Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Are We Looking At A New Sort of Trinity War?

Written By: Joshua Williamson
Art By: Jason Fabok, Alex Sinclair, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 21, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now, don't go and think of Night of The Monster Men as Rebirth's first event because that's be a terrible place to start your thinking when coming into this.  All that Monster Men nonsense was just a crossover, it's here where you'll get your first event and hopefully if everything works out and the comic book gods are smiling down at us, this will be the event that you'll remember for years to come and make you reminisce fondly of the early days of Rebirth.  So yeah, if you haven't already, you'll want to read Batman #13 before this......... simply because it's Batman, but also because we have a couple page prologue leading into this that will explain why Batman's taking action against Amanda Waller and her Suicide Squad in this event.  Okay, let's jump into this issue and see what all the hubbub is all about and see how the Suicide Squad will do against the world's greatest superheroes.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us seeing a mysterious figure walking into the Catacombs, a top secret underground prison that is meant for only a select few of the world's worst of the worst........... and we get to see this mystery man make everyone do what he wants them to do with only a word and that's release said worst of the worst and also kill themselves.  It's pretty gruesome and our boy gets his villains out of their cells, but we'll get back to that later.

Over in Badhnisia, we see that our Suicide Squad were sent out on a mission to stop a cult leader from destroying the island nation with a earthquake pulsar, that he stole from STAR Labs and this just chaps Rick Flag's ass because he was unaware of their mission, which means that he has to sit on the sidelines and not keep his monsters in check.  I'll admit, that while this part does feel like a bit of filler what with our team just taking out cult lackies left and right and the cult leader "Apex" just spewing out his nonsense about sacrifice while our team just stands around and watches him turn on the quake pulsar, it was still fun, what with the Squad jokes littered throughout.  Things really come to a head though when we jump over to the Justice League Watchtower and see Batman give his team the lowdown on Task Force X and them decide that they have to do something about this group.  It's funny to me too because Batman had been investigating Task Force X and Amanda Waller for awhile now, but it took her coming into the batcave and taking his files for Batman to go to his team and ask for help.  This situation doesn't stop our team from jumping at the chance to try and bring this group down though because it keeps them off the streets and also if they get them into a regular prison where they don't have to constantly put their lives on the line with the promise of a reduced sentence, where they believe they might actually get some rehabilitation done.  So the Justice League show up to Badhnisia, where they instantly secure the crumbling buildings and save all the people on the streets.......... essentially, they do the Suicide Squad's job for them by saving the island, but that doesn't mean that there's a handshake coming from the Suicide Squad.

In the end, Amanda Waller tells everyone that if they let the Justice League take them, she'll blow their brain bombs so now the Squad has no recourse but to take on the League and as Deadshot puts it, they have the advantage here because normally they're put into situations where people are trying to kill them, but here they at least know that the Justice League doesn't kill.  So the fight is on, but we'll deal with that in another issue because we have to end this book by finding out that our mystery man at the beginning of the issue is actually Maxwell Lord, who broke out Doctor Polaris, Emerald Empress, Johnny Sorrow, Rustam and Lobo............ but the original one that we saw the New 52 Lobo kill.  So yeah, we got Lobo back and I'm happy as hell to see Doctor Polaris making an appearance here, but the point of all this seems to be that Maxwell broke them all out so that they can help him usher in a new world that he believes the Justice League are preventing by not doing their jobs properly.  The problem with this is, while the team look like they're on board with Maxwell's plan, as this issue closes we see that Lord has a bloody nose, making me believe that he's still using his power and controlling them by making them think they want in on his world changing plan.  So yeah, they're gonna be pissed when they realize what's going on.

That's it for this first issue of Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad and while the art alone gets me excited for what's to come......... what with it being some of the best art we've seen in Rebirth, this initial issue doesn't really do much but set the stage for things to come, but even with that we run into the same problems we've been having with the Suicide Squad title and that's that Enchantress is useless as fuck here and that's weird as hell because it was an out of control Enchantress that originally took out the Justice League single handedly forcing the Justice League Dark to form to take care of the problem.  That's a bit of a nitpick though and really I just want to be able to see the character used properly somewhere.  This is a purely setup issue though, so you pretty much know what to expect, besides for the Maxwell Lord development and even though the prospect of seeing the Suicide Squad and the Justice League go toe to toe is pretty awesome, it's the Maxwell Lord stuff that I cared about the most.  My only concern is that we're heading back towards Trinity War territory, where we have three teams going against one another, which should be cool, but that event was over hyped and only acted as a setup for Forever Evil, leaving it to be a really disappointing event in and of itself.  I still have faith though and I could just sit and look at Jason Fabok's art while I wait for the next issue to come about and hopefully wow the shit out of me.

Bits and Pieces:

While we get some really fun setup with this first issue of Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad, this issue is just that: setup.  That being said though, I had a great time with this story and found myself really intrigued by the cliffhanger.  This event has really kicked off to a great start thanks to Jason Fabok's art knocking my socks off and I can't wait to see where we go from here and how this will affect the rest of Rebirth from here on out.  

8.7/10