Thunderbolts is not Suicide Squad (and vice versa)

I read From The Marvel Vault: Thunderbolts last week, a neat little one-shot presenting a lost tale of Nomad written by Fabian Nicieza from the time he was the regular writer on Thunderbolts and pulled recently from Tom Brevoort’s drawer to see publication for the first time. The main story was good, but it was a quick missive from Thunderbolts co-creator and original writer Kurt Busiek on the letters page thanking the fans for their years of support that grabbed my attention.

Like the proud parent he deserves to be recognized as, Busiek pointed out that Thunderbolts has been going strong nearly 15 years now over the course of 150+ issues and with only one brief break in regular publication of an ongoing series. Considering the book began in 1997, hardly fertile breeding ground for long-running comic book success stories, that’s quite an achievement. Thunderbolts is among the most enduring mainstream creations of the 90’s—I’d rank it above Superboy, at least on par with Kyle Rayner, maybe a notch below Deadpool—a fact even more impressive given the unique niche it has staked out.

For those who don’t know, the original premise of Thunderbolts was that the Avengers and Fantastic Four had seemingly been killed during the Onslaught event, so a new team of heroes rose up, only to be revealed—to the reader at least—in one of the most shocking last pages of a first issue ever—as the Masters of Evil in disguise, pretending to be good guys with the promise by Baron Zemo of some future scheme in mind.

I’ve said it before, but books starring bad guys are generally a hard sell, and they were even in the 90’s. Quick character-building villain-centric minis are great, but sustaining an ongoing with a protagonist who’s a nasty person the audience can’t sympathize with, no matter how cool they think he/she/they are in the abstract, is usually a recipe for early cancellation or unfortunate watering down of the character core (Venom and Deathstroke in the 90’s being the prime example of the latter).

Thunderbolts has managed to last as long as it has in no small part because though it started out as a book about lying villains, it grew organically into the story of people who had made mistakes trying to do better, as the bulk of the team turned on Zemo, having gotten a taste of being heroes and wanting to go for the real deal. It wasn’t another case of psychotic Eddie Brock or mercenary Slade Wilson suddenly getting a conscience for sales’ sake, it was genuine and not always surefire attempts at redemption from well-chosen small time villains off the B-list or lower who were never mass murderers to begin with and were believably cast in their role. Everybody loves an underdog story, and in many that’s what Thunderbolts has been for the past 15 years.

Obviously when you’re thinking about “villain books” that have done well, another that immediately springs to mind is the fondly remembered Suicide Squad, a series I’ve made clear is one of my all-time personal favorites. In the grand scheme of things, the prime Suicide Squad ongoing lasted a little over five years and shy of 70 issues, but if you look back at the mark it left on fans and creators and how influential it has been in the intervening period, you can see that its success was measured by something beyond longevity.

Suicide Squad did not take the Thunderbolts approach in conquering the issue of a cast you didn’t necessarily want to cheer or sympathize with, as Deadshot and Captain Boomerang certainly never really seemed to be seeking any sort of legitimate redemption and even though Amanda Waller was ostensibly the Professor X of the Squad, no question she was—and remains—a total “rhymes with witch” (as well as one of the most unique and awesome characters around). Instead, the circumvention route of Suicide Squad was to make no apologies for how reprehensible much of the featured players were and also give you a rotating handful of identification figures who would inevitably get driven out by how awful these people were (Nightshade, Nemesis, Vixen), go over the edge from being surrounded by madness (Rick Flag) or do their best to grin and bear it while recognizing they couldn’t do much to change things (the stalwart Bronze Tiger). Of course you also had the gimmick that any character could go at any time—hence the name—and the reliably strong writing of John Ostrander, who oversaw things from beginning to bitter end.

Given that Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad are perhaps the two most prominent villain/pseudo-villain-centric series in comics history in terms of length and esteem, it’s not a shocker that they will draw the occasional comparisons. If Marvel and DC did another Amalgam event tomorrow, it’s a safe bet we’d see the Thunder Squad or Suicide Bolts led by Baron Waller. It makes sense, yet despite the fact that there are surface similarities—two teams of super criminals fighting on the side of good under some duress with a lot of interpersonal drama—really once you scratch that, the two concepts couldn’t be more different, and as a fan of both, I’m certainly happy for that because both work well.

At its core, Suicide Squad is a cynical book. It’s brilliant, but in the same way shows like The Sopranos or The Wire are (or so I am told, having never regularly watched either—don’t hit me!). It has many messages, but a pretty central one is that playing by the rules doesn’t always get the job done and sometimes criminals and killers can succeed where heroes would fail because they’re willing to go dark places.

By contrast, despite the fact it originally starred a group flat out called the Masters of Evil and has traveled to some pretty dire instances itself over the past decade and a half, Thunderbolts always has been and likely always be optimistic underneath it all. Its message is that even though not everybody can change for the better, enough can—and want to—that redemption is a concept worth believing in.

Even when it appeared Thunderbolts was becoming outwardly more like Suicide Squad, there was something about that redemptive theme buried at the core that I swear pulled the book back. Warren Ellis had a great run that indeed centered on more dangerous figures like Norman Osborn and Bullseye being put to work by the government and doing some truly heinous stuff, but look even there how many times unlikely heroism took center stage, be it Jack Flag overcoming the odds, American Eagle standing his ground, or Songbird fighting the system from within. I swear Busiek wove something into the DNA of Thunderbolts that even when you set out to tell the most deranged stories possible, a trickle of that inspirational underdog tale is going to sneak in and work its magic.

It’s really tough to make a villain book work in comics, but both Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad found their own path, and given how much I dig them both, I can’t wait until somebody shows me a third way.

Underrated/Overlooked: JLA Incarnations

Not long after I got back into comics around the fall of 2000, the parents of the girl I was dating at the time got me a gift certificate to New England Comics for some occasion or another (Christmas? I dunno, they were Jewish...). Without much thought, I marched down to the store and grabbed the biggest, most intimidating-looking trade paperback I could find, which was Crisis On Infinite Earths.

To this day, the original Crisis remains one of my favorite stories of all-time, not just because I think it's particularly well-written and well-drawn, but also because for a guy like me just starting to explore the world of comics again it was like pouring a cup of pure sugar down the throat of a seven-year old, as suddenly I was exposed to literally hundreds of cool characters and stories begging me to learn more about them.

Of course it was also more than a bit overwhelming--especially so once I began reading ongoing DC books and not understanding how one continuity fit with another, why Superman hadn't been a founding member of the JLA, etc. etc.

Fortunately for me, later that year DC put out an excellent little mini-series called JLA: Incarnations that helped me out quite a bit and which I'm going to talk a little about...right now.

In 1998, Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn and Barry Kitson collaborated on JLA: Year One, a 12-issue mini re-telling the (duh) first year of the Justice League as it would have occured post-Crisis with Black Canary as a founding member and Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all absent; I picked that series up in trade and it remains one of my all-time favorites. JLA: Incarnations picked up where Year One left off, jumping to seven key points over the course of League history and re-telling or creating stories so as to explain how they went down under the changed continuity of Crisis.

John Ostrander was on writing duties for Incarnations and it was my first exposure to his work, long before I read Suicide Squad or anything else he had done. It's a body of work even in seven short issues that really demonstrates in my mind why Ostrander is such a strong writer. In the first place, playing continuity cop isn't necessarily the most enjoyable role, partcularly when you're doing it not to set up new stories you'll be working on (like how, say, Geoff Johns often does) but just to do universe-wide housekeeping; however, Ostrander turns out enthusiastic, enjoyable stuff in Incarnations with impressive character arcs and a great feel of suspense given that we pretty much knew going in almost exactly how each story ends.

Besides that, the framework of Incarnatons requires Ostrander not only to jump among diverse Justice League teams from the "Satellite roster" to the JLI and genuinely capture the feel of each era, it also needs him to get you invested in these characters over the course of only 22 pages or less, as he has a new slate to deal with the next month. Ostrander performs admirably under these constraints, arguably even turning them to his advantage as he employs callbacks to prior issues as a means of creating a larger epic out of what could have been throwaway busy work--the man is a pro.

On art for Incarnations is Val Semeiks, who must similarly go chameleon, changing his style subtly enough that you feel a shift between Aquaman's story and Blue Beetles, but not to such an extreme where it doesn't all feel like this takes place on one world. Semeiks has a classic approach to super hero action that hearkens back to early Justice League artists like Mike Sekowsky and even George Perez, so his exuberant, heroic figures give the stories a timeless feel that ties them together nicely.

Breaking it down, each issue is a more-or-less standalone story in which one League member serves as the focal point for a story that alters the status quo and ushers in a new era for the team. Issue #1 has Black Canary struggling to escape her mother's shadow as we get to see how the first JLA/JSA team-up went down without an Earth-2. Issue #2 brings Batman onto the team in order at Superman's behest as we see how the World's Finest were involved in the League in a more clandestine fashion post-Crisis. Issue #3 expands and re-shapes the story of Green Arrow leaving the team (which I talked about recently) as well as the League's move to their satellite HQ. Issue #4 has Aquaman questioning his need for the League and also expands the post-Crisis role of the Martian Manhunter, as in this new continuity he never left the group to go back to Mars. Issue #5 is a Crisis crossover 15 years later starring the Detroit League as they try to fill some big shoes with back-up stories on the ultimate fate of Barry Allen and the deaths of Vibe and Steel during Legends. Issue #6 is a fun little yarn about Blue Beetle and Booster Gold getting the JLI in trouble plus a back-up on the disbanding of Extreme Justice. Issue #7 wraps things up with a story of the then-current Big Seven (plus Plastic Man line-up against the first ever JLA foes, the Appelaxians.

There really are no weak issues in the bunch, and Ostrander does a nice job not giving you the same thing twice as far as feel or genre. In addition to just about everybody to ever serve on the League save for a few rosters he doesn't quite get to, Ostrander also covers a great mix of both classic and obscure villains including Wotan, Gorilla Grodd, Kobra, the Extremists and more. It really is a smorgasboard of everything you love about the League, making the series much more than just a primer for post-Crisis latecomers or a specialty project needed to fill a gap.

Aside from the aforementioned Green Arrow story, I also particularly enjoyed seeing the new JLA/JSA dynamic in issue #1 where the former was both a bit awed and somewat resentful of their predecessors in contrast to just finding another Earth where some older dudes had their names and powers. Issue #4 also has some of the more badass Martian Manhunter stuff you'll see, as he has to single-handedly hold off an alien invasion until Aquaman can rally the troops; Ostrander also nicely accentuates the positive qualities of the much-maligned Detroit League, captures a bit of that Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatties comedic magic for his JLI story, and manages to craft a relevant Extreme Justice back-up to boot.

Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see JLA: Incarnations collected any time soon if ever, simple because the subsequent events of Infinite Crisis, 52 and Final Crisis have made its continuity fixes obsolete already, but as I said earlier, it's certainly a series that accomplishes far more than housekeeping, and if you can find any or all of the single issues on the cheap, I recommend them.

Giving Back to John Ostrander

Just yesterday I wrote at length about the first volume of Sucide Squad, a comic book that has provided much entertainment and enjoyment to myself and many others over the years. As I noted, the two folks most responsible for what made that series so special were writer John Ostrander and his wife and co-plotter, Kim Yale. Sadly, Kim passed away as a result of breast cancer in 1997, and while John is still with us, he too has fallen upon bad health in recent years. John suffers from glaucoma, which has affected his vision and left him with significant medical bills.

In addition to his work on the Squad, Ostrander also penned seminal works like Grimjack and Hawkworld, collaborating with the incomporable Tim Truman on both. Ostrander and another frequent creative partner, Tom Mandrake, provided classic--and highly underrated--lengthy runs on ongoing series featuring the Spectre and the Martian Manhunter. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ostrander work with Marvel's Western heroes in Blaze of Glory, truly one of the most badass tales you will ever read.

No matter what character Ostrander was given (and he had his runs with the big guns from Batman and the Justice League to the Punisher and the X-Men as well), he made the most of it, working magic where it may have previously seemed impossible. Truly, John Ostrander may be one of the comic industry's more overlooked giants of the past few decades, but undoubtedly he has the respect of his peers and any fan who has ever read his work.

John Ostrander has given so much to comic books, and now is our chance to give something back to him.

comix4site is a web site organized by Mike Gold and Adriane Nash (and I do apologize if I'm getting any details wrong here) to raise money for the continued treatment of John's glaucoma. In addition to being able to donate directly to the cause, you can bid on really cool items from original art by the likes of Tim Truman, Rob Liefeld and many more to the chance to appear in Ed Brubaker's Criminal (and get offed)! There's also helpful info on glaucoma and how to treat it that everybody should check out.

As a fan of John Ostrander, I hope you'll join me in paying the man back for all he's provided for us over the years.

UPDATE: Newsarama has the latest on the situation from Gail Simone.

The Essentials: Suicide Squad volume one

I have a general stance on books in which villains are the protagonists, and that is that if they run too long, they tend to be no good and do more harm than good to the characters they are meant to spotlight. I think a good limited series, one-shot or original graphic novel giving the stage to a bad guy can be rad, as can something like Dark Avengers where the plot is very driven by the current state of the larger universe, but a solo ongoing series in which a popular ne'erdowell stars generally doesn't end well.

My two clarion examples of my above statement have always been the Deathstroke ongoing and Venom series of minis from my youth. Both showed that if you're going to have a badass mercenary or slobbering sociopath as your point guy, eventually they've got to soften to the point where readers can sympathize with them. In the 90's, it was this trajectory that caused both Deathstroke and Venom to lose their teeth and go from awesome villains to shades of grey wussies. It took tremendous effort to rehabilitate both guys in the past decade (Eddie Brock is still a complex work in progress).

Thusly it was with great trepidation that I took Geoff Johns up on his recommendation at San Diego Comic Con in 2004 that the original Suicide Squad series from the 80's was one I needed to check out. As Geoff had not led me wrong to that point, I went ahead and grabbed the first few issues of what he claimed was one of the definitive books in shaping his career from the back issue bins for cheap and figured if nothing else I had some decent plane reading for the trip home.

Wouldn't you know it, Geoff Johns was right again.

Spinning out of the 1986-87 Legends events, writer John Ostrander brought back the classic DC (and frankly evergreen fiction) concept of the Suicide Squad, a group of government operatives who headed into each mission with full knowledge that it could very well be their last. The twist Ostrander added was that whereas the Slver Age Task Force X (as the Squad was also known) filled its ranks with military men and women, this new group would be primarily comprised of super villains given the option to serve in exchange for having their prison sentences reduced with a few quasi-heroic types like Rick Flag and the Bronze Tiger along for the ride to keep them in line.

Through 66 issues and several Annuals plus a one-shot special or two, Ostrander was the driving creative force behind Suicide Squad, aided by a rotating group of artists and more significantly by his wife and co-plotter, Kim Yale (who passed away from breast cancer in 1997). Ostrander, Yale and company not only produced a stunning work that stands out from so much of what was being produced in late 80's ongoing super hero comics (it is far more in line with stuff like Frank Miller's Daredevil or Alan Moore's Watchmen than the Superman and Spider-Man comics of the time), they created perhaps the exception that proves the rule about books starring villains being a bad idea. They also opened up a darker, more mature corner of the DC Universe that I'd wager contributed in some ways to the birth of Vertigo and still resonates today in recent books like Checkmate and just about anything featuring Amanda Waller.

Perhaps the greatestest strength of Suicide Squad, what set it apart from other titles and allowed it to succeed regardless of the cast's moral leanings, was the ability of Ostrander and Yale to create or refine characters who felt like real people, warts and all. The DC Universe of 1987, both on its own and in contrast to Marvel, had always been a place comprised of infallible heroes who smiled and saved the day, their flaws only coming to the surface in the most intense of stories. Ostrander and Yale gave the members of the Squad as well as their support staff and supervisors personalities ranging from mundane to sadistic, but at the end of the day you definitely got the feel the guy living down the street from you could more likely be Nemesis than Green Lantern (and not just because Nemesis was a master of disguise). The world of the Squad was a dark, twisted and often terrifying place--though not without a healthy dose of black comedy--but also somewhere you could quite easily see yourself living, and that made the series all the more powerful.

As for the cast itself, Ostrander and Yale made the most of their rotating band of misfits, plugging all sorts of different characters into the Squad with varying degrees of success, but always making sure the book never hurt for variety. Aside from series pivot Amanda Waller and regulars Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and Bronze Tiger plus key players Flag, Nightshade and Nemesis (more on all of them later), you really never knew what you were going to get with Suicide Squad. You had your cannon fodder villains like Mindboggler or Slipknot, but you'd also get the occasional high profile baddie like the Penguin or Captain Cold being forced out of their colorful exploits battling Batman and the Flash into the murky waters of infiltrating Communist Russia or exposing corrupt U.S. politicians. Sometimes, particularly in the cases of Poison Ivy and Count Vertigo, these "A-listers" ended up sticking around and enjoying some of their best stories serving with the Squad.

You also had what can best be termed as "reclamation projects," where Ostrander and Yale took characters who had never quite reached their full potential elsewhere, such as Vixen or Roy Harper, and saw if they could be made to work with less of a super hero bent, an approach which sometimes panned out beautifully and other times flopped, but credit for bravery. Perhaps the best example of this approach would be Barbara Gordon, as the broken Batgirl was picked up by Suicide Squad and transformed into the wonderful Oracle character who has endured to this day. The Atom also got a much-needed pick-me-up from serving on the Squad in a story that brought Superman and Aquaman briefly into the title alongside frequent guest star Batman in a trippy tale that really stretched the scope of the DCU.

Ostrander and Yale also cast their net far and wide for recruits, going to Kirby's Fourth World to nab Lashina or to the misty lands that would soon become Vertigo to grab hold of Black Orchid and Shade, the Changing Man; heck, Grant Morrison himself even served one ill-fated mission with the Squad.

This ever-shifting and eclectic roster served to hammer home the core impetus of Suicide Squad and the "gimmick" the title brought to the table: Anything can happen, nobody is safe. Indeed, a character dies in the very first issue and the random bloodshed continues throughout the entire series. It's not just the folks wearing costumes who fall either, as supporting characters who Ostrander and Yale will make you fall in love with or want to punch in the face often get caught in the crossfire. Hell, characters you would have tabbed only issues earlier as indispensable are written out in grisly fashion and the book just reinvents itself and moves on.

Nobody is safe--and it's awesome.

However, beyond the bells and the whistles of guest stars, quirky also-rans getting a shot and creeping death, Ostrander and Yale assembled an incredibly strong core of characters who would serve as Suicide Squad's touchstone through the title's existence.

Always at the eye of the storm was Amanda Waller, perhaps John Ostrander's most enduring contribution to the DC Universe and truly a one of a kind character (which I'm sure those around her says their thanks for every day). Indeed "The Wall" is generally less a simple character and more a force of nature, a physically imposing (in her own way) shitkicker who doesn't suffer fools, who has tunnel vision when it comes to her goals, and who has no problem crossing any and every moral and ethical line if it serves the greater good. Oh, and did I mention that this strong, prominent, uncompromising character also happens to be an African-American woman?

Throughout the course of Suicide Squad you were never really quite sure whether to classifiy Amanda as a hero or a villain, and that certainly seemed to be in accordance with what Ostrander and Yale were shooting for. What drove Waller on a personal level was always a mystery that the writers would only peel back and reveal very small pieces of on the rare occasions they tantalized you with glimpses into her personal life. You'd get so caught up in the fact that this lady who was drawn as wide as she was tall could get all up in Batman's face that you didn't realize how much you were salivating to learn her motivations until they were dangled in front of you. It was always tough to get a handle on whether or not the Squad really was a force for ultimate good or just a tool Amanda was using to further her own shadowy agenda, and that ambiguity served the series well.

Aside from the Wall, the three characters who somehow survived with the Squad beginning to end were Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and Bronze Tiger, with Nightshade not far behind, Nemesis clocking in behind her, and Rick Flag getting an incomplete for reasons I'd rather not fully spoil despite the story being two decades old and since retconned because it was that good.

Before the Squad, Deadshot was a dime-a-dozen Batman bad guy, Captain Boomerange was one of the less interesting Flash Rogues, Bronze Tiger was Richard Dragon's sidekick and Nightshade was a Charlton acquisition headed for inevitable limbo. Ostrander and Yale made Deadshot an unquestionable badass with the cool of Clint Eastwood and that ever-present "does he have a deathwise or not?" question hovering over him to the point where fans were rabid for his background-expanding mini once it came out a couple years in (prior to his Squad days, that would have been like people clamoring for a Cavalier origin story). Boomerbutt became the DCU's uncrowned king of gallows humor and the scummiest of the scummy; the boomerang-tossing creep fans absolutely loved to hate. Bronze Tiger emerged as a man torn between a violent past and questionable present fighting for future happiness that seemed unattainable. Nightshade was the moral compass of a team that had no need for one and became a truly tragic figure on many levels.

Like few other writers in comic book history, Ostrander and Yale were masters of getting the best out of every character they touched, regardless of where they came from or what baggage the brought with them.

You may have noticed I've focused primarily on characters up to this point, and that's because I saw Suicide Squad as a very character-driven series--an impressive feat given the rapid entrances and exits of so many--but I don't want to give short shrift to some of the amazing plots Ostrander and Yale tangled said characters up in. Suicide Squad came at a time when it was becoming somewhat in vogue to infuse comics with real world politics and tackle the corresponding issues, but they really pushed the envelope in that regard and did it with maturity as opposed to preachiness or too on-the-nose. In addition to the aforementioned trip to Russia to free an oppressed revolutionary writer and Flag's ongoing quest to weed out dirty politics in the U.S. senate, the Squad also took on fundamentalist terrorists, rival intelligence agencies, the drug trade, and war-torn third world countries being run by dictators.

On the flipside, Waller and company journied to Apokolips and battled Granny Goodness, battled an army of zombies and took part in DC crossovers like Millenium, Invasion!, and War of the Gods. Suicide Squad often felt like a book on the fringe of the DC Universe, but it never had any trouble slipping back in when necessary.

Suicide Squad was also a book that rewarded long-time readers in a very satisfying way. Some plot threads introduced in the first 10 issues weren't paid off until a few years down the line, but when they were, it was worth it. Seemingly incidental characters were never what they seemed and almost always came back to play a bigger role. Past grudges were never forgotten. Slow-simmering revenge plots came to a boil nicely. I'm sure it may have gotten knocked for not being entirely new-reader-friendly, but Suicide Squad was a book with a plan.

Why do I feel like Suicide Squad ultimately succeeded where most "villain books" fail? Because really it wasn't a book about the heroic ideal or about bad guys twirling their mustaches, it was a series about life. Yes, in this case "life" centered around a group of super villains based out of a prison going on crazy missions they weren't expected to return from, but there was something very earnest about that. There was something you could connect with in Rick Flag's survivor's guilt, Nightshade's search for that elusive silver lining and even Captain Boomerang's self-serving schemes. This were people not trying to save or doom the world, they were just doing a job and bringing a psychology textbook worth of problems along with them. They became real to you and you mourned both their losses and their loss.

It was never pretty, but maybe that's why Suicide Squad was a book that felt like home, albeit one you hoped never to live in for long. John Ostrander, Kim Yale and company created a world that was the ultimate in escapism because it didn't feel that far off; while part of you was relieved to close each issue, a larger part was anxious to revisit the most unreliable group of friends you'd ever find.