Suicide Squad #8 Review: Delivers On Characterization And Action

This flashback issue delivers on characterization and action scenes while digging deep into the overarching reason why things have gone even more sideways than they normally do for a team expected to experience a high casualty rate. In this issue, we get a look at the start of the romance between the teleporter Wink and the winged flyer The Aerie.

It seems that lots of governments around the world are into all brands of illegal experimentation-styled shenanigans involving human trafficking. Why? Well, in a world of Leagues and Titans, it is logical that nation-states would want to make super-powered people as assets. Doing it with things that violate human decency and the Geneva Convention … well, then you're getting into Weapon X/Department H territory, and that literally never ends well for anybody.

If you're not already in love with the clean lines of Daniel Sampere and the brisk, evocative coloring of Adriano Lucas, well, spirit, what the heck is wrong with you? Their wonderful gift of visual storytelling, alongside the subtly effective lettering of Wes Abbott, makes the deliberate fall into an infatuation for these characters not only believable but enchanting. Even the cleverness of the title treatments is relevant to the plot. Then, of course, you have to get into that doggone Tom Taylor, and his disarming, careful scripting. He finds a savvy way to sideline most of the huge cast (seriously, there are ten people on the Squad now) and shine the light on this couple, driven together under impossible circumstances. What's also helpful is showing the continuity of corruption, a legacy of broken lives, and hypocrisy from people acting for "national security," whatever that means.

It's hard balancing stories about bad people against the good deeds they may do, and this issue — no, this series — has managed to walk that line in a way that's cash money. To do that and clearly show people falling (almost literally) in love? That's fantastic work. RATING: BUY.

• written by TOM TAYLOR

• art and cover by DANIEL SAMPERE and JUAN ALBARRAN

• variant cover by JEREMY ROBERTS

• Task Force X is done running. They pulled the bombs out of their necks, they've identified their target, and they're going on the hunt for the man who's pulled their strings and killed their friends. And now the Squad is up against forces far more powerful than they ever could have imagined. Taking them on…could be suicide.