Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

I 'bought' this during a buy two get the third free sale, and I'm glad this was my freebie.  I didn't want any four dollar issue, so I snagged a three dollar issue instead, and this was the only rebirth volume I was interested in as I'd read and enjoyed the number one of the regular series that came after this. 

This book.  Yikes.   Why do all the Suicide Squad origin stories just not suck me in?   Perhaps it's because they focus on the formation of the squad and the 'good' guys.   Flag is positioned as a traitor whose only choice is to join the Suicide Squad or rot in prison.   (I'm trying to find a shorthand for Suicide Squad but put the two initials together, and no.   I'm highly uncomfortable using two capital S letters right next to each other, so you'll probably get the whole name or I'll just cut it down to the Squad.   Daredevil turns into DD, Doctor Strange is just Strange often times, so I guess I have history of using both just one name or the initials so I'm not sure why I'm taking this long explaining this.  Waller has never been all good, and has instead taken up the position of the ends justify the means, an attitude that placed Magneto as a terrorist in  Marvel.   (Although to be fair to both characters, Magneto had a different agenda; he wanted to save those who were mutants, and kill all humans, whereas Waller wanted to do whatever was necessary to protect people, particularly those who were good and hardworking and suffered due to super villains and terrorism.   Even given these differences, Waller is more like Magneto than such a simple explanation of their differences would belie.   She is responsible for some very horrific actions, including holding the Squad hostage.   She justifies these actions because, in the end, it's all for the greater good.  Intent is not magic, no matter how much she acts as if it is, and it's in her determination and stubbornness and her willful blindness that I see the connection to Magneto.)

So, basically, I've gone on tangents, but Squad origins tend to focus on Waller and Flag who are at the very least more heroic than the Squad members themselves in that they are not serial killers.    Yay, you're less evil than the Squad?   I feel like ninety nine percent of the people in the DC universe fall under this umbrella, though. 

Still, as evil as the Squad is, I find them, and the dynamics between them in this very forced situation to be fascinating.   More so than how or why the Squad was formed, and more so than Waller and Flag - and they were the focus.   Him in particular and I find Flag more annoying than Waller, to be honest. 

This wasn't as boring as the intro to the original Squad volume which went into the original Squad that was vastly different.   Nor was it was fascinating as Waller's first origin story, which added a lot of depth to her, and solidified why she was the person who she was: the only one who could effectively put together the Squad and then hold them together.  It also made her sympathetic.   Not to say I agree with everything, or even most of what she does.  I find most of her decisions repellent, but I sympathize with her because given her hard life, and what she went through, I can understand her rage, and her determination to save all those people who had been like her.   Poor, with no way out of the violence of the ghetto, she clawed her way out, and made sure that she did everything in her power to fight against as much of this violence as possible.   Except, she didn't take a street-by-street fight on her hands; she had a more global vision.   It's her backbone, her vision, and her street smarts that made her so formidable and compelling in the original run, and quite frankly, it's what this issue lacks.   

A shame.   I didn't hate this, but I certainly didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped I would, either.