Suicide Squad: Blaze
Everyone knows how the Suicide Squad works. You’ve got your supervillains and/or antiheroes doing high-risk jobs for the government for a chance at reducing their sentences. Assuming they survive, of course. The appeal lies in seeing what these (generally) bad people will do to make it out alive and there have been plenty of good stories that have generated lots of nasty fun within this setup. So what happens when you have a writer interested in seeing just how nasty you can get with a “Suicide Squad” story while still holding the reader’s interest? You get “Blaze,” written by Simon Spurrier who’s no stranger to this kind of storytelling, for better (“X-Force”) and for worse (“Hellblazer.”)
The story begins with someone remembering how it all started. With random people dying after they’ve been dropped out of the sky once an unknown superbeing had taken a bite out of and/or had his way with them. The Justice League are unable to track this individual down, which means that alternative means need to be considered.
Enter the Suicide Squad, made up of Harley Quinn, Peacemaker, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang here. They’re not going to track or fight this thing, though. Squad boss Amanda Waller has access to something called the Blaze Procedure. The person who undergoes it will gain incredible power, but have a dramatically shortened lifespan. It’s that second part that has the current members of the Squad nope out of the Procedure. Which means that, for Waller, it’s time to consider Plan B: Getting regular criminals to undergo the Procedure.
This is how we’re introduced to the story’s protagonist Michael Van Zandt. He’s a nobody whose most distinguishing feature is a birthmark over his right eye, and the fact that he went joyriding with Tanya, a social media influencer, one time. There may have been a bank robbery, definitely some grand theft auto, and five people dead as a result before they’re stopped by a random superhero. Mike’s been rotting in jail ever since, until some government agents come to see if he’s interested in the Blaze Procedure. He’s hesitant about it at first… until he hears that Tanya has agreed to undergo it. That gets him.
The story starts picking up steam from there as we learn what kind of guy Mike is. He’s incredibly average and has some real self-esteem issues, which is almost certainly why he decided to get involved with Tanya and go along on the little crime spree that saw them both incarcerated. It’s the kind of passive mindset that makes him the ideal listener for characters to explain the plot to, and have him be a social parasite that sees him trying to find his worth in what others think of him rather than what he thinks of himself.
If you think that Mike sounds like the kind of individual you wouldn’t want to have undergo an experimental procedure that will give him superpowers, then you’d be right. Though the initial results of the procedure turn him into even more of a joke, his simmering resentment combined with the simultaneous fear and thrills provided by the missions he goes on turn the man into something of a monster. It’s a gradual shift over the course of the story, but one that makes perfect sense by the time we see what he’s become at the end.
Mike’s not a likeable character, but he’s an interesting one to observe, and that’s true for the remainder of the cast as well. His former partner-in-crime and would-be paramour Tanya starts off having it all, yet turns tragic the more we learn about her and how the Procedure manages to make her life substantially worse. The rest of their teammates aren’t as well-drawn; though, I have an appreciation for prison lifer Boris who gains the ability to see all the angles in life thanks to his new powers and is able to spell out why the powers that be are so invested in superheroes to Mike (and the reader) – more on that later.
As for the actual members of the Squad, well… they’re here. Harley, Peacemaker, Shark, and Boomerbutt feel like they’re surplus to the requirements of the story as they appear to be here only for name recognition and to keep the actual protagonists in line. The further you go in the story it becomes clearer which characters Spurrier was actually interested in (ascending order): Peacemaker, Boomerbutt, Shark, and Harley. Shark actually manages to get some genuine sympathy going with his constant requests to talk to his mom, which finally get a twisted comic payoff in the final issue with another Squad member. Harley, though, actually gets a fair amount of face time where she gets to skewer the cast with her psychoanalysis and even display some real heart underneath her crazy exterior.
Waller, however, is probably the most ruthless I’ve seen her in comics. She’s always been an end-justifies-the-means kind of character, but she can’t even be bothered to show an ounce of sympathy for the characters underneath her. Even as a means of motivation. Waller is here to make sure that “Captain Cannibal” gets caught using every resource at her disposal. Whether they be newly-enhanced inmates, or Superman himself, who is shown to be in way over his head here. She’s essentially the face of the powers that be in this world and they love superheroes because they enforce the status quo and keep the money rolling in. Until they don’t and the money gets threatened, along with the world itself, and then they need to be put down by any means necessary.
Did I mention that “Blaze” is a remarkably cynical superhero story in spite of the fact that it’s set within a version of the DC Universe. Spurrier has worked with superheroes here before, as well as within the Marvel Universe, and while he’s acknowledged a certain skepticism about them in other works he’s never come down as hard on them as he does here. There are parts of the story where it almost feels like I’m reading one of Garth Ennis’ occasional excursions into the superhero genre, even though any contempt expressed here feels like a way for Spurrier to make his point rather than the end itself. The writer has a lot to say about how we manage our world, the need for genuine empathy within it, and the dangers of toxic masculinity and I generally enjoyed trying to make sense of it all. Even if he’s not successful in making all of his points, I appreciated his efforts to try and do something different with the characters and the story itself.
He’s joined in this by his “Hellblazer” partner, artist Aaron Campbell. He provided some good, gritty art that captured the supernatural quite well in that series, so I was interested in seeing what he’d do within the superhero genre here. The good news is that his base style works well for the kind of gory, over-the-top action that the miniseries traffics in and he’s good at conveying the emotions of the characters regardless of how crazy their circumstances get.
Where Campbell lets us all down is in certain scenes where it just becomes too hard to parse what’s going on. Later on that’s due to the kind of light effects that surround much of what the Blaze Procedure survivors are doing, but his rendition of “Captain Cannibal” is a constant problem throughout. The idea is that the character possesses so much energy that he’s vibrating almost too fast to see. So most images of him on the page have a blurry, indistinct look to them. Campbell details the process by which he generated this effect in the making-of bits at the end of the volume. While I applaud his ambition here, I’d rather he had just drawn the character normally so I could actually make out what was going on in the scenes where he was present.
Art fails aside, “Blaze” is an impressively ruthless take on the “Suicide Squad.” Even if the familiar Squad members are meant to take a backseat here, Spurrier at least gives us an interesting protagonist to observe as his failings slowly but surely make life worse for those around him. That may not sound like everyone’s idea of a good time, but this story went places I genuinely didn’t expect it to and that’s become more important for me to see as time goes by.
However, if Superman is your favorite superhero, you may just want to leave this on the shelf…