In 2019 Shelfdust asked over a hundred comic book critics, podcasters, vloggers and commentators to pick their personal, subjective favourite ‘first’ comic book issues of all time. From their choices we counted down the top fifty entries, which you can find here! But we’re not leaving it there. Now the list is over and we know which comics made the list, we’ve invited critic and podcaster Matt Lune to host a weekly show right here on Shelfdust! Each week Matt will be sitting down with a different comic critic to look at every comic which charted into the top fifty, one issue at a time.
This week we turn to the comic which came in at 47th in our list: Suicide Squad #1 by John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, Karl Kesel, Carl Gafford and Todd Klein.
It’s an incredible concept: the US Government tell a group of super-villains that if they assist on black-ops missions, they will help commute their sentences in the long-run. If they follow orders and get the job done, they’ll be out of prison sooner: but if they break any of their rules, they’ll be assassinated immediately. And if they die on the mission? They’ll be written off as terrorists, without the Government’s awareness. It’s an incredible, politically-charged conceit for a brilliant series, and this week Matt is joined by Comic Book dot com’s Reviews Editor Chase Magnett to go over it!
You can listen to the episode:
Come back next week….. as Matt will be talking to Alex Lu about Daytripper #1!
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Chase Magnett is a writer and academic, as well as the Reviews Editor for Comic Book dot com. You can find him on Twitter here and on his blog here! His dog Tetra is the world’s greatest dog.
Matt Lune is a critic and podcaster best known for hosting “That’s The Issue” on Multiversity. You can find him on Twitter here!
This podcast is made possible thanks to the Shelfdust Patreon page! To find out more, head to our Patreon page here!
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