OK! It’s been a week, so its safe to assume that everyone that has wanted to get in on the news has already gotten it…last week DC Comics dropped a major bomb by presenting its first casualty of the “Rebirth” rebrand! Brace yourselves! Twelve pages into Suicide Squad #2 after surviving a sub-orbital plummet into an iceberg, and fighting their way into a maximum security penitentiary to reach one of its prisoners — a potential new member, a meta-human named Hack — one of the group’s most popular (that’s debatable) members gets literally blown out of his boots!
After surviving scores of battles with The Flash over the last several decades, and pulled into Task Force X at the very beginning of the clandestine agency’s launch, Captain Boomerang has bit the dust! Breaking into Black Vault may have been utterly routine for the mad Aussie with an even madder skill with the arc of his projectiles, but he may have listened for once when his superior officer, team leader Rick Flag, asked him to step away from the ominously elevated ball of black goo.
But Digger Harkness just couldn’t resist the urge and found himself on the receiving end of blast of what we now know to have been an unbridled and unchecked surge of heat-vision launched from with the orb, from none other than General Zod! So exactly why was the squad sent to free Zod from his Phantom Zone prison, or did they just happen to overstep their boundaries — like Boomerang often does — and accidentally unleashed Superman’s most dangerous adversary this side of Doomsday? Needless to say, it inspired all kinds of shock and awe!
Almost immediately after announcing the twist, the sales team at Midtown Comics in Midtown Manhattan limited sales of the issue to only 1 per customer and release day, inciting instant collector’s item buzz!
Whatever series writer Rob Williams and artist Jim Lee working with Scott Williams may have in store will have fans tuning in. When this creative team began working on the retooling of the title for the “Rebirth” rebrand initiative, the promise was to sync the team dynamics to match with the one introduced in the big screen and included Boomerang among its ranks. So why wipe the Captain off the planet so after so dramatic a new direction for this popular title? We’ll have to wait and see.
The bonus “team profile” epilogue which spotlighted Captain Boomerang, also written by Williams and featuring pencils by Ivan Reis, gives an interesting look into the character’s origins and his rather glorified perception of himself. One thing is certain, before the trauma of having lost one of its more colorful members settled in — how the team will react to losing Boomerang will be fun to watch — the introduction of Zod into the squad mythos may be a precursor to the upcoming Justice League/Suicide Squad pairing.
Suicide Squad #2 • “The Black Vault” Part 2: Blitzkrieg Bop is on sale now!