WARNING: The following article contains minor spoilers for Suicide Squad #1, by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas and Wes Abbott, on sale now.
Recently, superstar writer Tom Taylor wrapped up his horror-tinged comic DCeased, an out-of-continuity series which unleashed a zombie-like virus across the DC Universe and claimed countless victims, such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Now, the scribe has just launched a new volume of Suicide Squad with artist Bruno Redondo, a series that teams-up Task Force X with a crew of new characters called the Revolutionaries.
Although only one issue of the series has been released, the book has already claimed the lives of Cavalier, Magpie and new additions Scale and T.N.Teen. The writer’s last two projects have featured the deaths of multiple characters, and now, Taylor has revealed how he chooses the victims in his 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,'" Taylor said in an interview with CBR. “But unfortunately, [Suicide Squad] 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.”
Despite that, Taylor assures there are certain characters he intends on keeping around for the long haul. “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.”
Although DCeased served as a six-issue miniseries, Taylor will helm a sequel, DCeased: Unkillables, illustrated by Karl Mostert and Trevor Scott. The series begins February 2020.
Suicide Squad #2, by Tom Taylor and art by Bruno Redondo, arrives Jan. 6, 2020.