Fin Fang BOOM!Writer: Tom Taylor
Artist: Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas, and Wes Abbott
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 29, 2020
If Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo wrote and illustrated the phone book (are they still a thing? Don't "OK Boomer" me!), I would be first in line to buy it. Their Injustice is one of my favorite comic books of all-time, and if you haven't read it, do so immediately and then thank me later...with cheesesteaks and soft pretzels! When DC announced they were the new creative team bringing back the Suicide Squad, I couldn't wait for the first issue, and even after being slightly underwhelmed, I am still on board with what they are cooking up. Does this issue reward my faith? Let's find out...
I am a huge Tom Taylor fan, and while I keep hearing that he is the "guy who kills characters," I love the way he lets them live... before killing them! It's something that gets overlooked a bit, but Taylor is one of the best character writers in comics, and that is the key. He makes you love the characters before offing them. Tom Taylor makes you care, then cry, then curse him out, then cry some more. It's a real rollercoaster ride of emotions, and I love it! Unfortunately, the first issue of Suicide Squad had less character work than killing, and it did throw me off a bit, even as I understood why it was happening. Thankfully, that is not the case here.
The issue opens with a mission gone wrong. The reader is thrown into the chaos in a great POV way as the shit hits the fan. We then travel back a day to get some character work, establish some rules, and set up the fan that will ultimately be shit on big time!
Tom Taylor is good at writing conflict and using it to set up character moments. We get that right away with Fin and The Shark being neighbors. I can't see these two ever getting along, and since his brother, Scale, died to get him here, I don't think he is dying soon himself. Yep, I can see Shark getting put down real fast.
After Fin sets himself up as more of a badass than I thought he would be, we get a rollcall of the dead from the first issue and Lok spelling out specific rules for the Revolutionaries on the roster. Fifty completed missions get you a new life. I can't explain why, but having a set number instead of the ambiguous "until you work off your sentence" was a nice change. Their first mission is the one we saw in the opening, and it is starting to look like it went better than it looked.
As the Squad heads off on the mission, we get more great interaction between Fin and Shark, and ditto for the rest of the characters. Now, this is what I was talking about earlier! Of course, a Suicide Squad mission never goes as planned, and part of the team crash lands, and it's evident that things are a bit hairier than they expected.
The issue ends by showing the reader the well-oiled machine that is the Revolutionaries and the promise of a little more trust with the Squad as a whole...or it could all go up in flames next issue! Either way, I am now 100% in!
I expected more of this character work in the first issue, but here it is in the second, so I can't complain. Tom Taylor is setting the seeds for some new favorite characters, and that's usually the kiss of death in his books, so watch out! The story itself takes a bit of a backseat, but that's fine with me since I am more interested in learning about the characters and seeing them form a team than the actual missions going on at this early stage.
Bits and Pieces:
After being a bit let down with the first issue, Tom Taylor has won me over, and once again, it's with his great character work. While there is still a lot to learn about the new characters on the Squad, I want to learn, and that's a big thing. The story itself is a bit generic, but Bruno Redondo's art is excellent, and I am cool with everything we got here.
8.8/10
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