No Heroes: Suicide Squad Explained pt 3

Welcome back to part three in our series exploring the line-up for the upcoming Suicide Squad film. The movie may have only just started filming, but director Dvid Ayer has released a series of cast photos that have already caused a lot of noise online. Besides an ongoing debate over the Joker’s new look, most of it was focussed on the fact that the vast majority of these characters are completely unknown. To that end, we’ve put together a series of articles covering the line up as seen in the large cast photograph. Part One covered Slipknot, Captain Boomerang, and the Enchantress. Pat Two looked at Katana, Rick Flag and Harley Quinn. In Part Three, we’re covering Deadshot, Killer Croc, and El Diablo. 

Deadshot

 Another character who’s more antihero than full-on supervillain, Deadshot is a long time rival, and foe, to DC’s Batman. Often working as a hired assassin, Deadshot’s tagline is that he will ‘never miss’ a target. A highly capable marksman, Deadshot’s favourite weapons are a set of silenced, wrist-mounted guns. His prowess are enhanced by a cybernetic eye which enhances his accuracy and provides data on targets direct to his brain.

Deadshot has been a major player in the last two incarnations of the Suicide Squad, bringing both his skills as a marksman and his disregard for human life to the table. Well, when the team’s objectives revolve around taking out dangerous targets, a boomerang isn’t really going to cut it, right? One of Deadshot’s defining traits is his desire to die in a spectacular fashion. This desire is a key reason for his joining the team in the first place. With no reason to continue living, and an aversion to suicide, he simply does not care if he dies. Various reasons have been cited for this, but the most common thread in them is his parents’ abusive relationship.

Will Smith as Deadshot

Will Smith, cast to play Deadshot in Suicide Squad, is inarguably the biggest name on the cast list. The casting also strikes a chord for diversity, as the original comic book character is caucasian. The necessity of this change is questionable, considering that the team is already pretty diverse, including Katana (Japanese) and El Diablo (Mexican American) and double the number of female members of both Justice League and The Avengers. Of course, it worked for Marvel’s film franchise.

Deadshot should also not be confused with Deathstroke, another Batman villain and weapons master. Although both characters have their connections to the team, I personally question the idea of having characters with such similar names on the same team. It’s just confusing. He’s also entirely different from Marvel’s Deapool, who was created as a parody of Deathstroke. Yeah.

Killer Croc

Killer Croc, by Francesco Mattina

Another character drafted in from the Batman comic books, Waylon Jones was born with a form of atavism, leaving him with distinctive reptilian traits. Raised by an alcoholic aunt who hated his hideous appearance and brutal behavior, Waylon was the victim of physical anmd emotional abuse until he finally  killed his aunt and became a criminal. Like many of Batman’s villains, Killer Croc’s original motivation was to be the new kingpin of crime in Gotham. After killing his way through half of the city’s underworld, Killer Croc was finally defeated by Batman.

Aesthetcially, Croc’s appearance has varied wildly since his introduction. The character originally appeared as a powerfully-built man covered entirely in green scales, but with normal facial proportions and build. Various subsequent adaptations have featured tails, claws, elongated jawlines, and colour-schemes ranging from green to brown to grey. Since DC’s, line-wide reboot, The New 52, Killer Croc has been shown with an actual crocodile’s head, a change which has yet to be explained. Fortunately, the film appears to have given the character a much more toned-down appearance, with reptilian skin and no tail.

Killer Croc is another character who has nothing to do with the Suicide Squad in the DC comic books. However, his extreme violence and ruthlessness fits perfectly with the team’s goals and structure. It’s easy to see the serial-killer coerced into joining the team, if only to get out early from one of his many, many life sentences.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc

El Diablo

Like Rick Flag, there have been several incarnations of El Diablo in DC comics. The original was a bank teller named Lazarus Lane in the Wild West who was left in a coma after being struck by lightning. After being revived by a Native American shaman, Lane became possessed by a demon which would emerge whenever he fell asleep. Despite all this mystical stuff floating around, Lane actually had no superpowers other than increased stamina. However, he was proficient in the use of several weapons, notably his bullwhip, bolas, and guns.

Like the vast majority of characters, El Diablo was reinvented for DC’s New 52. The new El Diablo, and the only one to be a member of the Suicide Squad, is a Mexican criminal named Chato Santana who met Lazarus Lane after being hospitalised by the police. Santana is given the powers of a minor vengeance demon by Lane, who was in a living coma and died after the transfer. Unlike Lane, Santana combines his weapons mastery with various forms of heat control and fire manipulation.

As the film’s incarnation is portrayed by Jay Hernandez, an actor of Mexican American descent, and because the Santana version of the character is the only one to be a member of the team in the books, this is the most likely iteration of the character to appear in the film.

Jay Hernandez as El Diablo

No Heroes: Suicide Squad Explained pt 2

Welcome back to our in-depth look at the up-coming Suicide Squad, where we take a look at the team’s roster and work out how in the name of Cthulu it makes sense in the context of the characters’ extensive backstories. With cast photos popping up all over the net, a lot of people who aren’t familiar with comic books in general, or the minutia of the DC universe in particular, are wondering where all of these characters are coming from. Part One looked at the team’s origins as a whole, as well as introducing Captain Boomerang, Slipknot, and the Enchantress. Today, we’ve got Katana, Rick Flag (or should that be ‘Flagg’?) and the indomitable Harley Quinn. 

 Katana

Because everybody loves a samurai.

Tatsu Yamashiro’s origin story is a classic of boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy and girl get married, have children, then boy’s twin brother shows up and kills boy because he is also in love with girl. Oh, and her two children were also killed by a fire started by her brother-in-law. Of course. Driven mad by grief, Tatsu came to believe that her husband’s soul was now trapped in the sword used to kill him, a weapon known as the ‘Soultaker.’

Thus began a long and lustrious (ish) career as a crime-fighter and super-heroine. Katana’s main objective has always been to hunt down those responsible, or even just connected to, her husband’s death in order to avenge him. Besides her sword, which may or may not have the ability to absorb the souls of those it kills so that they can advise the wielder, Katana relies on an array of martial arts skills.

So how does a character like this end up on the Suicide Squad? Well, technically, she doesn’t. Katana was only ever

Karen Fukuhara as Katana

invited to take part in one mission with the Squad, a mission she turned down for various plot and character-related reasons. As she’s not a criminal, it’s not immediately obvious how Katana comes to be involved in the team. At the moment, there are two possibilities. The first is that, unlike the rest of the Squad, she is an outside agent asigned as a handler to help keep them under control. Alternatively, her possibly-haunted sword may have forced her to kill someone in a manner that resulted in her arrest and imprisonment. As Katana is driven by her need for revenge, it’s easy to see her subsequently joining the team so that she can be released from jail and get on with her manhunt.

Rick Flag

 Another tricky one to place as the DC universe features not one, not two, but three Rick Flags, each the son of the one before. The first two Flags were both members of the Suicide Squad at various times. However, as the first Rick Flag was a World War II veteran, it’s unlikely that he’ll feature in this film. Unless DC want to rip off Captain America completely, of course.

Rick Flag is another character who, on paper, doesn’t quite fit the Suicide Squad’s remit. In the books, he is the only character who isn’t some form of criminal. A covert agent tapped by US the government to lead the new Suicide Squad under the direction of Amanda Waller, Flag hated working with the criminals under his command, particularly the murderous Deadshot. Already reluctant to take on the role, Rick quickly began to show signs of mental instability. Which is what happens when you spend all day around someone who calls himself ‘Captain Boomerang,’ I guess.

Flag has no superpowers of his own, and luckily doesn’t have any gimmicky weapons, either. To be fair, with already got characters who favour boomerangs, ropes, and a Japanese sword, so it’s hard to imagine what else you could throw into the mix without becoming truly ridiculous. No, Flag is a good old-fashioned soldier, with the usual peak physical condition that comes as standard on all comic book characters. Oh, he’s also an expert  in military, Special Forces, and guerrilla tactics, strategy, and demolitions. Who isn’t, right? John Kinnaman as Rick Flag

Harley Quinn

 Harley is probably the most famous (or at least, infamous) character in Suicide Squad other than the Joker. The character stands out not only because she is one of the few female supervillains to have her own on-going title, but also because she started out as a tv character in Batman: The Annimated Series. Harley is also one of the youngest characters to appear in the film, making her debut in 1992. Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzell, was originally a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum, where she fell in love with the Joker and becomes his accomplice and on-off sidekick. Honestly, the state of the medical profession these days. In the comics, Harley Quinn alternates between being a strong, independent villain in her own right and being the Joker’s girlfriend-cum-punching bag. In some versions, simply being around the Joker appears to have been enough to drive her dotty. In others, the Joker intentionally exposes her to the same insanity-inducing compound that bleached his skin and drove him mad. And my most recent first date was just dinner at a restaurant…

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn

There was a minor uproar among friends when the character was redesigned as part of DC’s ‘New 52’ initiative, which saw a universal reboot of the DC universe. The ‘new’ Harley, which the movie version seems to be based on aesthetically, traded her original black and red harlequin outfit for something you’d find in a brothel designed by Elton John. This new incarnation is almost entirely independent of the Joker, striking out on a twisted path of antiheroism and villainy all of her own. In fact, the casual killing spree she goes on after the Joker breaks up with her is what leads to the character’s incarceration and eventual recruitment into the Suicide Squad in the first place. However, the fact that her movie counterpart wears a jacket with ‘Property of the Joker’ emblazoned on the back may call this into question.

Many action films contain romantic subplots, which often feel shoehorned in so that the film will appeal to the girlfiends of the guys who ‘actually’ want to see it. Yeah. However, because Joker and Harley are both such bat crap crazy lunatics, this could be a romantic dynamic worth watching out for. Will the characters be in love? Will the Joker be abusive? Will Harley snap and smash him in the face with her giant, phallic hammer? We can only hope.

Wait. That came out wrong…

In part three, we’ll be looking at the remaining cast, including Killer Croc, El Diablo, and the difference between Deathstroke and Deadshot!

No Heroes: Suicide Squad Explained pt 1

 With the announcement of The Suicide Squad, and the release of a number of set photographs of the team, a lot of people have been asking who, exactly, these people are. Over the next couple of posts, I’ll be running through the recently published Cast photos from the film, identifying the characters, and giving the history of the team.

Who are the Suicide Squad?

Task Force X, or The Suicide Squad as it is informally known, is a team of incarcerated supervillains-turned-anitheros who act as deniable assets for the American government. Most of the team carries out high-risk black ops missions in exchange for commuted prison sentences, whether this be a decreased number of years in jail, or an indefintely postponed death sentence. The group are run by Dr Amanda Walker, and operates out of Belle Reve Penitentiary. The team’s existence also gives a handy explanation for the apparent inability of any prison to hold a convicted villain in custody for any amount of time.

The main cast of the Suicide Squad. Left to right: Slipknot, Captain Boomerang, Enchantress, Katana (kneeling) Rick Flagg, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Killer Croc, and El Diablo (not pictured: the Joker, Deathstroke, Dr Walker)

Generally, The Suicide Squad go out on missions that are considered too dangerous or morally questionable for other groups. To keep the team a secret, members are implanted with explosive devices. If they try to escape custody during a mission or attempt to reveal the team’s existence to outsiders, the bombs are detonated, and the character dies. Typical Suicide Squad missions involve the elimination or retrieval of high-value targets, such as the recovery of a newborn baby who carries the cure to a deadly virus.

Identifying the team’s members is, in some cases, quite difficult. There is, of course, the problem of translation decay, by which characters and stories gain or lose extra elements as they cross over from book to screen and back. There’s also the problem that there have been no less than five different comic book series titled Suicide Squad, and the fact that the team, by its very nature, had a large revloving cast which changed as characters died, escaped, or were exhonerated. But here’s the low-down on three of the characters in the cast photo: Slipknot, Captain Boomerang, and Enchantress.

Slipknot

There’s really not that much to say about Slipknot. The character is basically an assassin who specialises in using ropes. The character was only in one mission for Suicide Squad in the original comic book series way back in 1988. Faced with an invading army of alien robots, he realised that his treasured ropes were useless against the enemy. He bottled it after convincing himself that the bomb implanted in his arm by the Suicide Squad’s handlers to keep him under control was a fake.Slipknot ended up lost in a swamp, weak and bleeding from the hole where his arm used to be.

I think Suicide Squad has found its Hawkeye.

Captain Boomerang

Ugh. What is it with C-list comic book characters and their gimicky weapons?

There are actually two Captain Boomerangs in DC comics, because clearly one wasn’t enough. I’m going to assume the character in the film is the first one, Digger Harkness. The illegitimate son of an American soldier and an Australian woman, Harkness grew up making boomerangs and  using them as weapons. As a young adult, he was hired as a performer and boomerang promoter by a toy company.When the audiences started to ridicule him, he turned to a life of crime, using his beloved boomerangs as his weapon of choice and developing the Captain Boomerang persona to hide his identity. As you do.

Captain Boomerang in The Flash (January 2011), by Scott Kolins

Captain Boomerang became a recurring villain in The Flash comic books. Which makes about as much sense as anything else, I suppose. The character joined the Suicide Squad, like most of its members, in exchange for being pardoned for his crimes. Captain Boomerang’s grating personality and blatant racism caused ongoing friction among his teammates, and he was considered to be a dangerous, vicious, cowardly and undependable member of the team. The character was basically the class clown of the team. But, you know, an incredibly racist, psychotic class clown. How far Boomerang will fill this role in the new team, where he’ll be competing with both Harley Quinn and the Joker, remains to be seen.

There are still a lot of questions about the character as he appears in the film. Is the character actually Digger Harkness, or his son, Owen, who also appeared in the Suicide Squad? Will he still be horribly racist? Will he use ordinary boomerangs, or special ones? Exploding boomerangs? Wait, is it still a boomerang is it explodes before coming back to you?

The Enchantress

Not to be confused with Amora The Enchantress, a long-running foe-sometimes-ally of Marvel’s Thor. June Moon stands out from the crowd because of her habit of switching from hero to villain and back with very little warning. The Enchatnress received her powers from an unknown magical entity while attending a fancy dress party so that she could fight a mystical threat to a castle in a DC story from the 60s, which says something about the level of thought going into character creation at the time. An often neglected character, the Enchantress is described as an extremely powerful magic user, which generally means that she gets new powers as the plot demands purely in order to get the writers out of a corner.

In many ways, The Enchatnress is kind of like Marvel’s The Increadible Hulk, but with magic. Both have split personalities and are pretty much ambiguous in terms of motivation and alliance. They also have transformative powers; June Moon is a blond white woman who’s appearance becomes dark and vaguely ethnic when she uses her powers. Sometimes her evil half is just June on a bad day. Sometimes its a completely separate demonic entity that’s possessing her. Different writers. Different character. The film’s version looks like patricularly wild, more like a Hatian Voodoo priestess than the original ‘Dwitcheroo-Witcheroo’ (yes, that’s really what the character was called in her first appearance in the 60s). As she’s appearing in Suicide Squad, it’s fairly safe to assume that this Enchantress is a villain, although how far DC will develop her powers, particularly her dual personalities and power level.

That’s all for now. I don’t want this article getting too big, so next time I’ll cover Katana, Rick Flagg, and Harley Quinn.