Today, we look at the time that Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad were taken captive and taken to Apokolips where they surprisingly fought their way home (well, most of them).
This is a feature called "Nothing is Better," where I spotlight aspects of classic comic books that have particularly impressed me.
One of the trickiest things to handle in comic book writing is the tonal shift. We see it all of the time in comics, where a character works perfectly fine in one type of story but when you put them into a different type of story, they stick out like a sore thumb. That was really what was so impressive with John Ostrander's run on Suicide Squad and it was what was captured so well in the recent The Suicide Squad film by James Gunn, which is that the concept shifts well from gritty drama to over-the-top humor to outlandish superhero vs. giant starfish fights.
Ostrander did the same during his original Suicide Squad series, where there would be super deep, super personal one-off stories mixed in with just wacky humor and, occasionally, throwing the Squad into the middle of a superhero crossover where they have to help defend Australia from an alien invasion.
One of the best examples of how well the characters adapted to new stories is when Ostrander (and his co-writer and wife, Kim Yale) took the team to Apokolips and somehow they actually thrived (all things considered)!
Early on in the series, the Suicide Squad (a government task force run by Amanda Waller which consisted of super-villains trying to get their sentences reduced and tarnished superheroes just looking to do some good) encountered the Female Furies, a team of powerful beings who work for Darkseid (Big Barda was their original leader). Lashina, the head of the group after Barda defected, was usurped from the group. Soon after, a mysterious strong woman showed up and joined the Squad. Dubbed "Duchess" (because she was a female John Wayne), she served with the Squad for a time until she revealed that SHE was Lashina (Waller knew this, of course, she just thought it best to keep her close where she could keep an eye on her - a strategy that did not turn out so well).
Now that Duchess remembered her past, she decides to take a bunch of Squad members with her to Apokolips in Suicide Squad #33 (by Ostrander, John K. Snyder III and Geoff Isherwood. Yale would be credited as a co-writer on half the issues of this story) to serve as cannon fodder on her journey to get her position back. She promises Shade the Changing Man that she will help him return home if he aids her (he figures he can get around their deal - he ALSO did not plan his strategy well, either).
Duchess takes advantage of the naivete of Flo, a support staff member who is the daughter of Waller's cousin, and therefore has been promised by Waller to her cousin that Flo will never go into combat. Flo has a crush on Bronze Tiger and she thinks proving herself in the field will impress him (her strategy, too, is a flawed one). Bronze Tiger's handling of Flo's crush is quite clever, as he obviously knows that she is crushing on him hard and he sort of just lets it go without saying anything, in part because if flatters him.
So a group of the Squad is off to Apokolips, with Bronze Tiger and a few remaining members of the team left behind and stuck with the task of figuring out a way to Apokolips to save their teammates (also, Bronze Tiger's girlfriend, Vixen, is one of the characters captured and taken by Lashina, so he is REALLY invested).
Waller and the others learn that they are there as basically cannon fodder, but when Granny Goodness shows up in the next issue, Waller knows their best chance is fighting alongside Lashina for now...
After a battle in the following issue (Luke McDonnell pencils in this one issue), Lashina succeeds in defeating the usurper to her title, and is welcomed back by Granny Goodness. When Granny asks what to do with the Squad members, Lashina suggests killing them. This leads to an excellent sequence in Suicide Squad #36 (Snyder back on pencils) where a series of Squad members defeat their Apokoloptian foes in succession, thus allowing Waller to rub Granny Goodness' face in it, but Goodness is not impressed...until the rest of the Suicide Squad arrive with the Forever Poeople as reinforcements! And Waller doesn't even care whether Granny is impressed or not...
As the battle rages on, Darkseid finally decides that things have gone on far enough and he shows up to put a stop to things. First, he admonishes Lashina. She informs him that he messes with the humans all of the time, so why not her? And, of course, he points out that she is not him and uses his Omega Beams to destroy her (for now)....
Sadly, during all of the fighting, Flo was tragically killed and Darkseid offers to use his powers to bring her back to life, but Waller knows that she would not be truly "alive" and turns down Darkseid's offer, something that not many people can say that they did and lived to tell the tale.
Darkseid then has the Squad all sent back to Earth with their dead, this whole experience a dramatic shift in the lives of the Squad, but one that left them with more resolve than they ever expected (except for Doctor Light, who hilariously is tricked into trying to become a superhero during the battle on Apokiolips, right in time for him to be killed almost instanteously. This was the major comic relief in the middle of this otherwise quite serious story arc).
Okay, folks, this is a feature that is a BIT less conducive to suggestions (as it really is about stuff that speaks to me, ya know?), but hey, feel free to still send suggestions for future installments, to brianc@cbr.com! Maybe you and I have the same take on things and I'll use your idea!