Comics Reviews: Green Arrow 19, Young All-Stars 26, Suicide Squad 29, Suicide Squad 30

Green Arrow #19 – “The Trial of Oliver Queen” – Mike Grell/Ed Hannigan/Dick Giordano, Frank McLaughlin

This one starts with a veteran cop (Egan) breaking in a rookie partner named Stankowski. Egan is close to retirement and gives his young partner the benefit of his experience, telling him how to handle various situations. They get a call about armed individuals across town and go to check it out. Egan heads down an alley to see what’s going on, unaware that Green Arrow is on the roof above him. A guy with a mask jumps out and fires a gun at Egan, who shoots back and misses. Green Arrow puts an arrow in the guy’s chest, but Egan quickly realizes the shots that hit him were just paint pellets and the guy Green Arrow pegged is a teenager. Another kid shows up with a paint gun and Stankowski almost shoots him before Egan tells him not to. Oliver feels guilty for shooting a teenaged kid and starts drinking to assuage his feelings. At the inquest, Egan is cleared of any wrongdoing (since the paint gun looks and sounds like a real gun) and so is Oliver, but the judge gives him shit, saying that vigilantes like him are dangerous and should be outlawed. Oliver’s drinking gets bad enough that Dinah calls Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan for help, but Hal can’t get there yet. After wandering the streets drunk (and ignoring some punks stripping a car), Oliver goes home and smashes his portrait of Robin Hood before passing out in Dinah’s arms.

Young All-Stars #26 – “Sick Leave” – Roy and Dann Thomas/Ron Harris/Bob Downs

This one starts with Iron Munro telling his fellow Young All-Stars that he’s quitting the team, but he won’t tell them why. Their argument is interrupted when a doctor tells them Tigress has fully recovered from being impaled a couple of issues back, but that he’s still worried about her. Turns out Tigress’s death and resurrection have turned her into an asshole (well, more than she already was) and she’s ready to quit the team too, so she can go off and do whatever she wants. (This is obviously Roy’s explanation of how Tigress ended up being the villainous Huntress.) When the others try to keep her from leaving, Tigress attacks them and takes off, evading capture with a little help from Gudra the Valkyrie (who was the one who brought Tigress back from the dead last issue). Munro finally tells the others why he’s leaving: he wants to look for his father (who he’d previously believed to be dead) after seeing a photo of him in South America with a dinosaur carcass. Fury and Flying Fox wonder what they should do next and Dyna-Mite calls California to check up on Tsunami’s condition. She’s doing better, except for the racist soldiers at the hospital who try to bring her in. That pisses off Neptune Perkins and he attacks them before they can get too rough with Tsunami (who is still hurting from her injuries). The two fight their way out of the hospital, almost getting shot by some gung-ho MPs. They make it to the ocean and Tsunami gets pissed of when a bullet grazes Neptune’s head, but he convinces her not to wreck a naval vessel and they swim away. When their teammates hear what happened, they’re not sure what to do. Their new allies (Fireball, Kuei, Squire, and Phantasmo) decide to go back to their respective homelands to fight the Axis powers. We never did figure out which of them was a traitor … or maybe that whole thing was just bullshit? Roosevelt could’ve gotten some bad info somewhere. Fury figures the way things are going, she may as well return to Greece to fight Nazis there, and Flying Fox decides to head back to his homeland to see how his people are doing. Dyna-Mite isn’t too happy about the team breaking up, but there isn’t much he can do about it. If this sounds like the end of this title, it’s not … there are still another five issues to go.

Suicide Squad #29 – “Heavy Squad” – John Ostrander, Kim Yale/John K. Snyder III/Pablo Marcos

This is part 8 of the drawn-out Janus Directive crossover; we’ve missed a few chapters in Manhunter and Checkmate (and Firestorm 86 takes place before this), but it’s not too hard to catch up. Checkmate plans an all-out attack against the Suicide Squad, partly in retaliation for their earlier attacks on General Eiling and Koning Industries, but also because Harry Stein thinks Amanda Waller has been replaced by a lookalike. Harry figures the Waller doppelganger is behind the whole Janus Directive (although we know it’s actually Kobra) and wants to take her out. Eiling reminds him that Belle Rêve is well-defended, but Harry says they can free the remaining members of the Force of July, who’ll be happy to fight against their captors. At Belle Rêve, Lois Lane is being held to keep her from going public about any of this, with the Squad’s public liaison (Kale) feeding her the usual bullshit. Checkmate attacks, led by Stein, Eiling, Harvey Bullock, Valentina Vostok, Black Thorn, Peacemaker, Major Force, and Checkmate Knight John Reed. Reed and Vostok bust out Force of July, but are immediately confronted by the squad. Peacemaker is attacked by Duchess and Briscoe, who manage to down Peacemaker’s chopper. Meanwhile, on Kobra’s orbiting Ark, his chief scientist (Valland) assures him that their pulse cannon is almost ready. The cannon will fire an electromagnetic pulse at the Western Hemisphere that can not only disable most technology, but also fry people’s brains … and there’s nothing on Earth that can stop it. But Kobra doesn’t know Dr. Megala is aboard, nor does he know that one of his servants he sent to kill Manhunter actually is Manhunter in disguise, having taken the guy’s identity after he died during their fight. At Belle Rêve, the fight rages on, with Major Force and Firestorm blasting each other, but when Black Thorn tries to kill Waller, she gets a surprise. After arranging a hasty truce using the Medusa Mask, Waller explains (to Stein, Bullock, Eiling, Captain Atom, Major Victory, Firestorm, Nightshade, Faraday, and Sarge Steel) how the doppelganger tried to take her place (which we saw in issue 26), but she killed her and has been pretending to be the doppelganger to figure out who’s behind all this. Her initial attacks on Checkmate and the Force of July were to stay in character and it worked; she tells them Kobra is behind all this and that Manhunter has located him, so no they can take the fight to Kobra and make him pay.

Suicide Squad #30 – “Endgame” – John Ostrander, Kim Yale/John K. Snyder/Karl Kesel

This is basically the last chapter of the Janus Directive (there’s a slight coda in Captain Atom, but that doesn’t amount to much) and there’s an intervening issue of Checkmate between this issue and the one above. Kobra’s Ark is being brought down to Earth and has been boarded by the Suicide Squad and their allies. Manhunter is still trying to free the hostages on board, including Megala, but Kobra has decided to use the pulse cannon to defend the Ark. When he learns that Kobra plans to fire the cannon, the President orders Sarge Steel (who he put in charge of the overall operation) to hit it with a nuke. Waller is pissed off that her people are being sacrificed before getting a chance to stop Kobra on their own, but Steel goes ahead with the nuke launch. On the Ark, the heroes fight through Kobra’s minions as he tries to flee, leaving Valland to fire the pulse cannon. Manhunter goes after Kobra as the rest try to fight their way through his hordes to stop Valland. Firestorm stops the nuke and tells Captain Atom to warn the authorities not to try that again. The Squad and their allies take out the pulse cannon, but Lady Liberty and Silent Majority are killed, leaving Major Victory as the last of the Force of July. Manhunter pounds Kobra and everyone evacuates the Ark so Firestorm and Captain Atom can destroy it. At Belle Rêve, Lois Lane is released, but she’s slapped with an injunction so she can’t report on (or even talk about) anything that went down. She’s pissed off and her mood gets worse when she gets a pie in the face from whomever’s been doing that. At a meeting in the White House, the President tells everyone that he’s reorganized the meta-human government agencies, putting Sarge Steel in overall charge in a cabinet-level post. Eiling (in charge of military operations), Stein (in charge of Checkmate, which is now independent), and Waller (still provisionally in charge of Suicide Squad, which now includes Major Victory) will all report directly to Steel. The President tells Waller she’ll only be in charge of the Squad if she can be a “team player” instead of hiding things from people who are supposed to be her allies. At Belle Rêve, Kobra is locked up, but isn’t too bothered by his confinement, and seems to be in contact with someone far away … or possibly inside his own mind, I’m not sure.