Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad #3 Review and *SPOILERS*

The Enemy of My Enemy

Written By: Joshua Williamson
Art By: Jesus Merino, Andy Owens, Alex Sinclair, Jeremiah Skipper, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 4, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

In the previous issue we saw our Justice League team captured by the Suicide Squad....... or at least, Killer Frost after a big ass fight and if that wasn't bad enough, we also have the villains that Maxwell Lord broke out of the super secret prison known as The Catacombs and as our heroes await whatever fate Amanda Waller has for them, these villains are out and about and doing god knows what...... while they're being controlled by Maxwell Lord.  Hopefully we get to see more of Max's crew in here because we've spent so much time with our title teams and at this point all I want is to see more of the real big bads of this book.  Let's jump into this issue and see what the Justice League do now that they're locked down in Belle Reve.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Batman being all Batman about it and breaking out of his Hannibal Lecter restraints and putting a hurt on the Belle Reve guards before making his way to Amanda Waller, who tries to reason with Batman that she really didn't want to hurt the Justice League and actually wanted to offer them an olive branch by........ get this, not putting a brain bomb in their heads.  The fucked up part about this that really comes off odd to me is that Batman was being wheeled to the infirmary....... and from the dialog, it appears that he was supposed to get a brain bomb.  It's weird, but eventually after we have a little back and forth between the Justice League and the Suicide Squad, we see our heroes released and given the lowdown on what Batman and Waller have been discussing.

So yeah, we get the information put out there about all the villains that escaped The Catacombs, which is cool if you don't know the characters and we even get a little background on Maxwell Lord and boy do I mean little and while all this is going down we see our villains team on an island in the South Pacific trying to find a weapon that will allow Maxwell to make the world into what he wants it to be.  The fucked up part is though, this part really doesn't mean much because while we see this team kill all the native people who protect this weapon and see Maxwell Lord and Doctor Polaris torture the shaman, it turns out that the weapon is being housed at Belle Reve so all of that came off really pointless in the long run.

In the end, we get a great reaction from the Pre-Flashpoint Superman when he realizes that Maxwell Lord is behind the big threat that these two teams are now facing, what with him having a personal connection to him from his own timeline and ultimately we end this issue with Maxwell's team heading for Belle Reve and Amanda Waller telling everyone that they shouldn't underestimate these foes because she knows they can act as a team because they were the first Suicide Squad.......... which just raises all kinds of questions for me because it doesn't make any sense with Emerald Empress being from the future and appearing to know that Saturn Girl...... or at least a Legionnaire is in this current time and also because Lobo has had himself all kinds of adventures during the New 52, including being killed by the new Lobo and then showing up here in the Catacombs.  I really hope all of this is explained and not just brushed under the rug.

That's it for this issue of Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad and while I'm still excited for this event, this installment just came off pretty lackluster since there wasn't anything for our characters to do besides for get caught up with who their new target is and for that target to waste their time going to one place only to head on over to Belle Reve by the end.  Yeah, there was some fun stuff here..... which with Captain Boomerang in this book, it wasn't really something that I thought wouldn't happen, but ultimately the story and even the art came off weaker than it's been in the previous two issues and I hope that this doesn't become a trend for this series because I thought that it started out pretty strong.

Bits and Pieces:

This chapter of our first Rebirth event came off the weakest so far and that's because there really wasn't anything for our characters to do except get caught up on the current situation that we the readers already know about and for our villains of the book to go to one place only to find out they have to go to another.  Just not a lot of anything going on here and while I did enjoy Jesus Merino's art in this issue, it just seemed to be a step down from what we've been getting previously.

6.5/10