Suicide Squad #29 Review and **SPOILERS**

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Red Dawn Has Broken

Story: Rob Williams 

Pencils: Barnaby Bagenda 

Inks: Jay Leisten 

Backup Story Artist: Wilfredo Torres 

Colors: Adriano Lucas 

Lettering: Pat Brosseau 

Cover: Tony S. Daniel, Danny Miki & Tomeu Morey 

Cover Price: $2.99 

On Sale Date: November 8, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Maybe it would do to have a successive lineage of Suicide Squads stretching back to ancient times, like…oh, I dunno, a coalition or “league” of particularly extraordinary fellows—gentlemen, really. You could throw mythological figures and gods on various teams, have them be the hidden hand that has silently guided history since time immemorial. Still, that wouldn’t explain why they made the Task Force X of the late 1950s a bunch of unpowered dopes fighting space monsters for patriotism. No matter. Let’s take a look at my review of Suicide Squad #29, ahoy!

Explain It!

What really killed M. Night Shyamalan movies after The Sixth Sense is that you can tell what the big switcheroo is going to be before the films are half over. That is owed partly to audiences looking for the twist once they’d been stunned by the spooky revelation of the first movie. But it’s also true that there’s only one thing fundamental to all twist endings or story shockers: things are not as they seem. And if clues to the truth have been seeded, they need only be found in order to determine the tale’s conclusion.

This was especially deflating when we figured out that Rick Flag Sr. and the rest of the original Suicide Squad aboard a shattered satellite were up to no good two issues ago. Since then, we’ve been sort of passively waiting for him to flip the script, to release Red Wave instead of enacting some dubious self-destruct sequence. That happens at the end of this issue. Along the way, there are some pretty entertaining scenes: Red Wave takes over Rick Flag and makes him attack half of the Suicide Squad briefly, and the ground forces at Groom Lake take off in an old moth-eaten bomber held aloft by Enchantress’ magic. But as far as what actually “happens” to make this story interesting…it isn’t much.

Once again, the two-page backup is the most intriguing thing of all: a terrifically-rendered couple of pages showing King Faraday’s first days as a member of Argent and Task Force X, which included encounters with a Black Triangle UFO and the famous War Wheel of DC’s army comics. It also hints towards Faraday having the hots for Flag’s girlfriend, Karin, so that’s a thing. The rest of the book looks fairly spectacular too, and there are a lot of exciting scenes to hold your interest. But that’s all it is: a collection of scenes. The overall story ran in place.

Bits and Pieces:

There's some fun times in this issue and some terrifically-rendered action scenes, but the shocking conclusion was evident from jump. This will all read better in the collected version, so hang out and wait for that.

6.5/10