Suicide Squad: Blaze marks the latest iteration of the team to hit comic shelves. Since the latest Suicide Squad film, it seems there’s a new series about the Squad coming out just about every month. This month’s flavor of the squad brings together the fantastic creative team from the most recent Hellblazer run, which established a blackhearted style with John Constantine. Writer Si Spurrier, artist Aaron Campbell, and colorist Jordie Bellaire now look to bring a similar flair to the Squad. What follows is a grim tale that despite being filled with new characters, new powers and action, remained difficult to get into.
The world we’re dropped into is a much more nihilistic version of the DC universe. There’s a Superman-level threat acting on its most base instincts leading to the random killing and violation of three people every day. Despite this, the Justice League is seemingly unable or unwilling to solve the problem. The only solution in this grim world? Send in a newly minted Suicide Squad, overseen by the members most prevalent in popular culture.
The newest Squad members consists of a bunch of criminal nobodies who survive Amanda Waller’s trials to earn their place in the “Blaze protocol”. This protocol imbues them each with abilities to varying degrees of usefulness but will kill them within three months time. Our entry point into these new characters comes from the narration of one of the criminals, Michael. Right from the beginning we’re treated to his perspective of the world in an effort to ease us into it, yet despite this he’s never a compelling enough character to fully believe in. He’s a wimpy con whose sole motivation is to just follow around fellow con, Tanya, like a lovesick puppy. Despite the effort to draw me into his character, it just consistently fell flat.
The same can mostly be said for the rest of the squad; they each have one defining feature and given this is a Suicide Squad book, it’s almost not even worth it buying into them cause we know they’ll probably just end up dying in an issue anyway. The book’s inherent cynicism also doesn’t make it that much of an enjoyable read, either. There are moments of black humor from Harley Quinn and co. scattered throughout, but they never really hit.
DC Comics
Bringing the story to life here is the art team of Aaron Campbell and Jordie Bellaire. Campbell brings his signature style to the book and works well in tandem with Bellaire’s colors. The whole comic has a very gritty and textured feel to the visuals, which matches very well with the narrative. Despite this, it can be difficult to parse what’s happening in panels at times. This is particularly evident during the action set pieces. When superpowers are on full display in the heat of chaotic battle, the abstract colors layered on the textured artwork work against one another other and make the reading a bit harder than it should be.
Suicide Squad: Blaze #1 is a comic that on paper should work for me but ended up a disappointment. I’m a huge fan of all the creatives involved here, but the end result did not work. The cynical edge could have worked to the narrative’s benefit but instead just made for a dreary reading experience. The new characters boil down to cannon fodder for the actual Squad members and are not that interesting, and the art, while serviceable, can get a bit muddy. There’s a lot of uncapitalized potential here that just makes for a “meh” comic. Hopefully this series will find its audience but it lacks the draw it could have had.
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