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Suicide Squad: Blaze, an upcoming DC Black Label series by Simon Spurrier and Aaron Campbell, pushes Task Force X in a dark new direction.
A new DC Black Label comic starring the Suicide Squad is coming in February, promising a horror twinge to the antics of Task Force X.
Suicide Squad: Blaze is written by Simon Spurrier and illustrated by Aaron Campbell, both of whom previously worked on the latest iteration of John Constantine: Hellblazer, also published as a DC Black Label title under the “Sandman Universe” banner. As revealed to Den of Geek, the upcoming series will inject some of this mature flavor into its depiction of the Suicide Squad. The titular team will be composed of mainstays like Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Peacemaker and King Shark — along with a group of five expendable newbies who have been granted superpowers via a secret procedure named BLAZE.
SUICIDE SQUAD: BLAZE #1
- Written by SIMON SPURRIER
- Art and cover by AARON CAMPBELL
- Ages 17+
- $6.99 US | 48 pages | 1 of 3 | Prestige Plus | 8 ½” x 10 7/8″
- On sale 2/8/22
- The attacks begin without warning. Brutal, sudden…cannibalistic. A metahuman with all the power of Superman but none of his humanity. An unstoppable being ruled only by hunger and instinct, striking at random across the world. To stop this threat, Harley Quinn, Peacemaker, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark have been assigned to corral, nursemaid, and if necessary execute five deadly new recruits: the expendable products of a secret government procedure called BLAZE. They’re ordinary prisoners, endowed with incredible power…in the certain knowledge that it’ll burn through them like wildfire. They have six months to live, maximum. If you’re staring down life in prison, maybe that’s a good deal—especially if you’re Michael Van Zandt, desperate to reunite with the mad lover who forsook you after your Bonnie-and-Clyde crime spree.
- But that power? It’s surprisingly transferrable. As each member of the Squad dies… the others get stronger. What would a hardened criminal do with that knowledge? Worse yet: What would a desperate, lovesick idiot do with it? One thing’s certain: this time the Suicide Squad’s bitten off more than it can chew. Win or lose—they all burn. Simon Spurrier and Aaron Campbell, the creative team behind the critically acclaimed John Constantine: Hellblazer, have been turned loose on the one DC title even more horrific and blackhearted than that one! We suggest you brace yourselves…
“Rather than being the ones who are putting their necks on the line,” Spurrier said, “[the Squad are] playing a role of mentoring a group of new characters who really are utterly expendable.” Spurrier added that these superpowers would expire after six months, and the book’s hook revolved around what sort of folk might have signed up to undergo such a radical — and temporary — transformation.
“If you could give somebody superpowers in the knowledge that it would kill them, what sort of people would volunteer for that?” Spurrier asked. “There are obviously going to be the people who do it because they’ve got nothing to live for, the people who do it because they want to go out in a blaze of glory. There’s no great mystery to the fact that this is called Suicide Squad: Blaze for that reason.”
Campbell said that he greatly enjoyed illustrating both the new and old characters of the series — particularly King Shark, who he described as a “big hulk of a man…[with] a little shark head on him,” and rising DC star Peacemaker, who he equated with a member of the IRA.
Facing this eclectic collection of antiheroes is an antagonist who Spurrier described as “so beyond anything you’ve seen before and yet at the same time, so horrifyingly ordinary,” as well as an overarching plot inspired by a myriad of horror influences. These include Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s 1989 graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, the 1990 psychological horror movie Jacob’s Ladder and the photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin, whose work prominently features death, disfigurement and corpses.
Suicide Squad: Blaze will run for three issues. Issue #1 goes on sale Feb. 8 from DC.
Source: Den of Geek
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