An old breath of fresh air.
This is is going to be a switchup from my normal format of reviewing current issues. After going to a great convention in my hometown and raiding the quarter-bins there for some gold, I return triumphant with some great classic DC stuff.
This issue is the last issue I read of the old Suicide Squad run and while I will be discussing this issues, I'll also treat this particular book as a bit of a time capsule. Much of this book is a product of its generation, which is not so much the 90's per se but the 80's.
This is especially true with the artwork. While Geof Isherwood is a good artist, his style is very dated by today's standards and even the standards of the day. the time period of 1989-1993 was when Marvel dominated in terms of creativity in art style and technique. While Liefeld is known for this, this time period also spawned Jim Lee. That's not to say that Suicide Squad doesn't have the edge necessary to be as good as most early Dark Age books, hell, Suicide Squad is dark as hell even here. Characters die frequently and there's a fair amount of personal torment and insanity demonstrated by the team. The big problem here is that Suicide Squad for the most part wasn't really doing anything different in terms of presentation that other DC books weren't already doing. Only Batman in this time period ever tried to approach the kind of star power that Marvel went for. If you want to see what DC books looked like in the late 80's, look no further than here.
Amanda Waller in this version of the team is still as badass and fearsome as ever. What's cooler is her desire in this final story arc to go with the Squad and get her hands dirty. Interestingly, I find Waller more compassionate here than in the current version where they depict her as being almost completely ruthless.
Adam Glass stays very true to the Squad's heritage with a revolving door roster and grim and secretive government conspiracies involving terrorists. Its interesting to note, that very little has changed in his run compared to John Ostrander's.