Suicide Squad: Get Joker!

This series has one thing in common with “The Last Ronin:”  Both series had some major delays between issues.  The difference between the two is that while “Ronin’s” delays only served to stoke the hype for that miniseries “Get Joker’s!” seemed to fizzle out after its first issue.  That’s likely because its first issue is its best as it gives us the delicious premise for this miniseries:  What happens when the Joker gets his hands on the device that controls the explosives implanted in each member of the Suicide Squad.  Which, in this particular instance of the team, includes one Jason “Red Hood” Todd.  He’s already been killed by the Joker once and he’s really not interested in experiencing it again.

“Get Joker!” comes to us from writer Brian Azzarello and artist Alex Maleev.  Azzarello has always been a writer who has tried to go against audience expectations in giving them what he thinks they need as opposed to what they want.  Sometimes that works out incredibly well (“100 Bullets,” “Wonder Woman”) and other times, not so much (“Superman,” “Batman:  Damned”).  This experience is closer to the latter than the former as after that great setup, “Get Joker!” doesn’t really go anywhere.  The threat presented by the Joker never feels like it fully materializes as Jason and the rest of the cast never really get too bent out of shape about it.  Even when the bullets start flying.

Azzarello does have some interesting ideas about Jason’s place in comics, and you get the idea that he’s playing with some kind of meta comics-vs.-film commentary when the new threat the team faces shows up at the end of the second issue.  These ideas aren’t really developed in any meaningful fashion, and the whole thing kind of fizzles out at the end.  Maleev does make it all look good, however, as his work here feels more focused and appropriate to the material than it did with “Checkmate.”  The miniseries has an appropriately grim aesthetic, and the artist makes the bits of dark comedy which poke through work pretty well.  “Get Joker!” as a whole, however, is less than the sum of its parts and is therefore best enjoyed by completists of either creators’ work.