J.M. Giovine's Reviews > Suicide Squad, Volume 2: Going Sane

Amanda Waller did the logical thing for her to do, she simply brought the Black Vault onto the Belle Reve prison. Now, Zod has been released from his prison, and the Task Force X will eventually face the inevitable, confronting him, but all hell breaks loose once the Phantom Zone starts influencing the rest of the inmates, personnel, and staff, even the very Suicide Squad and Waller herself, onto a raw and primitive sense of violence and death. I have to say, the whole arc toyed with the build-up expectation of whether Zod will fight against the team, and while this happens, the Squad will hang around the prison in their respective cell blocks.
As for a continuation of the previous volume, this comes a little bit disappointing; the whole story revolves on Zod being released, but once he’s awake and ready to go for a fight, this one doesn’t last, and we never get to see the whole team fully exploiting their abilities in order to take him down. As a matter of fact, most of the action happens once every individual inside the prison loses control and starts rampaging. It’s everyone against everybody. The idea of Rob Williams was to maintain the characters in the prison, maybe for development purposes, or just to explore a rather closed environment for them to interact. Whichever the way, it was a nice breath of fresh air seeing them not being deployed onto another country or city, but again, since the whole promise of the book was to see them dealing with Zod, the delivery of the finale fails.
As for the team members, Harley steals the show, once things go down, since she seems to not be affected by the influence of the Black Vault (which, unfortunately, is never clarified in the story), so the reverse effects cause her to become “sane”, as the title suggests. It was nice to see that take on her, since we don’t get that much of an opportunity to see the opposite of her that often, I even dare to say it was a missed opportunity from ‘The New 52’, which was clearly mostly focused on the edginess and brutality of its characters. The other character that has a little more protagonism is Rick Flag, who’s admirably exploited in order to demonstrate his capacity as a leader and as a fighter, since there is an impactful moment in which he goes toe to toe against Zod and, while the idea could be a little too exaggerated, it still seems nice how Williams tries to treat his characters with the opportunity to shine, if we consider how absent Flag was in the previous series.
Once again, the art department on issues 5 to 8 was amazing. Jim Lee continued working on the arc, which honestly, could’ve been attached to the first volume, since the story is surprisingly shorter than what it needs to be, and the whole “Them VS Zod” deal could’ve been handled in one single take throughout 6 or 7 issues attached together. Nevertheless, there is a certain lack of delivery coming from Lee since there are few frames in which his art truly stands. Maybe it is due to his constant involvement in a series (so far) that takes the most of his time, but I felt there were fewer impactful art-displays within these pages, although, his take on Zod is brutal, and one of the most terrifying appearances the villain has had. Despite not being here for that long, his presence imposes a great threat thanks to Lee’s art.
Regarding the One-Shots delivered at the end (which in the original single-issues where attached at the very end of them), now we have the chance to explore some of the backstories of characters such as Killer Croc, Hack and Enchantress, although, the art in these issues wasn’t particularly interesting or good enough, perhaps the Killer Croc one (written by Williams and drew by Carlos D’Anda) being the better one, since the last issue is a prelude to the anticipated “Justice League VS the Suicide Squad”, dealing with the introduction of the Killer Frost character to the team, and it is the one with the better art, with the layouts of Giuseppe Camuncoli and the finishing work by Francesco Mattina. However, the issue maintains itself quite stiff and uninteresting, working only as a presentation prior to the event, never delivering anything else.
Arguably, this is a mediocre entry, but it still entertains. Unnecessarily divided since this could’ve easily filled an entire volume on its own, but I guess that wouldn’t’ve helped the sales. Thankfully, Lee remained the main artist on these three issues, so the whole arc remains at least visually attractive, but I’m concerned on how much William’s script will hold once Lee departures from the series. Not with that much consistency, since there are still gaps unfilled in here, like how did they managed to bring Zod back from the Vault? What exactly happened to Cap. Boomerang and how he came back in full physical form? What were the consequences of the attack against the Russian facility? I don’t really think these questions will be answered, but I’m really hoping all these issues might be corrected and improved for the following arcs, right after the anticipated event.