It’s Villain’s Month and every single main universe title has been taken over by the villains. In this special issue of JLA, it’s focusing on Deadshot from Suicide Squad. This issue is also important because Matt Kindt is writing and he’ll be taking over Suicide Squad next month now that Alex Kot has left the building. Is it good?
Justice League of America #7.1 (DC Comics)
With the Justice League well… dead and Suicide Squad pretty much disbanded, Deadshot is allowed to roam free and do whatever he wants — which is another mission. This guy loves his job. However, during it all, we get a flashback and see what ultimately led him to becoming the guy he is. And if you would believe it, it was all because his family was killed.
Well, if some people become bats, I guess it’s only natural that somebody would become an assassin.
I am not overly familiar with the character of Deadshot nor do I know his backstory in the previous continuity, so I’m not sure how close his story is to the original. As such, I can only judge this by itself, which is probably for the best and the right thing to do overall. It’s a pretty good origin with what he ultimately became and how he now views things. I was a bit invested and I did come away liking this guy as a villain.
But besides his origin, the rest of the issue is decent. Not much in the way of dialogue since the story is mostly just narrated to us. The pacing is good (though I wonder how exactly he was able to have this large of a flashback as he was falling), ultimately ends in a way that led us directly into Kindt’s Suicide Squad, and it flowed pretty well. Not much else to say besides that.
But you certainly will waste that poor man’s coffee, you jerk!
The artwork is all around decent, but nothing too special. Nothing is poorly drawn, the layouts are good (I liked the use of walls as panel borders in some of the pages), and all the characters look fine. However, nothing really jumps out at you or is particularly memorable. Not bad, but could be better.
7.5
- The writing is good all around.
- Solid enough origin.
- The artwork is decent.
- Not particularly exciting or memorable overall.
Is It Good?
This Deadshot one-shot (no pun) is certainly a decent and interesting story, plus origin. It reads well and seems like it is setting things in place for the new writer of Suicide Squad, but that’s it. Worth checking out if you are fan, but you probably wouldn’t be missing much if you just waited until the trade came out that had this issue in it.
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