15 DC Comics Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die
7. Suicide Squad Volume 1: Trial By Fire
So turns out that the Suicide Squad movie wasn't exactly the saving grace of the DC movie universe but what are you going to do? Go read the John Ostrander and Kim Yale Suicide Squad, that's what you're going to do.
While the series is technically a sequel 50's comic of the same name, it stands apart as the introduction to the 'Mission Impossible but with supervillains' format that has come to define the Squad.
Suicide Squad was incredibly innovative for its time, portraying supervillains not as two-dimensional megalomaniacs, but as complex characters who mostly turned to crime just to make ends meet. The stories are politically relevant to the time period and each arc is thrilling, with the cast of obscure characters adding a real sense that anyone could die.
The first volume contains one of the series' best storylines Misson to Moscow in which a disastrous covert mission leads to the Squad trying to fight their way out of Communist Russia and introduces key characters like the merciless director Amanda Waller, dispassionate mercenary with a deathwish Deadshot and everybody's favourite scumbag Captain Boomerang.
Really the entire series is worth reading, especially this volume and Vol. 5: Apokolips Now where members of the Squad are kidnapped and taken to Darkseid's homeworld. The resulting rescue mission is one of the bloodiest in Suicide Squad history.