Comics Reviews: Green Arrow 17, Young All-Stars 24, Suicide Squad 26

Green Arrow #17 – “The Horseman Part 1” – Mike Grell/Dan Jurgens/Dick Giordano, Frank McLaughlin

This one starts with a dude on a motorbike (the Horseman) stopping off at a roadside strip club. He’s looking for a specific stripper calling herself Dawn, but she’s not there. After pounding the bouncers and torching the owner’s Cadillac, the Horseman leaves. We see Dawn (who apparently likes fetish gear) performing at a different strip club, this one in Seattle. Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen and Dinah (Black Canary) Lance are in the audience and Dinah is surprisingly cool with hanging out at a strip joint. (In fact, it kinda seems like going there was her idea.) Dawn finishes her set but the manager isn’t too happy, since she was just going through the motions. He tells a couple of the bouncers to let Dawn know she needs to be more animated next time. Backstage, Dawn talks to a new girl, Cherry (real name Glynis), warning her to get out of the life before it eats her alive. Cherry won’t listen and points out that if Dawn hates it so much, she should just quit. Dawn says she’s planning on quitting and moving to Vancouver, and that she has some special “retirement insurance” set up. Later, Green Arrow goes out to patrol the city, itching for some action. The Horseman busts up another strip club looking for Dawn, letting the owner know who he is and telling him to warn his suppliers. Green Arrow busts up a drug deal and gives the money to a wino who’s freaked out by something he saw in an abandoned warehouse. Green Arrow finds Dawn crucified and cut up, which makes him sick (probably bringing back memories of Black Canary getting worked over in the Longbow Hunters). The cops find some forensic evidence (either a hair of some fibres, I can’t tell), but Lieutenant Cameron assumes Dawn was probably hooking on the side. Green Arrow points out that even if she was a hooker, she didn’t deserve this and vows to find whoever did it.

Young All-Stars #24 – “The Axis” – Roy and Dann Thomas/Ron Harris/Bob Downs, Mike Gustovich

This one starts with Iron Munro having a vision of Tigress’s death (which we saw last issue). His comrade (Fireball, a Russian hero) tells him it’s just his imagination and freaks out on a young man for not being in the Army. Munro tells Fireball to calm down and she recounts how her village and most of her family were wiped out by German planes. Fireball now hates the Germans with a passion and wants to wipe the entire country off the map, not seeing Munro’s distinction between Nazis and ordinary German citizens. Munro and Fireball are in New York to look after some of the scientists involved in the creation of the atom bomb (including Einstein), but Munro has been warned that one of the All-Stars’ new allies is a traitor working for the Axis (and FDR thinks Fury could be the traitor too, although none of her friends agree). He and Fireball are also unaware that Ubermensch has already found Einstein and his colleagues and is waiting to ambush the heroes. In St. Louis, Fury and Phantasmo (a French hero) are heading to Washington University, where some scientists are working with uranium. The two heroes bond over their home countries (Greece and France) being occupied by Nazis, but are interrupted when Baron Blitzkrieg and Sumo show up to steal the uranium. Phantasmo tackles Sumo, while Fury takes on Blitzkrieg, who uses a hostage to hold her back. Tisiphone tries to take over Fury’s consciousness, but she fights off her namesake’s influence and rescues the hostage. Blitzkrieg pounds her and takes off with the uranium followed by Sumo, who runs Phantasmo through with his sword. Luckily, Phantasmo is descended from an earth-spirit, so iron can’t kill him. In New York, Ubermensch pounds the shit out of Iron Munro and Fireball has a sky duel with Gudra, the Nazi Valkyrie. They end up in the river and Fireball is close to defeat but manages to blind Gudra with a flare. A passing boat picks Fireball up and hides her from the vengeful Gudra, who ends up taking Iron Munro as a prize (saying he’s near death), while Ubermensch grabs Einstein and the other nuclear scientists.

Suicide Squad #26 – “Stone Cold Dead” – John Ostrander/Grant Miehm/Karl Kesel

This one starts with Rustam (head of the Jihad) in Qurac letting the Quraci leader know that he’s giving powers to some people who will join the Jihad, letting them get revenge on the Suicide Squad. In the United States, Vicki Vale interviews J. Danfield Kale, the Squad’s new civilian leader. Of course we know Kale is really an actor named Kovacs, hired by Amanda Waller to be the public face of the Squad so she could keep running things behind the scenes. Waller is just returning from deprogramming Blue Beetle (which happens in Justice League 27, so I guess Suicide Squad is a little ahead of that title in internal chronology). Waller is greeted at her door by someone who looks exactly like her holding a gun. Meanwhile, Oracle (a mysterious hacker who offered to help the Squad with her computer skills) has found the virus Waller had planted in the Squad’s computer system and left one of her own in retaliation. Oracle was nice enough to leave a “vaccine” for the virus, but warns she won’t do so if they try to sabotage her again. We don’t see Oracle’s face, but we do get the first clues that she’s Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl. Vixen heads off for a personal mission, getting a rather personal goodbye from Bronze Tiger (and both of them get pies thrown at them by … whoever’s been doing that around headquarters. Shade and a Belle Rêve scientist test Ifrit, trying to get her used to being in Mindboggler’s form, but they still can’t control her. In Washington, the Squad’s lawyer (Craemer) wants to get Deadshot committed to an asylum (instead of prison) for killing Senator Cray and the District Attorney agrees. They mention Rick Flag’s involvement in Cray’s death, but nobody knows where Flag is now. Flag has gone to Qurac to take out the Jihad for good by blowing up their headquarters. He wrote a letter to Nightshade apologizing for going off the deep end and recounting a mission his father had in Qurac with the original Squad back in World War II, where they tried to steal a nuclear bomb the Quracis were building. The bomb ended up in a crevasse near Jihad headquarters and Flag figures he can st it off and take out the whole mountain. Flag sneaks into the Jihad’s mountain stronghold and finds the nuke, wiring it up to detonate. Rustam finds Flag, who keeps Rustam fighting until the bomb goes off, blowing the mountain and everyone in it to hell. When the explosion is reported on the American news, Nightshade tearfully finishes Flag’s letter, knowing he never intended to return from this mission. As far as I know, Flag’s death (and the deaths of the Jihad members who were present) is permanent.