The Squad got another ongoing series in 2001, written by Keith Giffen, about a Suicide Squad commanded by General Frank (formerly Sgt.) Rock. It lasted a year, and I rarely hear much good about it. Or much about it at all, really. In late 2007, John Ostrander came back with an 8-issue mini-series that revolved around, of all things, the return of Rick Flag. Curious, since Flag rather emphatically died setting off a small nuclear device in the Jihad's mountainside base a couple of years into the original Suicide Squad.
But he and Rustam wound up in Skartaris (yep, from Mike Grell's Warlord), and Flag eventually got back to the world. The Squad he returns to is back to be run by Waller, but she's gotten a bit nastier, which is terrifying. The explosive bracelets are gone, replaced with little bombs implanted at the base of your skull. Although it turns out Waller has one herself, implanted a long time ago, and only one person knows that code.
I don't really buy that. One of the major reasons things went the way they did for Flag in the first volume of Suicide Squad was because Waller didn't trust him, and therefore didn't confide in him. He didn't get any support from her, and acted on incomplete information to try and save the Squad. On the other hand, it would be like the Wall to put her life in the hands of a guy she largely dislikes and who feels the same way about her.
Javi Pina and Robin Riggs are the penciler/inker team, and their work is very clean, easy to read and follow. The action makes senses, the emotion is there. It's in my wheelhouse for the sort of general look I like, but I'm not sure it's right for this book. McDonnell had the squared-off, strongly outlined look that made everyone look rough and ragged, plus the hard shadows that could swallow characters up. Isherwood was a lot smoother, but also added a lot of detail to the faces, playing up the wrinkles or the bags under the eyes, the toll of the work. That's not really present here. It's good superhero comic art, but maybe not good Suicide Squad art.
Ostrander adds some other elements to the mix. Former General Wade Eiling, now the near-unstoppable Shaggy Man as one of the Squad's newest "recruits." Plastique, who betrayed the team in the first story arc is back, unaware this isn't her first term of service (because Waller had her mindwiped after Plastique betrayed them, before accepting the more upstanding personnel's objections and shelving that.) Boomerbutt is dead - thanks, Brad Meltzer, you fucking putz - and in his place is his son, Owen. The one with super-speed. Like his dad, he manages to get on Deadshot's bad side.
There's also the usual assortment of second and third-string villains, like Windfall from Force of Nature, or Twisted Sister. They're there primarily for the body count, but Ostrander remembers to give them enough focus so we have some idea of what they're like, so that we might actually care if they die or not.
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