Suicide Squad #39 Review and **SPOILERS**

Stall The Wall

Writer: Rob Williams 

Artist: Neil Edwards 

Colors: Ulises Arreola 

Letters: Pat Brosseau 

Cover: Andy Kubert and Brad Anderson 

Cover Price: $2.99

On Sale Date: April 11, 2018

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Uh oh, the Suicide Squad is gonna…do something. I forget exactly what. Intercept The Wall, I think? I recall Amanda Waller was miffed about it, whatever the plan is. Hopefully my review of Suicide Squad #39 will bring me up to speed, or we’re all screwed!

Explain It!

The year was 1988 or 1989, I was fourteen years old. A friend and I headed out on the Long Island Rail Road to a party in Riverhead, which near the most Eastern tip of the island, right between its two forks. Coming from a neighborhood that didn’t ask for ID, we brought the beer—three six-packs of Budweiser tallboys, stuffed into a polka-dot backpack that was very much in fashion for the time. I don’t remember how many I drank before I was drunk; I imagine it wasn’t very many. But drunk I was, along with two or three friends, and we set about making a big enough nuisance of ourselves to get kicked out of the house. There I was, a few hundred miles from my neighborhood in the dead of night, with no idea of how to get back home.

But four teen-aged boys plied with beer and testosterone can do anything, so we made our way to a nearby town called Quogue, where we slept overnight in an abandoned van. The next morning, I made my way Westward on the Long Island Rail Road with a friend from Stony Brook. He’d called a family friend for a ride at least that far, and they’d agreed to do it—only if we participated in an AIDS walk in Patchogue. Without any better options, and fueled off of our youth, we walked in that march and giggled about any girls of the same age strolling about. Eventually, we made it back to his house in Stony Brook, where his grandparents hated me. We showered, ate something, and slept.

I still needed to get back to Queens, two days after having left, and my friend had a girl he liked in a neighborhood not far from me called Great Neck. So we hopped back onto the Long Island Rail Road and made it to Mineola, where my friend got the bright idea to call this girl and see if she was home. She wasn’t. We hung around Mineola for a while, thumbing through an issue of Outlaw Biker, then decided to make it to her home anyway. It was empty. My friend broke in to leave this girl a note, and while he was inside, the girl and her father pulled up in the car. So we told another spate of lies, then my parents came to pick me up and take me home, and that ended the weekend.

I tell this story because there is nothing to say about this issue of Suicide Squad. Rick assembles the Squad to tackle The Wall, and they fail, so The Wall is able to get the information he needed: Amanda Waller’s personal information. Arriving at a hospital where her daughter has just given birth, he threatens to kill her. That’s it. This is about as much of a rip-off as an issue can be. There’s one plot beat, for crying out loud. Yet again, we have a completely decompressed story where characters sit around and talk for most of the book to justify its existence. I am sick of it. Write six-issue stories or make shorter arcs. This shit is for the birds.

Bits and Pieces:

This books runs in place for an issue, so you can skip it and hop on the next one, unless that remains in a holding pattern. You know what? Just get the trade collection if you're hell-bent to read this stuff, though frankly I wouldn't go out of my way.

5/10