By 1987, The Suicide Squad was little more than an interesting name with a largely forgotten history in DC Comics. But, an influx of talent and ideas from the thriving “Independent” smaller comic book companies took that idea and created an influential and highly entertaining team of villains fighting and dying in a moral grey area. John Ostrander, Kimberly Yale, and Luke McDonnell’s Suicide Squad provides insights on the maturing of comics, the impact of the independent companies, the slowly growing diversity of comic characters, and much more all in a fast paced, exhilarating comic series.
While we prepare for discussion questions, polls and a quiz in April, we need your help now. What issues or story arcs are must reads from the Ostrander Suicide Squad run and why? Let us know below and we’ll develop a short “suggested reading” list and a longer “deep-dive” list when we fully launch on April 1st. 2020-03-24T05:00:00Z → 2020-03-31T05:00:00Z
I’ll start this off with the thought that we need at least one of the Brave and the Bold: Suicide Squad stories just to see the original idea. B&B 25 and 26 are the first two Suicide Squad stories and by far the most interesting so would start there.
One of the great things the 1987 Suicide Squad series did was bring back Barbara Gordon post-Killing Joke in a vital role as Oracle. The character of Oracle was introduced in issue #23 and then we found out Oracle’s identity in issue #38. This occurs across several storylines, but once Barbara is revealed to be Oracle, Ostrander does a fantastic job building the character and giving her agency, showing how Barbara Gordon is so much more than only Batgirl.
I love how Ostrander’s run gave Bronze Tiger some spotlight. He’s such an underutilized character. Perhaps even topping the list of Underutilized; the argument can be made
I think we may end up doing the reading list differently in April. A short suggested reading, then for Deeper Dive categories because there’s so much going on here. Like @jgj-usmc hits on, character development is so important in this series, we probably have Deeper Dive: Waller, etc. Also, I think there’s some kind of poll question in what character creation/development was most important, Waller, Oracle, Deadshot, etc.
Speaking for myself, I don’t know that I would call that requires reading. Although it does reveal some details regarding Flag, it’s really mostly about the original Suicide Squad.