New Suicide Squad #20 Review and **SPOILERS**

Hear! Hear! The Gang’s All Here!

Written By: Tim Seeley

Art By: Juan Ferreyra

Letters By: Nate Peikos of Blambot®

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: May 4, 2016

**Non-Spoilers and Score At The Bottom**

We return to part twenty of the Adventures of the Suicide Squad at Castle Fleischhaus, where Deadshot discovers a conspicuous clue and Harley Quinn and Scooby-Doo see a g-g-g-ghost! Really, was there ever a time that the Suicide Squad wasn’t at Castle Fleischhaus? I feel like they’ve been there forever, fighting the Fist of Cain douchebags alongside various Jersey Shore bros and hentai cosplayers. It’s been pretty interesting, but if they’re going to spend so much time at an old castle then I really need to see more vampires and shambling suits of uninhabited armor. Still, murderous psychopaths and mercenary assassins provide their own thrills, and I’m betting that when El Diablo lets loose his fire-making powers it rankles more than a few restless spirits roaming the halls of this crumbling fortress. I just really could have used a Frankenstein’s monster or something guys! Next time, okay? As for this time, I’ve reviewed the issue at hand, which has its own merit even though it contains no ghosts. How much merit? Well, read on to find out!

Explain It!:

I think it’s pretty fucked up to produce a comic book like Suicide Squad, normally a goofy shoot-em-up action series about a gang of irascible but noble black ops assassins, and then go and make it look like like something you expect to see in a museum gallery. I don’t think it’s fair that I should have to be impressed by texture and shading while watching people get their heads knocked off by a block of concrete stuck on the end of some twisted rebar. Which is something that actually happens in this book. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. Having regrouped in some room within Castle Fleischhaus, the Squad decides to form a plan of attack. Deadshot takes lead, because he’s the most handsome. He sends a team of Harley Quinn, Cheetah, and El Diablo in to create mayhem while Deathtrap picks off some of the more seasoned killers and Deadshot provides cover for him. It’s a pretty solid plan, but even more solid are the unbelievable and creative layouts that I assume are due to Juan Ferreyra. Something about the plotting makes everything seem to happen in real time, with pop-up circles used to highlight certain characters’ commentary as carnage happens in the larger panels. You’ve really got to see it to understand, and no I won’t be revealing it here!

While the Suicide Squad dispatches the Fist of Cain, Amanda Waller, Cap’n (shudder) Boomerang, and Mr. Ashemore aka the United Kingdom’s Hunky Punk are flying across the pond (and by that I mean the Atlantic Ocean, not an actual pond) to Castle Fleischhaus on the border of Prague to rescue the team and probably give them a stern talking to. Ashemore envisions himself a hero, someone who should be respected, despite the fact that he wears an impenetrable gargoyle suit. I mean come on. Is that the stupidest “super power” of all? Cap’n Boomerang points out that by thinking he deserves accolades and respect, he’s automatically not a hero, though he should have just kept making fun of the name Hunky Punk. Back at Fleischhaus, most of the Fist of Cain have been slaughtered or clobbered, and now the team has to find Adam Reed (heir to the Buddy Reed Coffee fortune) who has a transmitter that can pop the bombs implanted in their heads by A.R.G.U.S. They get to Reed’s office, and he isn’t there but a bunch of blood from his girlfriend—sorry, ex-girlfriend now!—splattered in the pattern of a rose. This makes Deathtrap gasp because Seal’s “Kissed By a Rose” had been playing in his head all day, plus it reminded him of the Spirit of Murder, Rose Tattoo, who promises to be wherever people are getting wholesale killed and to rise from the pumpkin patch every Halloween. Just then someone tosses a grenade into the room, the blast separating everyone and sending Deadshot through a wall.

A couple of lingering Fist of Cainers have Harley Quinn cornered and are about to fill her fulla lead, when Hunky Punk shows up in his gargoyle outfit and deflects the bullets away. Cap’n Boomerang swoops in to kill the offensive duo, and Hunky Punk raises his helmet to announce his greatness, when Rose Tattoo, who has infested the body of Adam Reed’s ex-girlfriend Seraphine, pops him in the eye with an arrow, earning this issue the much-coveted Panel That Made Reggie Laugh Out Loud for the week. Fucking Hunky Punk. Tattoo Rose says a nursery rhyme created in her honor, but honestly it is so awkward that it doesn’t bear repeating. At that moment, Waller saves a prone Deadshot from being bucked down, and then Cheetah attacks Tattoo Rose while El Diablo creates a wall of flame…and you know what? I’m going to leave it there, because the final events of this issue should be read, and you should know if you want to read this or not by now! The answer should be that you do want to read it!

So this Fleischhaus thing is going on a little longer than I might have liked—I suspect it’s going to fit neatly in a trade collection coming to a comic shop near you—but I am enjoying it thoroughly so I can’t complain too much. The star of this show, ladies and gentlemen, is Juan Ferreyra, who is just putting down an art clinic every time he drops a two-page spread. Which, as a matter of fact, he does quite often. The whole first page of the book is like a study in facial expression. For three bucks, you’re getting lesson worthy of the best art schools, and you won’t even have to get anything on your body pierced or take weird drugs to attend. Unless you want to, of course.

Still hilarious.

Bits and Pieces

The Suicide Squad is clearly feeling at home at creepy Castle Fleischhaus, they've had their mail forwarded there and Cheetah planted hydrangeas. This issue brings Amanda Waller into the fray once again, along with some special guests. But the reason you want to buy this comic book is for the art, colors and layout by Juan Ferreyra, it all works together perfectly and makes me want to frame the pages of this comic book and hang them on my wall.

8.5/10