Suicide Squad - C/D?

- They fought a great villain team called Jihad, it was all k-political.

- Brilliant 3 parter where they go behind the then iron curtain with THE PENGUIN as part of the Squad

- Deadshot! God I bet he's rubbish now wherever he appears. But then he wasn't. The Campaign '88 storyline was well exciting.

- Genuine tension as to whether the squad would get busted/taken down by proper superheroes.

- AMANDA WALLER!!!

- Captain Boomerang - sleazy ageing villain, also one of the few ppl in the series you could root for (who wasn't boring) (hello Bronze Tiger)

- The fantastic mismatch of the story where the whole squad get taken to APOKOLIPS!!

- Not that many characters actually died but more than in any other series - and anyone could die.

- Got a bit boring towards the end but the magnificent seven last story was pretty grebt.

Didn't Giffen do a new Suicide Squad recently, or was that just rumored, or ... ? I thought it had something to do with that alien invasion crossover thing at DC. I mean, not the one actually called Invasion, the recent one.

The Dirty Dozen/Suicide Squad premise is such a great one for so many genres that it's a wonder it's not used more, especially in the Marvel and DC universes where you have all these characters already around and ready to be used.

Also it came just after that big crossover with the rubbish Checkmate series which was all government spook espionage super-agent oliver north stuff and was clearly designed to get new readers into this gritty world of realistic superspy action. So OF COURSE John Ostrander then pulls out several issues of full-on Kirbyverse madness!

Deadshot's got another mini-series coming up soon, where he tries to clean up some Star City slum to protect the child he never knew he had (which kinda takes some of the oomph out of super-fantastic mini he had in the 80s, where his son DIES!). The good news is he has to fight Green Arrow! And then he'll probably join JL Elite or the Outsiders.
The assassin with a deathwish, he was almost the DCU Punisher, but not.

LM's run on Iron Man (written by Vic Fluro fave Denny O'Neil) was solid, too - I think Steve Mitchell was the inker there. (CONFESSION: I actually tried my hand at "writing" a comic script, age 10ish, by opening up an issue of Iron Man and trying to replicate THAT script on my Smith-Corona.)

But this thread has reminded me I should really try and track down the John Ostrander series. I loved it at the time, especially when the Flash rogues gallery featured. Wasn't there soem kind of Psycho-Pirate related cataclysm at some point, following (or perhaps immediately preceding) the Animal Man fiasco?

this version has been in DC: TNF as well.

(RD is a patented Chuck Dixon martial arts comic in which RD has been retconned from zen master supreme to vagabond pit fighter disilussioned punk. Hopefully the use of the demon Neron might throw some measive twist into the tale)

Looks like DC is finally starting to reprint Ostrander's Suicide Squad. The first TPB came out a couple of months ago, and the next one is due in October. And they're proper 250 page books too, not these thin 6 issue collections DC has been doing with some of their other reprints. Yay!

With DC now reprinting Shade and Human Target (hopefully the full runs), and the Flex Mentallo book coming out next month, are there still some essential 80s/90s titles that remain out of print? I guess they never collected Ostrander's run on The Spectre, except for one TPB...

I wouldn't hold my breath about them actually completing these runs. These lower-priority collections are really, really frustrating, as DC often just loses interest halfway through. The last Shade reprint was a year ago, with nothing further announced AFAIK. The Sandman Mystery Theatre trades, as well. DC had been pretty good about releasing a new volume of those every year for a while now. Last one came out in April of last year, again with nothing further announced. But, hey! At least they're completely unnecessarily rebooting the Delano Hellblazer trades...which they got distracted and forgot to finish once already.

As insane as many of the Big Two's business decisions often are, their reprint divisions are a special breed of crazy unto themselves.

Yeah, I've become kinda worried about whether or not more Shade collections will come out... At least Milligan's Human Target run was short, so DC needs to put out just one more TPB to collect it all.

Speaking of Milligan, I while ago I found out that Enigma is out of print, and even a used copy costs at least 40 bucks on Amazon. That's pretty crazy, IMO Enigma is one of the most seminal Vertigo books there is! I guess Sandman and Preacher are the only Vertigo titles that have been continously in print ever since the first TPBs came out?

Enigma being out of print is a shame. That series got my wife to read comics.

The out of print stuff I'd love to see: Complete Perez/Wolfman New Teen Titans, Levitz/Giffen Legion and All-Star Squadron. The last is never going to happen, but the other two are a shame. Happy to see that Abnett/Lanning's Legion Lost is returning to print.

DC did put out a couple of '80s Levitz LOSH trades a couple of years ago. And, obviously, didn't continue putting them out. There's also an All-Star Comics Showcase reprint coming this fall, which might be a precursor to some All-Star Squadron Showcase volumes? Since they're also putting out an Infinity, Inc. trade later this year? Yeah, like I said before: insane.

I agree, especially because Titans & LOSH were big titles, getting the nice paper and everything. That they're out in bits and not straight runs even in Showcase form is madness.

All-Star Squadron is never gonna happen, but I can dream.

By the way, I'm pretty sure All-Star Squadron is never going to happen.

Suicide Squad holds up pretty well. I got the whole run again and have re-read the first couple of years.

Since most of this stuff comes out helter skelter in trade, the best way to get it is look on Ebay for the whole run. I've run into quite a few things that way that are way cheaper for the actual comics than a whole run if reprinted in trade.

This was a cool cover that caught peoples eye. I always wonder why they don't do stuff like this to draw people in. I suppose it is just easier to have a bunch of pinups done and just have them in backstock, as most covers have bupkus to do with the insides and just look like a poster.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/e/e4/20110120045652!Suicide_Squad_-1.jpg

I know this has been said before, but the Grant/Breyfogle Batman, which has only been reprinted in Spanish! Specifically the Detective and Batman runs they did as a team, not Grant's mediocre Shadow of the Bat book (although that did have some Breyfogle art early on, such as the brilliant issue "The Nobody", which was the team's final issue together).

Michel Fiffe has done a full-colour Suicide Squad tribute comic.

I keep thinking "The recent Suicide Squad comics really were great!" then realising that I meant Secret Six.

Secret Six was definitely a spiritual sequel to the Suicide Squad, kind of the same motley cast except now being able to do what they do without having to work for the man. I think the S6 was pretty much DC's most consistent and best title of the past few years. There is plenty of fun in there and it's a shame it didn't really make it through the restart, as it definitely wasn't something that was broken (and they went and redesigned Deadshot which I think is heresy).

Deadshot/Floyd Lawton is one of my all time favorite characters. I thought he was the coolest looking character ever when I was a little kid and I loved Marshall Rogers then one of my favorite comic writers as a teenager John Ostrander made him as cool a character as he looked then when I got back into comics was when the Secret Six by Gail Simone was starting up and it was an immediate connection. Floyd is the dude.