I read volume 1 of the New 52 Suicide Squad, and I'll be honest, it didn't exactly blow me away, the Joker wasn't very Joker-ish, and in a few places the art seemed a little bit lazy, but overall I thought it was a pretty decent book and I found it quite an enjoyable way to pass the afternoon. I certainly didn't feel like I'd wasted my time or money on it.

So why do people seem to hate it so much? I mean, I've only read issues #1-7 so it may well have gotten much worse later on, but what was it that people didn't like exactly?

Deadshot & Harley had some pretty big changes to their characters. i personally enjoyed it.

Harley Quinn purists b^tched about her costume change and the one fling she had with Deadshot.

I personally love Suicide Squad.

Kot's short run was awesome.

I think that Suicide Squad start off alright, I was intrigued by the concept of having B and C list villains running around in humorous and unpredictable adventures that often lead to death. But starting from Basilisk Rising onwards, it started to lose me to the point where I no longer care for the series. There were 3 main problems:

1) The characterization of Harley Quinn: I can survive with the fling with Deadshot where she looked like a pornstar that was created just for fan service but at one point Harley Quinn stopped being Harley Quinn and turned into another character entirely. I never really pictured her as a great fighter but she was able to best members of the League of Assassins and for the life of me I just could not buy this "badass" version of Harley Quinn. There's a difference between being able to defend yourself against armed idiots and defeating trained assassins left and right. Not to mention, she frequently puts her team in danger yet for whatever reason she still on the team. If I can't buy the main character of a team book, a yellow flag is raised.

2) The book lost its theme: The main theme of the Suicide Squad is that this is a team that has a lot of C-list villains who are expendable and could die at any time (hence the name Suicide Squad) and the beginning of the series really played into that. There was a certain amount of unpredictability to the story-telling, but after awhile characters would die but then immediately come back to life, which defeats the whole purpose of the moniker "SUICIDE Squad". It might have changed after issue 20 but I stopped reading after that, so if it did, please correct me.

3) It stopped being funny: When you have a book that is supposed to be funny and stops being funny, that's a problem.

Now it seems as though Deathstroke and Black Manta are joining the team which is odd because they're not B and C list villains so I'm not quite sure if it's going to get back on track.

Black Manta and Deathstroke are joining New Suicide Squad so I'm excited for that but I like the Suicide Squad comics. Deadshot is a badass. Not a fan of Jokers Daughter though

It was fine. This new one should be even sicker though.

Adam Glass' Suicide Squad was just boring.

Is that the upcoming 31st issue where they will be in Russia?

@vandersexxx: Not sure, all I know is that the new series is starting in July.

I only read the first volume but I thought it was pretty good

I love Suicide Squad.

I think it just lacked a lot of story. I mean sure it may have done a good job of following it's premise (expendable super-villains recruited by the government.) But it just didn't have an interesting story beyond "whacky mission of the day" and "oh no what is Waller up to?.....hey!! that's not nice!"

I don't think we really came out of any story arc with a big enough change beyond cast members. But i thought the whole Forever Evil plotline was pretty interesting, with Waller having to depend on them despite having no leverage anymore and it would've been cool if the book continued straight from where it ended....but alas in 2014 comics don't get the chance to improve, they just get relaunched completely

I need to read this sounds like.

Why? It was generic & the characters lacked personality.

I read up through issue 19 and nothing got resolved there, then issue 20 started something new. What happened to the situation they were in in the previous issue?

I am currently complete on this series.

Want pulled me in was the Amanda Waller (New 52 Team 7) connection. I mean, WOW!!! Who the heck gave her the 'right' or the backing, funding or even power to control the DC Universe the way she does. Sam Lane? Who exactly does Amanda Waller work for? Who signs her checks? Which means yes, I follow JLA/United as well. I want to know who pulls her strings.

As far as the rest of the Squad... are you nuts! This is one of my favorite reads. Really good twists and turns. And with that being said, I look forward to the new direction. The sample preview I recently read, looked like the series is about to take on a more militaristic (Task Force X) genre with Deathstroke and Black Manta on board . Plus the tension between Harley Q and Joker's Daughter looks really interesting. And Amanda Waller gets demoted. If that doesn't sound good.... have a good day.

I've been reading SS since the reboot and while the concept has always been one that intrigues me, I share the OP's impression of mediocrity. I don't care about some of the character changes from the reboot, for me that's part of what makes this an interesting read. What brings this series down for me is the frequent creative team changes.

I think SS is especially susceptible to taking damage from creative team changes because of the nature of the team. There's no real team leader (except Waller, who's only a leader the same way a man with a choke collar is a leader among dogs) or sidekicks. Every member of the team is constantly trying to do their own thing or prove themselves to everyone else which means the dynamics of the team should always be changing. With a solid creative team the internal power struggles become an intriguing part of the story, and we see that in some places within the New 52 SS. But when you frequently change creative teams, elements that might've been built upon are ignored, forgotten, or just not played out as well as they should have been. IMO some of the biggest missed opportunities for this title were things like Waller essentially using Yo-Yo as a science experiment and the Deadshot v Unknown Soldier "leadership" struggle.

It looks like the New Suicide Squad is going to be going down similar routes the way it started. Already we see conflicts forming between certain members of the group, Joker's Daughter and Harley, Deadshot and Deathstroke. I'd like to see them give Black Manta some leadership on the new team too, which would make sense since he's a volunteer member with a medal of honor (or something like that) after the events of Forever Evil. And obviously the new director of Task Force X is the polar opposite of Amanda Waller and will almost definitely be driven out of the project before too long, but in the meantime he is going to piss of Waller and likely put the team in a position where they have much more control than Waller would like.

@minisaladfresh:

Suicide Squad replace a fan favorite similiar title "Secret Six"

and mainly due to Harley Quinn´s new costume and some even call her slut or whore and skinny apperance of Amanda Waller.

@youknowwhattodo:

And Savant isnt a male Black Canary with Creote the male Barbara Gordon.

@vitalius: haha, so Harley Quinn can torture and murder as many people as she wants but showing her cleavage is too extreme?

I've heard people complain about her new costume like that, I really don't think you can judge Harley Quinn for her morals, I'm not sure she has any haha.

As for Amanda Waller, honestly who cares?

Surely it should be about the character, not the appearance? I mean I loved Nightwing, but I didn't cry over his costume switching from blue to red. And "oh no, Wally West is mixed race now, it's the end of the world!"

Seriously, I think people are totally justified to dislike a comic if the character's personality is wrong, or the story is badly written, or the art sucks, but getting up in arms about a change to a character's appearance just seems stupid to me.

@minisaladfresh:

Well some people grow up this characters and you know what happens with nostalgia. Her costume show all her curves, Starfire has been a whore since 80 and on n52, she was only for 1 issue. Amanda Waller i think was created to not be a usual human that could still be tough.

Yes people should judge a character for what she is and not her apperance. People tend judge and complain without knowing what is going on.

I enjoyed the series a lot. I thought it was pretty good. However, I would have made some changes-

Keep Harley crazy. No need to dabble in the Dr Harleen Quinzell. Everyone likes to see Harley.

It was overly Deadshot focused. I would have bounced the POV around a bit more per issue.

Should have kept killing the C and D listers. That's always fun.

Some of Amanda Waller's lines seemed very canned and not well written.

Given some numbers on how long they were to be incarcerated for and once a mission was completed, update it like Death Race.