DC continues to show its love for the Suicide Squad with a new mature-readers title for the team in 2022. The three-issue Prestige Plus series Suicide Squad: Blaze reunites the creators of the recent John Constantine: Hellblazer series - writer Simon Spurrier and artist Aaron Campbell - for a title that DC calls "more horrific and blackhearted" than their previous team-up.
"Rather than being the ones who are putting their necks on the line [the Squad are] playing a role of mentoring a group of new characters who really are utterly expendable," Spurrier says.
In Suicide Squad: Blaze, the team of Harley Quinn, Peacemaker, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark are tasked to "corral, nursemaid, and if necessary execute" (as DC describes it) five people who volunteered to become metahumans thanks to a secret US government procedure called 'Blaze.' The good news is that they now have powers, but the bad news is that it'll kill them in six months, maximum. And as each one dies (or is killed), the remaining recruits get stronger.
These new 'Blaze' recruits are like a souped-up version of the Suicide Squad (and in some ways similar to Spurrier's X-Force run from 2014 and 2015).
Together, these two units are being tasked to take down an unnamed threat DC describes as someone "with all the power of Superman but none of his humanity."
"If you had a superpowered individual who just wanted to kill people all over the world, what would you do?" Spurrier says. "The answer I think is that you would find people who are prepared to die to stop them."
Campbell has drawn the primary cover to Suicide Squad: Blaze #1. It'll be joined with a variant cover by Matías Bergara. You can check them out here:
Suicide Squad: Blaze #1 (of 2) goes on sale on February 8 as part of DC's Black Label imprint.
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