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

An illustration style I'd like to see for other Suicide Squad characters too

The minute I laid eyes on this fan art I thought of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. And for those of you who know Frazetta's work (which should be all of you) that is some high praise for artist Tony de Zanuga who did this Black Orchid rendering. I've blogged about Black Orchid a couple of times here before with her having been one of the non convict members of the Squad who appeared in about a dozen issues in the original series. Certainly one of the more mysterious members of The Squad Black Orchid had some kind of arrangement with Waller for which in exchange for her services from time to time she was given a certain amount of access to Belle Reve's information resources: http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2011/03/task-force-x-retirement-files-020-023.html
But as of recently I remember where else we've seen her working with the Suicide Squad. She appeared in issue #1 of the original Deadshot mini-series along with Rick Flag, Waller and Flo Crowley. In that issue she's sent to save Deadshot who is in a free fall plunging to his death after having ruptured the fuselage of a plane filled with high level drug dealers he provoked a fire fight with. You see a little bit of that clip art in the Deadshot DC super villains Youtube video I featured a few postings back. And we've also seen her fighting along side other Squad members against the alien alliance in the INVASION mini series: http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2008/05/ambush-bug-cameos-invasion.html

It happens to be the day after I originally published this posting that I stumbled upon this Enchantress fan art. As many of you know Enchantress was with the Squad from the very beginning up until the mid teens but would manifest herself here and there in various ways through out the series. I felt adding this fine piece of art would be a nice way to "augment" this posting. I'm definitely getting an Elvira kinda vibe from this. Along with quite bit of blood flow to my lower abdominal area, go figure.

One last thing, our favorite DC 52 Mystery Science Theater 3000 style reviewer covered Suicide Squad #23. I won't get a chance to thoroughly read it till later today but among other things there may be a possible Nightshade appearance: http://tessatechaitea.tumblr.com/post/55788387389/suicide-squad-22

The Rogues vs The Secret 6 and other cool happenings

Left click to enlarge

To see the full skit go to: http://dbsuniverse.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-who-would-win-rogues-vs-secret-six.html

I'm updating this posting with this other action figure single panel skit I just found at http://random-happenstance.blogspot.com/

Left click to enhance image : )

Let me add one more thing to this posting before I return this JLA (Ed Benes, Dwayne McDuffie,) trade paper back to the library I checked out a couple of weeks ago. I just can't let this book go with out saving one of my favorite panels from the issue that comes from this heart to heart moment between Mari and Ben from JLA#22.