Review: Suicide Squad Vol. 4- Discipline and Punish

Quick Summary

Pros: The individual characters are well-written and interesting on their own. The humor is well done and hits a nice balance between too much and too little.

Cons: The transition from the previous collection is frustrating and does not explain a lot. The villains are forgettable and the main plotline is lackluster.

Overall: A little bit of good and a little bit of bad produces a collection that lands somewhere neatly in the middle. Problems with plot keep the collection from being as memorable as it could be and even produce a little frustration. However, the characters themselves are entertaining and manage to capture plenty of attention through their often action-packed and occasionally humorous actions. This isn’t the best collection out there but fans of the Suicide Squad cast members are sure to find some fun within its pages.

Story

Suicide Squad Vol. 4: Discipline and Punish, by Ales Kot and Matt Kindt, is a collection where a number of positives and negatives keep the book from moving anywhere beyond an average quality level. On one hand, the volume’s opening is rough and the main narrative ends up being very forgettable. On the other hand, the character driven action is fun and humorous, while also building some interesting future plotlines. The end result is a collection with mixed quality but with the potential to develop into something better.

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The beginning of Discipline and Punish is a bit rough. The primary narrative of the series switches and completely drops the entire Regulus and Kurt Lance plotlines. Meanwhile, multiple characters experience unexplained shifts in personality, such as King Shark’s attempt at living a peaceful life or Amanda Waller’s redoubled hatred for the inmates who recently chose to save her life. The lack of explanation behind these changes is frustrating and getting used to them negatively impacts the beginning of this book.

Luckily, once the changes are made and the narrative has had time to adjust, things start to improve. The Suicide Squad stories told here are more character driven than they were previously. Personal feelings and team dynamics are more important than before and, thus, receive more attention. Because of this, readers get a chance to learn more about what drives the members of the Suicide Squad, some of which comes from James Gordon Jr.’s analysis and some of which comes from the villains’ spotlight chapters.

The focus on the members of the squad also ends up shining a bit more humor into their actions. King Shark’s humanitarian side, Deadshot’s cavalier attitude toward everything, and Harley Quinn’s ever-present jokes ensure that the volume has plenty, but not too much, humor. Even James Gordon Jr.’s strange obsession with Amanda Waller adds something to this bizarre comedy.

On the flip side, the shift to a more character driven story leaves the main narrative wanting. None of the villains or threats presented in this collection were memorable or stood out in any specific way. The only truly memorable encounter was when the Squad temporarily turned on itself and Harley held Amanda Waller hostage. However, there are hints that a larger story is in the works for the next volume, which will hopefully turn out better.

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Art

The artistic quality in Discipline and Punish ends up being the inverse of the storytelling quality. Patrick Zircher starts out the collection with a few great looking chapters. His pencils capture the gritty and violent nature of the Suicide Squad, without looking so gritty that humor feels out of place. His work here also has plenty of detail and is laid out in a creative fashion on most places.

However, the final few chapters in Discipline and Punish do not look quite as good. They lack the detail or the serious tone seen in the previous chapters, thus giving a conflict between the tone of the story and the tone of the art. This is especially noticeable in the final Suicide Squad chapter, which is so radically different that it is a bit jarring all the way through. These chapters do not ruin the artistic quality of the collection but they do prevent it from being as great as it could have been.

Continuity

Suicide Squad Vol. 4: Discipline and Punish continues the story from Suicide Squad Vol. 3: Death is for Suckers (Review).

The story here continues in Suicide Squad Vol. 5: Walled In (Review).

This volume also makes references to other comic books, detailed below:

• David Graves was approached by Amanda Waller at the conclusion of Justice League Vol. 2: The Villain’s Journey (Review).
• Cheetah was captured at the beginning of Justice League Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis (Review).
• The “Gotham nearly drowned me” line is a reference to the conclusion of Batgirl Vol. 3: Death of the Family (Review).
• Amanda Waller’s time on Team 7 is brought up. Her time with this team is detailed in Team 7 Vol. 1: Fight Fire with Fire (Review).
• The final two chapters from this collection are tie-in issues to the Forever Evil (Review) event.