Suicide Roulette
Oooooh, this is one of the most awesome covers thus far. This series has been on a roll with the past few. The notion of the characters all at each others throats is rarely executed so beautifully with so many characters involved. And amazingly enough, everyone has different weapons. It's so amazing, I can even nearly push aside the nagging annoyance at the skinny Amanda Er, on the cover for the first time. And I can ignore the ridiculousness of Harley's gigantic boobs on this cover. That's impressive.
I'm still going to nag about the ridiculously erratic artist schedule, but it's good to have, what can be closest to considered, the series regular Frederico Dallochio back. He brings more cold and stern expressions to Amanda Er, giving me the thinest of thin rays of joy about her character. In fact, this entire issue does happen to have her acting like a boss. The 'main cast' each get a scene of character exploration, offset with Amanda being pretty damn manipulative and a cold hard bitch. And Deadshot's growing his facial hair!
Although Amanda appears too sympathetic towards Black Spider, and her interaction with him this issue paint her in a more humanizing light. Not as bad as her other terrible scenes, but still.
Mmm... I'm anticipating people whining about Harley being mostly naked in this one scene. I'm going to as well, but for probably different reasons. This is one rare occasion where it makes complete and total sense for her to be naked. They even try to make sure she's sexualized as little as possible. Her breasts aren't just covered, they're hidden behind objects closer to the front. We don't get to see the contours of them. BUT. They left her tiny panties on. It's actually kind of sexy when we see her from behind, or one of the other shots; BUT, why does she have THEM on when she has nothing else on? It doesn't really make sense.
Intersected here is a fantastic scene where SOMEONE is being brainwashed and trained as a sleeper agent to kill Amanda Er, and shut down the Squad. This scene does an amazing job at hiding the identity of the sleeper agent, and makes the cover more apt. This creates a FANTASTIC tension for the next issue.
In Conclusion: 4.5/5
This is definitely my favorite issue. We get more development of the actual main characters, but left to contemplate their fates still. One of them is a brainwashed sleeper agent for the increasingly interesting organization, Basilisk. I can't wait to see what's going to happen next.
And for the record, I'm betting on King Shark. I would say Black Spider; but that's too obvious.
