DCEU: 10 Comics It Must Adapt To Beat Marvel

9. Suicide Squad: From The Ashes

Suicide Squad From The Ashes
DC Comics

James Gunn's firing from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 proved to be Marvel's loss and DC's gain, as the writer/director is now attached to helm a new version of the Suicide Squad for Warner Bros. in the coming years.

Dubbed simply 'The Suicide Squad', this new iteration of the team will supposedly leave behind most of the first film's cast in favour of a brand-new lineup. Will Smith is out as Deadshot, Idris Elba is in, and while it's still unconfirmed as to whether or not Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn will appear, given the renewed focus on the character, one would expect her to feature in one way or another.

Again, as with Batman, there are plenty of brilliant Suicide Squad stories Gunn could look to for inspiration. Perhaps the best, though, would be From the Ashes, a comic helmed by Suicide Squad creator John Ostrander.

The main problem with the first film (apart from the jarring soundtrack and cumbersome editing), was that it didn't really justify the Squad's creation. Pretty much any super-team could go ahead and deal with a public world-ending sky-portal, whereas the Squad are usually deployed to handle more covert matters. How better to go back to basics, then, than with the original creator's book?

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.