Ask Chris #16: Comics, Politics and the Suicide Squad

Here at ComicsAlliance, we value our readership and are always open to what the masses of Internet readers have to say. That's why we've given Senior Writer Chris Sims the punishment pleasure of stepping into the grand tradition of the Answer Man as he responds to your reader questions!

A: It's almost inconceivable for me to think that comics didn't influence my politics in at least some way. I mean, they've influenced pretty much everything else about me, from my job all the way down to the way I talk to my friends -- as unforgivably nerdy as it may be, when my "Awesome Hospital" co-writer Chad got married, my pals and I didn't call it "Chad's wedding," we called it "Chad #500: The Wedding Issue."

Even so, when I try to think of specific things about comics that would've shaped my political views, I can't really put a finger on much. I mean, despite my love of Batman and the Punisher, I'm pretty sure I'd come out against real-life costumed vigilantes (although I imagine I'd be more in favor of it if the alternative was being poisoned by a clown), and while I do think the inspirational speeches that Captain America gives about the nature of the American Dream are really moving, it's more because I already believe that stuff. I didn't come to a lot of comics until after most of my political opinions had formed.

I will, however, cop to the fact that the one issue of "Cap" that I did have as as kid that dealt with political issues -- the Kirby issue where Cap and the Falcon infiltrate a gang of separatists, and a giant disembodied head on a TV screen (where the background is an American flag with the stars replaced by a hangman's noose) commands an angry mob to rip a strung-up effigy of a "freedom freak" limb from limb and beat it with pipes -- scared the living hell out of me, though that was less about the political implications of the story and more because I was six years old and completely unprepared for Jack Kirby to blow my mind.

But whether or not it influenced my development or just reinforced what was there, there is a comic that shaped the way I think about a lot of stuff, and I don't think anyone's going to be surprised here when I say it's The X-Men.I don't talk about it as much as my other favorites, but when I was a kid, there were three comics that I read over and over and over again: "Untold Legend of the Batman," "The Very Best of Spider-Man" (which contained both "The Final Chapter" and "Whatever Happened to Crusher Hogan") and a black-and-white paperback that collected the Chris Claremont / John Byrne story where the X-Men fought Arcade. I must've read that thing a hundred times, and because of that, I developed the kind of love for the X-Men that only a kid can have.

I don't think anyone needs me to tell them this, but while Marvel perfected the idea of the outsider hero with the Thing and Spider-Man, the X-Men took it to a completely different level by expanding that metaphor to encompass a whole race, specifically once the book got relaunched by Claremont, Byrne, Len Wein and Dave Cockrum. I don't think it's a coincidence that a book where the protagonists were literally identified as a race was created during the height of the Civil Rights movement, but once the international team of "New" X-Men arrived, the message was solidified: A group of people who were different from each other in virtually every respect, uniting not just for their own benefit, but for the benefit of a world that hates and fears them. As cheesy as that might sound to readers who have heard it a million times, that's an incredible hook.

From there, the political implications were barely even subtext: Not only were the protagonists of the book a different race, they were a literal oppressed minority, and the people who hated them for no better reason than they were different or who allowed their fear to get the best of their humanity were the villains in no uncertain terms. That's a powerful message, especially when it's being wrapped up and given to children. Kids can be pretty unforgiving of differences, and while not every child came away from reading about Wolverine with the message that our differences make us special, there were plenty on both sides of that equation that either learned a life lesson from the X-Men or took solace in the fact that their heroes had to deal with it too.

Which is another thing that makes it such an important metaphor: It's fictionalized in the world of comics just enough to be adaptable. Way back when the ComicsAlliance staff did our roundtable of "Second Coming," I talked about how depressing it was that as much as I want to see them advance, the X-Men are always going to have to have that aspect of being persecuted because there's always going to be real-life persecution they can symbolize.

But the flipside to that is that people are always going to have the X-Men to identify with and learn from. They work whether the issues being addressed are explicitly metaphors for race (the Holocaust imagery of the Sentinels and mutants being rounded up into camps) or sexuality (the anti-mutant religious leaders of "God Loves, Man Kills" certainly read a lot like the bigots who literally want to outlaw homosexuality) or just a more general symbol of oppression. The franchise has a pretty well-deserved reputation for getting bogged down with the intricacies of its own minutiae, but underneath all the alternate futures and cybernetic arms and memory implants and Fake Xorns and alien bird-people, that core idea is still there, and still relevant and gripping. It can still teach us something, and considering the franchise's enduring popularity, it still is.

Also, I love any comic where dudes beat the crap out of Nazis. Because screw those guys.

Q: What are your 5 favorite moments in Suicide Squad? --Michael, via email

A: Normally, when people tell me I "forgot" something in one of my columns it's just a matter of me not including something they wanted me to or ending a Top Ten list after ten entries instead of the 11th they can't believe I didn't include. In this case, though, my memory did slip: When I listed off my all-time favorite runs in last week's Ask Chris, I totally forgot about John Ostrander's 66-issue run as the writer of "Suicide Squad," easily the best ongoing series DC was putting out in the '80s.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading it, it's essentially the "Dirty Dozen" in comic book form: Super-villains are given the chance to commute their sentences by going on suicide missions (hence the title) for the government, with the overarching hook being that someone dies in every story arc. It's phenomenal stuff, and it's the direct predecessor of books like Greg Rucka's "Checkmate" and Gail Simone's "Secret Six," and despite having never been reprinted (though a Showcase has been solicited twice without ever actually coming out), it's one of the true cornerstones of the modern DC Universe.

As for my favorite moments in the series itself, I flipped through my run and found five great moments from the first half: