Batman and Deadshot have made it to New Mexico in order save Zoe, but not without obstacles and a bunch of internal fighting. Three members of the Suicide Squad are hot on their trail in order to bring them back to Amanda Waller, the world’s unhappiest person.
Suicide Squad #43
Writer: Rob Williams
Artist: Philippe Briones (pgs 1-10) & Hugo Petrus (pgs. 11-22)
Cover Artist: Guillem March & Tomeu Morey
Colorist: Hi-Fi
Publisher: DC Comics
What You Need to Know:
Kobra has taken Zoe Lawton, Deadshot’s daughter, and keeping her prisoner in order to replace her soul with their original leaders, Jeffrey Franklin Burr. Batman and Deadshot made their way to New Mexico to find her, when they were attacked by… a giant mutated cobra person? Eh, I guess we’ve seen worse.
What You’ll Find Out:
After a very brief flashback to baby Bruce’s night in the alley where he lost his parents, we flash forward to the present where the dysfunctional duo are in a truck right after running into a tremendous mutant cobra man and a miniature army of Kobra mercenaries. While Batman takes down the cobra monster… which was pretty cool, if I’m being honest, Deadshot takes on the mercenaries, shooting to maim and not kill as he emphasizes to Batman. One mercenary, however, does run his mouth and Deadshot does what Deadshot does best and shoots him in the skull point blank right through his helmet.
This Prompts the Dark Knight and the World’s Greatest Marksman to get into fisticuffs over the “No Fatalities” rule that Batman instated when he first broke Floyd, Deadshot’s real name for those casual readers, out of Belle Reve. Deadshot reminds Batman, and consequently the readers, that this isn’t “some cutesy team-up &$%&” and that he’s worried about what they are going to do to his daughter. It’s a pretty brutal fight, but in the end, Batman wins with a swift throat chop telling Lawton that he is a father and that he needs to “be better” for her.
Directly after the… let’s say lesson, that Batman teaches Deadshot, we see the duo chased by the members of the Suicide Squad in a small helicopter sent to capture them with Harley at the… wheel? stick? I do not know what the steering mechanism is called, but either way, Harley driving was never going to be a good thing. Harley hallucinates being in a submarine for some reason and Captain Cold, the newest member of the Squad, blasts Deadshot with his cold gun freezing him in place. Throwing a Batarang into the icy prison Deadshot is trapped in helps him to break out somehow which is where I mimic the “shrug” emoji. Anyway, the chase ends with Batman and Deadshot jumping off the end of a cliff overlooking a giant damn while the Suicide Squad is about to crash land from Harley’s bad steering as well.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch or in this case, the secret lair of Kobra, we see Zoe being dressed in Kobra gear including a chic helmet and given a new nickname: Rekoil. Zoe is fighting the fumes that are allegedly destroying her soul to replace with Jeffrey Franklin Burr, the original leader of Kobra. I’m sure she’ll be fine.
What Just Happened?
In the entirety of the arc so far, we’ve seen Deadshot and Batman argue over the morality of their methods. Deadshot makes the argument that brutally beating someone to the point of death is just as bad as killing them. Now, I may not have either person’s skill sets or deep seeded issues, but while I do not agree with Deadshot, he does make you stop and think for a minute. Batman, of course, does believe in a line you do not cross, which is why we do love him so very much.
My one gripe with the arc so far, as this is my first introduction to the Suicide Squad comic, is that Harley is not written very evenly. I may not be an expert on mental illnesses, but I do like to believe that I have enough respect for people who have them that a character with mental illness should not be written so erratically in different ways issue to issue. It just seems as though she has completely gone off of her meds which should be properly managed by the doctors at Belle Reve so little continuity issues like that tend to give me pause.
Rating: 8 /10
Final Thought: The arc as a whole has been really interesting and evenly paced and issue #43 does a very good job of keeping you interested and invested in the dynamics of how everyone works together. This issue would have gotten a higher rating if I felt Harley was written with just a bit more finesse and understanding of mental illnesses.
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