trying to bone Harley Quinn so there's that reason why I hate the one female team member surrounded by a billion men. It turns into a complete shaggin' wagon situation!

If writer Adam Glass was such a fan of Harley Quinn, I don't understand why he would change her character and put her in this situation. It's like watching bad fan fiction re-enacted by cosplayers.

Again I wonder why Secret Six - a comic with interesting characters, genuine sex appeal, good scenarios and humour was canned for this universal reboot. 

Suicide Squad New 52 #4

Well this cover is interesting. Definitely not a fan of the art here. Everyone's skin looks like they're decaying, Captain Boomerang's namesakes are flying around like no tomorrow and are apparently electrical. Deadshot's little projectile shooter makes it look like he's pointing at this Basilisk character and saying "No! Bad Basilisk! Down! Down, girl!"



The actual comic opens up with a bunch of nameless mooks getting murdered.

Deadshot kills his mook with tried and proven not really true method of the neck snap.

Harley Quinn shows a savage glee in garrote wiring her victim while soothingly whispering to him/her.

King Shark has apparently eaten his allotted person but the artist is too lazy to show it or can't stomach actually drawing it.

It's annoying to see how easily the writers have turned Harley Quinn into a wanton murderer.








We've been told part of her backstory involved killing and then playing with the corpses of several lawyers. In all of her pre-52 life, she was never shown to be an outright murderer... and by that I mean she DID murder people but either was too mentally ill to realise that's what she was doing or was more of an accessory to murder as her beau obviously had the higher body count.

Harley Quinn did not get into this life because she wanted to or enjoyed killing people - she got into it for love. So while I would believe she would kill because he wanted her to or because there was a 'humorous' side to the death, I do not believe she would just murder directly like this because she'd been shown previously to not actually give a shit about being a bad guy.

And furthermore.. how effective would garrote wire be against whatever armour this hench person has on their neck? And also Harley's ear looks weird.

Suicide Squad New 52 #3

Okay, this cover is.. a bunch of dudes in armour taken out by another dude with a fascinating groin shield while Harley leaps towards them, boobs first, with no eye balls, and some poor old guy's toupe around her neck.
When I first saw it, I thought that someone had superimposed Black Spider's head on Deadshot's body.



The Squad has 21 minutes until their evacuation but they'd hiding out in a diner and being shot at by some random called Mad Dog.

Black Spider thinks he's the only one to use smoke grenades and heat vision goggles.

Black Spider is wrong.


Black Spider gets shot for his arrogant stupidity.

This image of Harley - even with the New 52 get up - is perfect characterisation. She would totally do this during a siege. So again, not an ideal team member but hey.

Suicide Squad New 52 #1

With all the hype about Suicide Squad and the constant reboots it has, what time like the present to look back and see what all the fuss was about with the original run of Suicide Squad in the New52?

Nov 2011

Writer: Adam Glass 

Artist: Federico Dallochio, Ransom Getty and Scott Hanna

Colourist: Val Staples

Letterer: Jared K Fletcher

When this was first released as a promo image, the world was seemingly in an uproar. Why was Harley being so skankified and why was she armed to the teeth?

Now we're not looking to slut shame anyone, but you can't look at this cover and say 'well Harley's on the team because of her smarts and gymnastic abilities' because the focal point is how much skin she's showing compared to her other team mates and her previous bodysuit - which doesn't rule out her smarts but sure as heck isn't a good indicator of them either, especially comic wise!

 For another thing, when's the last time you saw a gymnast, or any athlete, showcase their abilities while in a tight corset designed to fall off their boobs at any given time, and while weighed down with ammunition? The easy answer is you don't, for obvious reasons.

Yep, another inappropriate costume for women, and hell, it's not even in her standard colours and she's the colour of a dead albino toad's belly.
And what is up with her face? Is that eye make-up or a skin condition?
She looks like an unattractive shark!

Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death

C. Mann and Laura Martin cover

Dodsons variant

Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death

Released: Mar 2016

Writer: Amy Chu

Pencils: Clay Mann

Inks: Seth Mann

Colours: Ulises Arreola

A comic I should have gotten into much earlier but I wasn't really aware of it until now. Where was the hype train on this one, DC? Anyway. 

Lovely covers. The variant classic HQ and PI by the Dodsons is it's usual work of art and I like the original cover too with it's traditional 'sexy' pose somewhat twisted by the look on Ivy's face and outfit. The new 52 outfit they gave Ivy was always a mixed bag depending on who was drawing it, this mix of classic Ivy face and new outfit works for me.  I like that the vines's she's lying on are in the shape of DNA and her flowers are growing lifeforms inside of them. 

 The art is amazing in this series. There are a lot of panels that could have been so cheesecakey, like the front cover or these two massive spreads of the main character and her cameo buddy - but they just aren't shown that way.

It's so refreshing!

As well as that, they're still drawn very attractively, but very realistically as opposed to the normal ridiculously posed stuff you get elsewhere.