Thank you DC Rebirth! For half a decade, DC Comics tried their New 52 initiative where they restart their entire universe over in an effort to get new readers. It ultimately failed and was recently reversed in full. I don’t want to get into the details of why New 52 sucked because that would take too much time. While there were good stories and titles, it’s for the best they ditched it and published the DC Rebirth One-Shot comic as a soft reboot. But one thing the New 52 did do that some people are probably grateful for is to shine a light on the Suicide Squad. And with that newfound attention, they charged into a challenge that surprisingly hasn’t been written about before. The group fight the Justice League!

One of the first major stories to come out of the Rebirth era. It begins with Batman informing the rest of the League about the existence of Amanda Waller’s task force, thanks to some snooping in his own book at the time. They raise up some valid points about the flaws of such a team, especially in regards to actually rehabilitating criminals. But they then detect the team currently active on mission and go confront them. That’s where their first battle occurs. But later on, it appears this has been orchestrated and that a secret villain is making moves behind the scenes. Forced to team-up, heroes and villains alike take down a power that threatens the entire world.

Obviously some characters in a story like this aren’t going to get as much attention as others. But the ones that do get the most solo attention work well for the story. There are the obvious choices – Waller, Batman, Maxwell Lord. But one focus that surprisingly works well is Killer Frost. She is the newest member of the Squad and her ice powers are fueled by draining the life force of other people. Not sure if they always worked liked that or if that’s something the New 52 introduced. In the first issue she seems to have the same willingness to just kill and do the kind of things she probably did before being recruited. But when given the chance to kill Superman an issue later, she hesitates. And that starts an arc where at the final issue where Eclipso fails to gain control of her and she fights back – yet refusing to kill Maxwell Lord for Amanda Waller. Batman himself is willing to start a new JL team and Frost is his first choice.

But her arc does tie into the major theme of the story. What kind of role or purpose does a program like Task Force X serve? The heroes point out this isn’t the right way to rehabilitate criminals. And since they are rewarded with shorter sentences after each successful mission, they could just end up being freed again thanks to the government the heroes are trusting to contain them. But perhaps the repetition can do some good for these villains. Frost was willing to let herself die instead of taking Maxwell Lord’s life force, despite him being the reason the world almost ended. And if we look at this from a longterm perspective, Harley’s time with the Squad definitely had some influence of pushing her to be more heroic. And taking on missions that the League might not even know about is another strong reason for their existence.

Now let’s look at the larger story. We get to see a look at Waller’s first Suicide Squad as they are being manipulated by Maxwell Lord. And there are some cool picks, but a couple of ones that I can’t help but question. How did she manage to control Johnny Sorrow and Lobo – the alien who has a healing factor that pretty much makes him invincible? Once that bomb goes off in his head, just give him a few minutes and then he’s alive and free. But it does lead to some neat action and fights. The League & Squad do fight a couple of times. Once at the beginning and later on when most of the League is controlled by Eclipso. Oh and by the way, while Maxwell Lord is the villain for most of the story, this was a cool way of reintroducing Eclipso to the DCU. Or maybe he already was? The New 52 is confusing. But thanks to him we get an extra JL vs SS fight. ANd if we had just that one in the beginning, I would probably argue the story didn’t live up to the title.

The entire story is well paced. And everyone seems to be portrayed accurately. I do like how Superman and Frost do have this talk that gets her to talk about how seeing him just fly once inspired her to try and do good. Before being turned into an ice-based villain, but that’s not important. There actually is this sort of arc between Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn. Harley saves Wonder Woman from one of the bad guys and that seems to get her on Diana’s good side and Harley seems really happy and giddy about it. I thought that was cute and nice. Now give me a Brave & Bold series starring the two! And I like how even thought Eclipso was the main threat and Maxwell Lord worked to set him free and try to control him, the story does show that Waller still somehow comes out as the worst one. This story is a good reminder at how manipulative she can be and why she is well known among the super community. She is that big of a threat if she decides to go after you and this story is a solid reminder of that fact.

Let’s see what else I can talk about…The art is good. Some of the fights had specific Squad & League members go up against each other and I thought the pairings were mostly clever. A few that didn’t have much connection, but that just happens in big fights. Not all of them have to have some clever connection to each other. There are a couple of teases at the end of the story where they would end up developing or being resolved in later stories or books. Lobo & Frost joining a version of the Justice League of America with Batman gets a series for a while. There are a couple of teases of the back then still missing OG JSA, which didn’t get resolved until very recently. But that kind of stuff just comes with reading comics.

Overall, this was a fun read that still had some thought and a touch of dramatic weight.