Soldier. War hero. Traitor. Captain Rick Flag was one of America’s greatest military commanders before he was banished to a secret military prison. But after years of isolation, Flag’s life changes forever when a woman called Amanda Waller offers him redemption in exchange for taking on the single most dangerous job in the entire DC Universe: keeping the Suicide Squad alive!

If you’ve seen all the ads and the hype, but don’t know who the Suicide Squad are, Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1 is a good introduction to the concept of the group and the comic.

What’s interesting to me is the comics’ move to align itself with the upcoming film which debuts the same week. The story involves Amanda Waller having to bring the program more into the open with some oversight and she does that by recruiting a new member. The rest of the comic involves a small team trying to extract a scientist and things going wrong.

The point of these “Rebirth” issues is to introduce these characters and concepts to new audiences and at the same time mix the old with the new. This comic does a decent job at that introducing the concept, but it feels a bit thin to get me really excited for things. The comic written by Rob Williams is the bit of the movie before the credits roll, but even with that, there’s something that’s missing though I couldn’t say what. That might be due to the issue focusing a lot on Flagg and Boomerang, Harley, and Deadshot don’t get enough time to shine. It could be because there’s an easy solution to their task they don’t take. It could be a combination or the first few issues taking up too much. I’m not quite sure, but this is a quick read that I quickly put to the side.

The art by Philip Tan is solid, though. The comic looks fantastic with an energetic vibe to even slow scenes of two characters arguing. The style reminds me a lot of old Wildstorm comics, and that’s not a bad thing. It works and works really well.

The comic does a decent job of catching folks up who are new, but I’m not sure there’s quite enough to really sell the concept for old readers and maybe even the new ones. Still, this is a series I want to see where it goes and we’ll see if the alignment of the comic with the film is a good thing or a bad one.

Story: Rob Williams Art: Philip Tan
Story: 6.9 Art: 8.15 Overall: 7.05 Recommendation: Read

DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review