WARNING: The following article contains minor spoilers for Suicide Squad, by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas and Wes Abbott, on sale now.
Joining up with Task Force X has always been as bleak a prospect as its nickname Suicide Squad would suggest. Created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru for 1959's The Brave and the Bold #25 and later revamped by John Ostrander, the Suicide Squad is a group of supervillains, typically led by Amanda Waller, being coerced into doing black ops missions for the government. The team tends to have something of a high-casualty rate due to the extreme nature of their missions. However, with Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo relaunching the book for DC, expect the Suicide Squad to get even deadlier for its members.
Taylor, who previously collaborated with Redondo on such books as Injustice, has made a name for himself penning hits like DCeased and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. He's gained acclaim for his work, which mixes action with gut-punch moments that stick with readers long after they've put one of his comics down. He's also definitely not afraid to kill characters, as evidenced by DCeased and Injustice.
CBR talked with Taylor over the phone about his upcoming Suicide Squad book on such topics as the popularity of Harley Quinn, how he chooses to kill characters, creating the book's Revolutionaries and more.
CBR: What are you most excited for people to see in Suicide Squad
Tom Taylor: I'm very excited for them to meet the Revolutionaries, certainly. The ten new characters that we've created specifically for this book, and to meet a lot of the old cast and characters that you haven't seen for a long time, like Cavalier and Magpie and Zebra-Man! He's the best, come on!
I'm excited just to share the ridiculous fun and manicness that is this book. This is a book that we've really wanted to make sure lives up to its title. You know, the Suicide Squad are not supposed to all make it through to the end of every mission. And in this book that's certainly the case.
Was there anyone of those characters that you mentioned, or just in general, that you really liked writing?
I've been a Harley Quinn fan forever. I loved writing her in Injustice. I've written scenes with her that I'll always fondly look back on. Bringing her into DCeased was fantastic and then getting to write her in this team is just a joy.
But of the new cast, The Aerie and Wink. The two of them together are just brilliant. Having that queer relationship there and having these two characters that are just, you know, one is just so much fun and so free and the two of them are just so close and sort of need each other. So having two characters like that, who have been thrust into this environment, is, you know, it's a joy to write characters like that. Osita is kind of the same, the leader of the Revolutionaries. She's a great, incredibly tough character to write.
Harley Quinn is a really popular character, especially right now. Why do you think she appeals to so many people?
There's a number of reasons. One, she's truly free. You know, she is free when she's not with the Joker. And I find her to be a million times better when she's not with the Joker. When she's with the Joker... there's a victim element to that. And when she's free of him then she gets to be her. And I think there's something about that that really resonates with people.
People love characters that can speak truth to power. Harley Quinn can speak truth to power -- to any power on Earth. And [she] doesn't just speak truth, but sits there pointing and laughing at the person who needs to hear the truth. So I think for a lot of people there's something in Harley Quinn that they wish there was more about in themselves.
Speaking of truth to power, the very first scene in your Suicide Squad takes place in Australia and sees the Revolutionaries stealing a nuclear warhead and critiquing the government's priorities on that. I mean, you've never struck me as someone that shies away from taking a swing at real world problems and issues. And Suicide Squad is ripe for social commentary. Is that something that you can tease more about for us, more kinds of social commentary, things like that?
Well, the Suicide Squad is a black ops group run by the US Government doing things that are technically illegal, so of course there's commentary there. The Revolutionaries themselves, they consider themselves to be freedom fighters. You know, others will call them terrorists, and I don't stand either way. I make sure that it is morally gray. Certainly their opening is hideous. What they do is nasty in every sense of the word, but again there's so much going on in the world that books like this can reflect and also that you just can't ignore. Anything you do with teams like these tends to reflect the real world.
One of the things that I think has always made your writing really sing for me is that you're very good at mixing in emotional gut punches. Can you talk to me a bit about how you go about crafting those moments?
I think it's just about making sure that the characters are real on the page, that you have their voice, that you understand what makes them tick. And whatever they want, whatever it is in their lives, that they regret that haunts them, whatever it is, or whatever they're after... Whatever they're after, you take that away, or you threaten it. Whatever they regret, or whatever piece is buried in the past, you bring it to the surface and you show glimpses of it.
But also, I think the way I tend to trick people into these emotional gut punches is I put a lot of humor and a lot of heart just before I shove the emotional scene in. So I often have people sort of smiling at something and then "Oh my god! I didn't see that coming. Oh no! Alfred! Father's day!" You know, or Spider-Bite in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. It's about putting people in a position of safety or feeling like they're along on this ride with these characters and then pulling the rug out from under them. And with something like the Suicide Squad, you can do that better than almost anyone.
Absolutely. I mean, it's a team designed to have the characters die.
If you're a fan of what we did in DCeased, for instance, you'll definitely be a fan of this book.
How did you make your decisions, and how do you make your decisions, about who to kill in these books?
I wish I could just say, "Yeah, I think it's time for that person to die" or "I don't like that character so much, I'll kill them." But unfortunately, this really is a book where you have to kill your darlings. There's a character that dies in the first issue that I would have loved to have held on to. But we have to make the audience feel. The reader has to realize that there's no firm footing here. Really, anyone can die in this book, anyone can get taken away. Anyone can go on a mission and not come back. And unless the readers believe that, then they're not part of the story. They're not caught up in what we're trying to do here.
There are, I will be honest, between one and three characters that I really don't want to kill, that I've kind of set aside and spoken to an editor about it. And Andrea Shea and I have had a little secret pact off to the side going, "Come on! Let's keep these ones alive."
But, you know, I could change my mind at issue #7, where I just go, "Aw man, if this person doesn't come through in this moment, if they sacrifice themselves, it's gonna mean so much." So, yes, I won't promise anyone survives to the end.
This issue -- and the solicitations for future issues give this away so it's not too big of a spoiler -- but Lok takes over Task Force X from Amanda Waller. How would you compare the two?
I think a lot of people have always looked at Amanda Waller and gone, "Oh man, she's the worst. She's just nasty. She'll do anything to get what she wants. She'll put these people through anything." And Lok is so much worse. He is just a sadist. He is happy to torture these guys, to threaten them at the drop of the hat and to change the parameters. We had something that happens in issue one where Magpie doesn't want to go on a mission, and he just says, "OK, we'll add time to your sentence." And it's just like, that's never been part of the deal. But for Lok it is. He changes the rules, and so it makes the threat for our characters much more real. So the threat is even bigger from within, just as it is from without
Circling back to the Revolutionaries, how did you, or where did, that idea to include them come from?
It came from a number of places. So, first of all, I was pitching with it, you know, I kept coming up with different characters from the past, character that people hadn't seen in ages, you know, essentially expendable characters, C-list DC characters that we could build up and then murder. There's no other way to put it.
What kept happening, it was bizarre, people would be like, "Yes, yes, yes, just use that person... Ah, so it turns out we've got this story coming up in this other book, and they're being used for the first time in fifteen years. Sorry." And that just continually happened.
Also, I wanted a more diverse cast from day one, as well. I wanted a cast that reflected the real world and was a truly global cast. And so it came to this point where I was just like, "Hey, you know, what if I just created 10 all-new characters?" And the editors were like, "OK, why don't you do that?"
And so Bruno Redondo and I went away, and he just started designing. We worked really closely with editor Andrea Shea. She was kind of our sounding board on a lot of it. To get Thylacine, we talked to Ryan Griffen, who's the creator of Cleverman, an Aboriginal superhero in Australia, and Shari Sebbens, who's an Indigenous actor... And we asked them for a lot of advice getting that character right and they asked Mobs up and down the country just to get things right as well.
So, you know, we had a lot of people helping us out and making sure that we were getting this right and not offending anyone. We've obviously got an enby character in The Aerie and getting a non binary character and getting the look of that character right was, you know, it was a challenge, but it was one that we were definitely up for. And, again, that was a lot of consultation with different people.
That was also something that struck me when reading this was that choice to bring in all of these diverse characters. Assuming that any of them actually survive the experience, who would you most like to see continue in the DC Universe at large? Is there anyone that you would really, really like to catch on and become a big thing?
Taylor: I'm not putting any favoritism in this interview in case people see it on the page and go, "Ah! Tom's not going to kill that person."
But I will say, The Aerie and Wink, I think their relationship, and who they are, is really important to see in a book like this. You know, I've become a bit biased with someone like Thylacine, because there haven't been a lot of Indigenous characters, Aboriginal Australian characters, in comics. It's [great] to get someone like that in.
But having said that, I can't stress enough that literally all of them are on the chopping board if it's right for the story.
You love all your children equally, and you'd kill them all equally.
That's right! This is truly a kill your darlings moment, when I know if it comes up, they're going to have to go. I'm actually writing Suicide Squad today. I've been writing two issues kind of back-to-back and working out a big two-part arc, and I know a character is dying in this. And I'm just like, "Aw, man. I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I wanted to save you but... you're going to go."
You could start a letters page at back just to apologize.
I'd write it to the character. "Chaos Kitten, I'm so sorry. Your beanie with the hat, with the ears, was incredible. You know, we never wanted to see you go, but Darkseid landed on Earth and it was between you and him! You were the only [one] who could save him, so you know it had to be..." Anyway, no.
Is there anything else you want to add, Tom?
I just want to say how absolutely fantastic our whole team has been on this book. You know, Bruno and I obviously had a very long history together. We've worked together for about seven years across Injustice, Star Wars and a whole host of things. But then bringing in Adriano Lucas on colors, it's fantastic. Andrea Shea has been great. It's really such a great team to work with. We're all incredibly excited for this book, and Andrea and I are just always buzzing at each other and constantly shooting things back and forth. So I'm really happy that you get to see the sort of product of our excitement. Our little murder book baby...
Well, I've got a Suicide Squad member to kill.