four color espionage

Within the comic book community people are getting very excited about the return of John Ostrander and his book Grimjack to the shelves of stores. Now I've read a few issues of Grimjack when it was being published by First many years ago and can understand why it has such a loyal following to this day, but there is another series that Ostrander was writing at about roughly the same time that appealed to me more than Grimjack ever did and that book would be the Suicide Squad.

From what I understand Ostrander didn't create the concept of a team of incarcerated criminals being sent on dangerous missions for the government, but that didn't stop me from loving the book once I finally discovered it. Here were a group of characters with very questionable morals being asked to do something that might get them killed and they did it not once but over and over again. In addition to the danger in what they were doing, they also had to work with people that they may or may not like. None of these characters were team players and that continual hostility among them added even more interest to the book.

For me the Squad was a nice contrast to the more traditional super hero fare that DC is known for publishing. Even today I can't think of any other book that uses the same concept as well as Ostrander did. What I mean is that there have been other anti hero books since that time, but no one can match the group dynamics that Ostrander offered up on a monthly basis.

 
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