Review: Suicide Squad Vol. 2- Basilisk Rising

Quick Summary

Pros: The overall narrative is fun and has plenty of great moments from the individual members of the Suicide Squad. The story’s twists and turns keep things interesting.

Cons: Various plot points are left undeveloped and take away enjoyment from other portions of the volume.

Overall: The second volume in the Suicide Squad series continues to deliver some of the best features from the first volume, fun action and unexpected twists. These attributes keep the narrative exciting and ensure that the Suicide Squad’s various adventures are what fans would expect them to be. However, the larger narrative has a few problems that hold this collection from being universally worthwhile. Readers looking for surprising action or who enjoyed the first volume should check this book out.

Story

Suicide Squad Vol. 2: Basilisk Rising, by Adam Glass, is an alright adventure that manages to stay exciting through a number of entertaining twists and turns. This volume sees the Suicide Squad go on a couple of missions that emphasize what this series is about, fun bouts of action. These action sequences are then enhanced as members of the squad make completely unexpected decisions, often shaking up the narrative and adding additional excitement to the moment. However, the overall storytelling also has a number of problems that prevent this volume from being as good as it could have been. In the end, this is still a decent collection, even though it could have been better.

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The bulk of Basilisk Rising is a moderately entertaining adventure that contains everything one would expect from the Suicide Squad. This includes random acts of violence, some over-the-top fight scenes, and plenty of action all the way through. There is also a bit of interesting character development as the story progresses, most of which comes from Amanda Waller.

The best part about this narrative is the twists and turns that it takes. Throughout the read, secrets, like the identity of a traitor on the Suicide Squad, pop up and provide an injection of excitement when revealed. Captain Boomerang’s double betrayal and Deadshot’s self-inflicted gunshot were some of the most enjoyable of these twists, as they came as a complete surprise to me and were my favorite moments of the collection. This unpredictability is in line with some of the positives from Vol. 1 (Review) and confirms that narrative uncertainty is one of the best aspects of the Suicide Squad series thus far.

However, the storyline in Basilisk Rising also contains a number of problems. The most significant of these problems is the lack of meaningful follow-through on various plot points. Right from the start, it appears as if the Resurrection Man crossover will have a big impact on the Suicide Squad as a whole, yet this impact ends up being relatively minor. This can also be seen in Harley Quinn’s character evolution; one minute she claims her insanity is cured yet this has almost no impact on her actions throughout the rest of the collection. Not developing on these plot points made me believe that other plot points would be left undeveloped, which negatively impacted my reading experience.

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Art

The artwork in Basilisk Rising is alright and does not have many overly negative or overly positive attributes. The pencilers working on this volume, who include Fernando Dagnino, Carlos Rodriguez, Federico Dallocchio, Jesús Saíz, and Andres Guinaldo, present a surprisingly consistent volume despite the number of different artists working on this title. Most of them also perform well in drawing fun action scenes, which is one of the biggest draws in this collection. However, there are significant areas where the level of detail drops in the character depictions, leading to some strange looking faces. There are also moments where perspective feels very off, which can be seen on a page where King Shark’s hand appears to be as large as a regular human’s entire torso. The combination of these positives and negatives creates a volume that gets the job done but isn’t incredibly striking in any way.

Continuity

Suicide Squad Vol. 2: Basilisk Rising continues the story from Suicide Squad Vol. 1: Kicked in the Teeth (Review).

The story here continues in Suicide Squad Vol. 3: Death is for Suckers (Review).

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

• The beginning of this volume contains a tie-in with the beginning of Resurrection Man Vol. 2: A Matter of Death and Life (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).