Suicide Squad (The New 52) Volume 4: Discipline And Punish by Ales Kot, Matt Kindt and Patrick Zircher (graphic novel review).
With this volume of ‘Suicide Squad (The New 52) Volume 4: Discipline and Punish’, there’s a change of writers, and the stories are sourced from Suicide Squad # 20–23, Batman Detective Comics # 23, and Justice League of America # 71. You’ll have to decide how strong the continuity is. Without going too far, it is also noted that the Samsara Serum is only a limited recovery before going fatal, and yet Amanda Waller goes from not looking well back to normal in the final issues here.
Without throwing aspersions after so long, it quickly became obvious that writer Ales Kot has not gotten a handle on Harley Quinn, minimising her dialogue to looks by artist Patrick Zircher, and with ‘Harley Lives’, writer Matt Kindt devoting an issue to her doesn’t capture her dialogue. Writing about a mad person is always going to be difficult. When it works, it works; when it doesn’t, it shows.
From the looks of things here, spoiler permitting, the current Suicide Squad is on its last missions before some of them are released, with new members the Unknown Soldier and Cheetah and serial murderer James Gordon Jr. acting as Waller’s technical advisor. Then we follow Harley Quinn and Deadshot as they have individual issues with themselves, mostly going over their histories.
Reading about the failure of ‘The New 52’, if the sudden drop in writing quality here is an example of that, then I can see the problem. The art, even that by Neil Googe in the Harley story, is at least up to par, albeit quirky.
GF Willmetts
February 2024
(pub: DC Comics, 2014. page graphic novel softcover. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-1-4012-4701-0)
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