The fly in the ointment of Assault on Arkham Part 2

Suicide Squad 64

After having read and processed the comments in my last posting I'm going to stick to my guns on this one. In Suicide Squad #1 of the 2007-08 9 issue mini-series we see Amanda Waller blow of the head of a prisoner at Belle Reve who tried to lead a prison break and had taken some guards as hostages. In Checkmate #3 (Vol. 2) Waller shot dead when she could have taken prisoner a would be Kobra assassin sent after her. And of course we all saw what happened with KGBeast in Assault on Arkham as well as the fact that Waller put out a hit on The Riddler.
The bottom line here is that Waller can be ruthless with her enemies and even with convict members of The Squad when she needs to keep them in line. But authorizing lethal force to any degree against American civilians and or against law enforcement agents was just stretching things too much. I mean sending The Squad on a mission where it's anticipated that they're gonna have too knock around some cops who probably have families is one thing but to say it's ok to kill some of em if they need to? Uh-huh no way I'm not buying it that's not the Amanda Waller I know that was a definite over site in what was other wise a well done and very entertaining movie.

Nightshade digital painting by Julianna Pardue

Ok now that I got all that Amanda Waller stuff off my chest let me move on here a bit. I haven't bothered looking for any Suicide squad related fan art for months now so I decided to see what's out there for the Hell of it last night. Hot damn did I ever find some awesome stuff out there so I just had to add it to this posting . .

Deadshot fan art by Phil-Cho

 .I love this subtle costume re-design not to mention the animation cell style look to this fan art. What DC's ultimate marks man might have looked on Young Justice? . . . .

Sashs Bordeaux cosplay by White Lemon

Dios Mios! Spanish cosplay vixen White Lemon hits it our of the park again with a little something for Checkmate fans. Suddenly I'm really thirsty for some lemonade.

The fly in the ointment of Assault on Arkham

After having watched my Assault on Arkham DVD a couple more times since buying it on Thursday there's one glaring thing about the story that bothers me. During the mission briefing Waller tells The Squad to keep the "body count to a minimum". I'm sorry but even Waller at her worst would never authorize The Squad to use lethal force to any degree on the staff of Arkham Asylum.
Would Waller kill a disobedient member of The Squad to make an example of them in order to keep the rest of them in line? . . sure. Would she send The Squad to assassinate some manner of criminal? . . .sure. All that falls in line with a "greater good" kinda rationale she often operates on. But condoning the deaths of civilians is something I think is out of character for The Wall. All those people who work at Arkham are basically federal employees working at a facility serving a branch of law enforcement.
Now keep in mind I'm not trying to be "that guy" or otherwise trying to discourage you from seeing this. That over sight aside this was still a really well produced and entertaining movie that is clearly not aimed at a pre-teen crowd thank God. And unlike in Arrow or Smallville for that matter The Suicide Squad as a team and as individual characters really get a chance to shine. Now if we can get an animated DC feature sending Task Force X after some terrorists like ISIS then I could die a happy man.

Assault on Arkham is AWESOME!

This movie is one of the best DC animated features yet. The animation is perfect and so are the voice actors. The story is awesome, aside from some really snappy well written dialogue it's even got sex, cursing and plenty of gore. In short, it's everything that makes much of DC's animated stuff so great and exemplifies why marvel's animated stuff never does anything for me. As far as the high light moments there's really too many to get into here with out this posting being way too long. As far as any criticisms go there's a few things I could nit pick about but nothing major.
Ironically, this movie at it's core is fundamentally based on the New 52 Squad but in the case of this movie it works in ways that the writing on the now defunct comic book series never did. Anyways, seeing as I'm only writing this posting only after one viewing i'm sure i'll have more thoughts on this after I get to watch it again. Hopefully we'll be all talking about this movie and comparing notes in the comments section in the coming days.

P.S. thanks for leaving that comment in the previous posting Manfred but as it turned out I found the DVD at Target earlier this morning and it was only $13.

PODCASTS!
Other new happenings for all things Suicide Squad it looks like we've got another Squad centric blog spot (see bottom of blog role at left hand column) as well as far as I know the first Suicide Squad podcasts. The first episode consists largely of an over view introduction of the history of The Suicide Squad http://head.x10.mx/TaskForceX/Episode1.mp3 and episode #2 gives us a recap of the first 3 issues of the Legends 6 issue mini series  . . .
http://head.x10.mx/TaskForceX/Episode2.mp3

BIG WOW Comic Festival San Jose CA. Greg Rucka

On the DC end of this weekend's con in San Jose I'm hoping to get a chance to have a few words with Greg Rucka. In a way Rucka is almost as synonymous with The Suicide Squad as John Ostrander thanks to his work on Checkmate (volume 2) and on the OMAC Project story line. But in general I've always loved how his writing interweaves history and contemporary geo-politics into his stories which always gave his writing a very "real" feel for me. Needless to say I'll be sure to mention if I get a chance to talk to him is that the New52 Squad title would be way better if he were writing it. As it turns out Rucka was born in San Francisco and grew in the Monterey area which is about a two hour drive south. Ironically San Jose is pretty much at the half way point between the two regions.

By the way at the end of this review for #29 the reviewer mentions that the series is getting cancelled. I found out that #30 is the final issue and a long over due mercy killing for this series but I also found out that it will be relaunched YET AGAIN (volume 2) as "The New Suicide Squad". Ever heard that term "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"?

A collection of absolute bad asses with attitudes

Last weekend I finally broke down and bought Batman: Under the Red Hood. After months of watching clips of it on Youtube I finally came across it at a record store that has tons of DVDs. It was only $12 so I figured what the Hell. Needless to say it was every bit as good as the scenes on Youtube from it suggest. The DVD also has some extras consisting of production documentaries of other DC animated films like Crisis on Two Earths and Superman/Batman Apocalypse. I must have a real thing for ex side kicks who turn into these anti-hero types with an attitude. I would love to see some sort of team between the Young Justice Roy Harper Arsenal and the Jason Todd from Batman: Under The Red Hood that would be so friggin awesome!

Here's some fantastic commission art by Checkmate (Vol.1) artist Steve Erwin. What can I say about this that isn't instantly obvious to the human eye? But I would like to point out I really love Peacemaker's rifle. It looks like something between an M-16 and the pulse guns in ALIENS used by the colonial marines. Back in the 80s I had a few Vigilante comics I always liked the more graphic nature of the comic and who didn't like that cool costume of his?

And one last thing. To answer you question Aliera about who is Bruno. It probably would be a good idea to not have any kids around when you click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxQC-nE8cNM

Finally, some newly discovered fan art

Free Comic Book Day was a bust. I didn't see anything that was of any interest to me all the free comics were crap and they were using the back issue bin area for more space so I wasn't able to do my usual foraging there for cool old school shit. Oh well, at least I have some newly found fan art which this blog has been devoid of for a little while now. First up is some classic Nightshade by Brendon Fraim.

Did you know that Nightshade, Peacemaker, Sergeant Steele, Blue Beetle, Judo Master, Captain Atom and The Question were all originally characters from another publishing company that no longer exists called Charlton Comics? Most of you probably did know that already but for the few who don't I thought you might have found that interesting. DC at some point bought the rights to the characters and integrated them into the DC Universe.
Nightshade pretty much became synonymous with both Captain Atom (the DC title of course) and The Suicide Squad. Peacemaker and Sergeant Steele made multiple appearances in both the Suicide Squad and Checkmate (both volumes). So I'm diggin Peacemaker re-design concept but I'm also looking to get some feed back on it from you good people. If you need a quick reference to his costume design as it was in the old DCU: http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2012/06/impel-trading-cards-series-task-force-x_21.html

Peacmaker re-design concept by Joe Singleton