The legendary comic team known as Task Force X have a new mission–and a brand new limited series–thanks to Suicide Squad: Get Joker. The new Black Label series isn’t the only R-Rated incarnation of the Squad fans have to enjoy, but with Jason Todd, the Red Hood leading this new manhunt… it’s a chance for payback years in the making.

Screen Rant got the chance to speak with writer Brian Azzarello and artist Alex Maleev about their new series, and readers can find the full interview below.

What went into creating the lineup on this team? It seems to be one of the more intriguing elements, in that you haven’t seen these characters join forces before.

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Brian Azzarello: That was one of the reasons to do it. Pretty much my only marching order was: Harley had to be in it. So, she’s in it. And then to actually give her a really good reason and some tension, the mission is to go after Joker. Then there were a lot of characters no one’s used for years. [Meow Meow]’s a new character, but there’s Wild Dog and Firefly. Some of these guys, nobody’s done anything with them for years.

There are a lot of new characters or less familiar characters. Did the upcoming Suicide Squad film have any impact or factor into any of your decision-making about the team or this story?

Brian Azzarello: I didn’t want to use any of the characters in that team, for one thing. Tonally, I would say it’s pretty similar. Again, this book’s rated R, which is different for a lot of DC characters, property-wise. So’s the film, so tonally, it’s going to be the same, or similar.

But like I said, I wanted to use characters that hadn’t been around a while, that I could actually do something with it. If you throw some characters that you’re more familiar with into the story, I think there’s no tension there. Because you know they’re not going to die, and the point of this book is that they could die.

Why was Jason Todd chosen as the anchor and leader of this theme?

Brian Azzarello: Once I decided that the mission was going to be a Joker-centric mission, I thought having him in charge of the group would be a good thing. Also, he’s a vigilante; he’s a criminal. Just because he kills bad guys doesn’t mean killing’s okay.

You mentioned the editorial marching order to put Harley in it, but you also mentioned that you decided it was a Joker mission. What was the origin story of this book? How much of it was editorial saying, “Do you want to do this,” and how much of it was you saying, “Here’s what it is?”

Brian Azzarello: The origin of this book is that I was going to do Suicide Squad for the regular DCU a few years ago. The mission was going to eventually get to where we are in this book, with them going after Joker. It was a very different lineup, though, of characters.

There was a lot of editorial input for the regular DCU. [Here], there’s been none other than… No one told me to put Harley in it, but that’s kind of like, “You gotta put Harley in.” I didn’t want to answer the question, “Why isn’t Harley in it?” But they’ve been pretty cool. There’s been some times; there’s been some rawness that we had to cook a little. But other than that, it’s been okay.

How important was it to add political elements into the book? I’m referring, of course, to the insurrection bit of dialogue – but also the fact that there are Russians involved.

Brian Azzarello: I like to keep things contemporary. These books don’t have to be complete fantasy, so let’s put it in a real world. Make the world believable, and then you can do all sorts of fancy things as long as the world’s believable.

Yeah, I wanted to comment somewhat on the interaction; that just sort of happened. That line went in a little bit later, but that character was always going to be the way that he is. That line is good shorthand for how this character thinks, that’s all.

And the Russians? They’re not going away, it seems.

Everyone has an idea of who Jason Todd is, and everyone thinks they know his story. What did you want to get across when writing Jason Todd here? Other versions have shown him enjoying his work a bit more than he does here.

Brian Azzarello: No, I think Jason in this story is… I approached him like, “If you went through all this, and you really didn’t know why.” Because there’s a lot of holes in Jason’s story.

I think he’s a bit more sardonic in this; sort of accepting fate, but then not understanding fate. Fate kind of sucks, right? We’re all in on the joke about what’s going on? Who’s pulling the strings? We don’t know. Is there really anybody pulling the strings? We have no idea.

He’s a vigilante. And the way I approached him, all his backstory and all this terrible stuff, made him what he is. I do that because… of course I did that.

That feels like a more modern take, because he’s angry.

Brian Azzarello: He’s not that silly angry. He’s the kind of angry where he’d have no friends. The guy’s always angry. “Alright. Lighten up, Francis.”

Were there any series or particular arcs that you looked to from previous comics for inspiration, or for that matter, was there anything you really wanted to stray away from or revisit in a different light?

Brian Azzarello: No. Sorry, one word answer. There’s nothing I read specifically, or anything like that.’

When I approach this stuff, I really want to do something that hasn’t been done. This stuff’s all in print now, forever. If you want a certain kind of story, you can go get it. I’m not here to redo anything, so let’s do something new and fresh with these characters.

Like, Jason’s not entirely angry, but he’s still pissed off. He’s not high blood pressure angry, but he’s pissed at the world. So, it’s just coming at these things from a different angle.

You mentioned some new characters, and I love Meow Meow. Where did the new characters came from in your mind, and what can you tell us about them going forward – if anything? 

Brian Azzarello: They might die. They might get killed.

If they do die, my job is to make you really miss them when they do. I’ve tried to give all these characters a very specific personality, and I think in the second issue – which you haven’t read – there’s moments for each one to flesh out why they are there, and what they’ve done in the past. That kind of stuff.

Like I said, the new characters, and using minor characters creates tension within the within the team that everybody can die. If it were the Penguin in it, it’s like, “He’s not going to kill the Penguin. Penguin safe.” Or if he does die, “He’s not really dead.” That kind of stuff. Being able to create new characters, and then maybe kill them – I did that for 10 years with 100 Bullets, so I’m pretty well-versed in it.

Jason Todd is clearly the main character in the first issue. Is that something we should expect throughout the series, or will other characters take more of a focal point?

Brian Azzarello: It’s established that he’s doing the narration or internal monologue, so he’s going to remain the main character.

Does writing a book for DC Black Label like this feel like the ‘training wheels’ are off in any way? 

Brian Azzarello: No, I did Batman: Damned… I think the training wheels are back on. But there’s a lot more leeway, yeah.

Because you can mess around with continuity, knowing that you’re not going to mess up someone else’s book too?

Brian Azzarello: Right. And sometimes I think continuity really gets in the way of storytelling. Sometimes things get so dense that you stay away from it. But then there’s a lot of people who, that’s what they love about comics. And it makes it harder. Everyone’s constantly harping on how we need new readers, we need new readers, we need new readers. Continuity, in some regards keeps new readers away.

If you see the film, and it’s like, “Wow, that’s cool. I like that Suicide Squad.” That’s what this is for. It’s coming out the same week, which DC has never done before. That’s new. We’ll see how it goes.

Can you speak about what it’s like collaborating with someone like Alex Maleev, whose reputation really precedes him? One of the most pivotal scenes in this book actually has no dialogue on it.

Brian Azzarello: I know what you’re talking about, yeah. He and I have been for years kidding around that we’re going to work together. This finally came came along, and both of our schedules worked out that way.

I’ve been really happy to look at the art and see what he’s doing with it. He’s a really strong storyteller. I’ve been really fortunate that I get to work with strong storytellers, for the most part.

Silence when conveying the story, Alex is great at it. But I’ve been doing that for years with Eduardo Risso. It’s nice to be able to just hand something off and, pretty much, you’re gonna get it. I mean, there were some hiccups at the beginning, but there always are. This is the first time he’s been working with me, and my scripts – I know for a fact – are very different than Bendis’.

Could you elaborate on that? 

Brian Azzarello: Mine are really bare bones. If I were getting paid by the word, I would need another job. Doing a lot of art direction and that kind of stuff, it’s not something that I’m I do. That gave him a lot of freedom in this book.

By the end of the book, the Suicide Squad is going off the rails with a lot of momentum. What was that like, finding what Alex was going to be doing when the action or heat turns up on this?

Brian Azzarello: I’m glad you noticed that it sped up. Because it does; it really speeds up. I got the same impression when I got the pages back. I really loved the way he handled the action. There’s a lot of action in the second issue too, that is pretty cool.

To follow up a little bit on the bare bones nature of your scripts: with a new character like Meow Meow, how much control did you have over the character design?

Brian Azzarello: I described her, that’s it. But as far as what he came up with, it was pretty good. He did a good job. I don’t even remember what I said. Like, “She’s one of those Tokyo street kids. Punk, fashion, anime influence.” That kind of stuff. “Give her a mask.” As in a mask we’re all wearing.

Is that emblematic of your process with Alex throughout? Was there a lot of back and forth, or did you let him do his thing?

Brian Azzarello: There was back and forth in the beginning. But since, not much. Yeah, “do your thing.”

You mentioned this story grew out of what was going to be a regular DCU Suicide Squad run at one point. But now you’re working in this prestige format, and you get a much bigger paid count per issue. Was it always going to be that way once you started writing this story, and what did that length give you in terms of pacing?

Brian Azzarello: Once I agreed to do the Black Label Suicide Squad, yeah. It was always going to be the larger format. I like the 48 pages an issue pacing; it seems that it works well for me. The 20-page [one] is okay, but some things get… Because it’s just 20 pages, you’ve got to leave a lot of character stuff on the cutting room floor.

There’s certain things that have to be in a comic; somebody’s got to get punched in the face. In every damn comic there is, somebody’s got to get punched in the face. Well, not every damn comic, but most damn comics. You know, what? If Archie punched somebody in the face, that would sell.

I really like the format. And I like the three issue [structure]; it’s act 1, 2, and 3. I can see myself doing more of this stuff.

How much thought goes into the costume part of Jason Todd? Because it does help set him apart.

Brian Azzarello: That was Alex. We did discuss it at first. I thought because the story was going to be pretty much on his shoulders, that if he was going to have that Red Hood thing where you can’t see his face, that was going to be really hard to get to convey emotion. Unless you’re Spider Man, and your eyes go “ooh.” So, we went with a Domino mask instead.

I like that we’ve now gotten to, “How do we allow Jason Todd to emote?”

Brian Azzarello: Well, he needs to in this story. He’s the glue of this thing.

What can you reveal about my new favorite DC character, ‘Larry’?

Brian Azzarello: Larry has a very big role in this book. Larry’s almost a lynchpin for where the story goes.

It’s interesting to see Joker working at the behest of, or being funded by, another organization in the Russians. What gave you the idea to make him not a lone maniac, but to tie him into something greater?

Brian Azzarello: Well, I don’t know how much greater it is. They’re just giving him money. He’s not working for them; I think that’s made kind of clear when it’s explained from Toyman that they’re not having him do anything but be himself. Just creating chaos, which is something that they’re doing now in real life: just creating chaos here.

No one from Russia voted for Donald Trump, but they put a lot of misinformation on Facebook or some of these other [sites] that people followed, and things changed because of that. That’s just being chaotic. So, he’s not on anybody’s leash.

This is coming out the same week as an R-rated Suicide Squad movie that people are very excited for. Do you see that appetite growing and maybe doing sequels to this comic down the line?

Brian Azzarello: Oh, let’s finish the first one. I’ll say, it’s not an area of DC that I would mind returning to. I think there’s going to be meat left on the bones when we’re done. And that meat’s name is Larry.

We see Joker in a Clockwork Orange outfit. May we see other movie references like that in this series?

Brian Azzarello: Maybe. But the Clockwork Orange one was something intentional… I really wanted to push that [chaotic energy]. And it also throws him into how he’s seen the movie. He’s like us.

Alex, what was your experience working with Brian, dealing with these characters and juggling the team dynamic on the page?

Alex Maleev: Brian, you write way too many people on one page for 48 pages. And it’s hard. It’s hard. Next project we do, let’s just go and do the European stuff, where two people talk by the window and they light up matches and do LEGOs and drink tea. For 48 pages, that would be great.

How do I manage this? It’s part of the job. It’s nothing that we haven’t done before, and it’s nothing that we won’t do again. It doesn’t make a difference for me, to be honest with you. I read the script, I see what’s going on, I lay it out, and I get to work. It’s as simple as that. It makes no difference.

Brian Azzarello: We had to start off with a lot of characters, Alex, because we had to kill them.

Alex Maleev: [Laughs] I know. I don’t know how far we are into that conversation. Some, we got rid of. Thank God. I actually liked one of the ones we got rid of. The first one that died was one of my favorites. It was based on a friend of mine, who is a surfer from Portland, whose name is Tom. I kind of used his likeness, and I was sad to see him go. Brian Azzarello: You were sad to see him go, really?

Alex Maleev: Yeah, yeah. I was surprised that he was gonna go first, because he’s a good friend of mine. We had to whack him.

Brian Azzarello: I want people to be sad when he goes.

Alex Maleev: Actually, I liked his superpower. That was a cool idea.

Alex, you have so many characters in this book, including Jason Todd at the center. What other visual influences did you pull from for the look of this book?

Alex Maleev: I use myself as the Joker sometimes, because I can make those funny faces that I use. You see me; I don’t look like the Joker. But I pose for him.

Most of the female characters are based on my wife. This is since the Daredevil days, so any female character I have, they kind of resemble themselves. But let’s see. I do have assembled many, many photographs over the years that I sometimes use. I just play with the faces of no one in particular – but that guy Tom, that friend of mine that I used as a likeness. Not that I can think of anybody else. It’s just him.

I really like your interpretation of Joker.

Alex Maleev: Thank you. I did do some research, and I used some characters and actors and singers – and a bunch of people that I can put together as montage or collage. But mostly I use myself. I can come back here with the clothes that the Joker wears, if you want to see that. I use a shirt, which I have upstairs – no suspenders. My father-in-law had suspenders, and I go, “Let me have them for a couple of weeks. He goes, “Nope.”

One of my favorite panels in the first issue is the sound effects made up of hands holding guns. Did you draw the scene multiple ways and eventually come to that conclusion?

Alex Maleev: I have seen other artists use that trick. “You know what, one of those days, I got to use that.” It probably was years later that it came back to me, and it just felt like that scene had to be broken up a little bit. Using the letters are so large and drawing behind them was one of the ways to make it more interesting.

But it’s not a trick I came up with. A lot of people who have used it, but I haven’t used it myself. And it’s maybe the first time I did that, so that’s why it’s a little unusual.

Brian was saying his scripts are very limited in terms of background details. Do you appreciate the level of creativity you can bring to it?

Alex Maleev: I don’t know what else he could have added to it. I don’t think they’re limited, as far as the backgrounds go. No, I don’t think so. I mean, I didn’t feel that way.

Brian, did you ever stop and think you need to find a way to make “there’s a bomb in their heads” more disturbing?

Brian Azzarello: The way that it burns them up from the inside? It was just sort of modernizing, that’s all. The mechanics of it gets explained in the second issue.

Alex, do you get excited when you find out that you get to draw something like a person self-immolating inside their uniform?

Alex Maleev: When I get excited is when the last page is done, and it’s uploaded onto the server. And then I’m excited when I get an email with my payment. Getting it to my bank account really, really, really gets me very excited. It makes me giddy with excitement. That’s how I feel about it.

But as far as the artwork? Again, guys, I hate to tell you. I know it’s a boring answer. I can come up with all kinds of weird stories, but it’s just part of the job. Do I get excited? I’ll get excited if I get a really elaborate Gotham City spread. That will get me excited.

Brian Azzarello: I’m taking notes.

What about that would get you excited?

Alex Maleev: The way I design the city. That’s what excites me. I just love doing Gotham. Being a DC right now and drawing DC books, that background for me is a living character.

We get to see the Red Hood look that people know, and we get to see Jason as Robin. What went into walking the line between Jason as Red Hood and Jason as Robin?

Brian Azzarello: What I like about what you did with Jason is that you sort of held closer to the character of Robin. So, it was almost like when he first appeared in Hush.

And if this book is to appeal to people who aren’t familiar with the comics – like somebody who sees The Suicide Squad and says, “I want to go read a Suicide Squad book. I’m going to pick this up,” – I think having Jason as a former Robin is going to resonate more with this casual reader.

Alex Maleev: The Joker was a design that we came up with, and that’s kind of new; that look. And we had to go around, do some sketches, and see what we wanted to go with. But mostly the Joker was a new design, and the new characters were new.

What else is unique in that book, as far as design goes? I think the Joker and his crew mostly is what we focused on. When we did the first cover, this is when the Joker designed came to life. And that’s how we kept him.

Was it exciting for you to design the new character of Meow Meow with Brian?

Alex Maleev: Oh, this is cool. Don’t kill her yet, please. I like her a lot.

Again, this is off Brian’s description. All the details were actually his idea. For me, just to put it together was a matter of looking into some references of Tokyo goth city girls. I put together whatever I saw online: the clothing, the look, the hair. Most of that is just stuff that actually exists. But credit to Brian, he came up with her superpower. If we can call that a superpower.

For a lot of this first issue, Joker is either a decoy or he’s in a Clockwork Orange costume. What can you tell us about the new Joker design, and what were the conversations like getting them to the right place?

Brian Azzarello: I think it’s always important for Joker to look dangerous, not funny. What you’ve come up with, Alex, I think he looks really oily and nasty.

Alex Maleev: Yes, that’s it. Nasty is a good way of describing him.

Brian Azzarello: He looks like he can just go off at any second. He’s like a stiletto or a switchblade, if I were to pick a weapon. He’s got this look to him that’s very sharp and angular. I like it a lot.

Alex Maleev: There’s an element of craziness in him that can go off at any moment. He’s not as much evil, but he can really lose control. This is the way I see him. The unpredictable nature of him is what makes him scary, I think. And that craziness is what I’m going for when I draw him.

Brian Azzarello: I’ve gotten in many discussions with other writers about Joker. “Is he evil?” I always say, “No, he’s not evil.” My take is if he were evil, then he would go to prison.

Alex Maleev: But he’s nuts. That’s the thing about him. He’s just not predictable.

Brian Azzarello: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think the concept of good and evil is something that he understands.

Alex, since this is a rated-R DC Black Label book, is there any artistry that goes into how gory you can make something? Knowing it won’t get rejected like it would in a mainline DC or Marvel book.

Alex Maleev: I used to do this. I used to push the boundaries and see how far I can take it. Now I know that if I did this, it will come back with notes – no matter what label this is. It’s not gonna fly. That, and any kind of suggestive sexuality. Brian, did we go over the second issue with them?

Brian Azzarello: They don’t know anything about the second issue yet. Well, now they know there’s some suggested sexuality.

Alex Maleev: Okay, so with the suggested sexuality stuff, I did draw this the way I wanted it to be done. I absolutely prepared myself for the email back saying, “Ehhh…” And I did get the email, and I did what had to be done for it to pass the judgment.

Brian Azzarello: We’ve both been at this long enough, where we know what the boundaries are.

Alex Maleev: Yeah, yeah. You try; you stick a little toe in and you see if maybe it’ll get jammed. And it does get jammed. So yes, I did try to push it just a little. I do have the pages, if you want to see the more suggestive things that you wrote. But they did come back and say, “Eh.”

But I think we had an issue with what we showed in issue one. And this was the hardest one to fix, because I wanted to show more and DC wanted to show less. And because I did this on layers, and I worked digitally on that book, we could make changes easily. I can move images around in layers, where I can block off things that cannot be shown.

Yeah, the largest issue I had with censorship was issue one at the end: how much I can show of a certain scene, and how gory it could be. I went for the kill, and HR went for the kill as well. And I lost.

Alex, when you’re given the assignment of creating your version of the death of Robin, what do you bring to that? Because you’re partly recreating something that you know, and that everyone knows. Do you want to bring something different to it?

Alex Maleev: I would answer that question better if I had both images – the reference and my page – in front of me, so I can see exactly what happened. But the image is iconic, so I wanted to keep that. This is like Bullseye killing Electro, you know? You’ve got to have the same sort of image. Not that you cannot show this 100 different ways, but fans want to see that very same image.

All I had to do is adjust the anatomy a little bit – not to say fix some things that I thought didn’t look right in the original drawing. But because my style is more realistic, I tend to pay attention to anatomy a little more. My focus on that was to keep the same image, so that fans would see that and recognize it immediately and know exactly what it is. And then just dress it with my style. That’s all there was to it.

It’s really not that hard, I hate to tell you. If you work in that business for 20-something years, those things are getting easier with time.

What’s the thing that you’re most excited for readers to discover as the series goes on? Or that you are most proud of having put together?

Brian Azzarello: I think you’re gonna like the characters, and you’re not gonna want to see them die. I’m proud of that.

Alex Maleev: I didn’t want to see them die. I can attest to that.

Referring to the previous question, if you go on a jazz concert – and some of you probably have – and you see a quartet or trio, and they play for the first time that evening together… They’ve never met before, but if they’re good enough, you’ll never recognize the fact that they never seen each other before that concert. They probably met an hour before the show, and they figured out exactly which tunes they’re going to play that evening. And you would never recognize that. Why? Because they’ve done it so many times, and they know the tunes so well, that it’s seamless the way they play. They need to look at each other in certain time during the tunes, and they know exactly what is going on.

And I think it’s the same with us. We don’t have to work together for 25 years to know what we’re doing. We can be thrown in a pit, and we can come up with something almost immediately. Just because we have the experience of working with other people. And I think this is truly a secret that it’s not that hard. Once you’ve done [for] the length that we have – and Brian and I are veterans in the business – you throw us together, and we’ll come up with something. Just like a well-oiled jazz band. I hope this is a good analogy.

We’re coming up on almost 35 years of the modern Suicide Squad concept as we know it. What for you makes a good Suicide Squad comic, and what have you pulled from the best Suicide Squad comics over the years that you hope translates to this version?

Alex Maleev: I wish we could have updated some of the designs of the original characters. And I’m not gonna tell you who’s in a squad, because I don’t want to spoil anything. But I wish we had time to redesign some of these characters, because I think they’re outdated.

Brian Azzarello: I don’t know what we’ve actually pulled from the old stuff, other than I pulled the original conceit and sort of updated it. That’s basically what I wanted to do – update this stuff a little bit. Make these characters not so much cannon fodder, but make them human. Give them all a real distinct voice beforehand. Some of them you aren’t gonna like, which is great – but I think every one of them’s compelling.

Suicide Squad: Get Joker #1 is available now wherever comic books are physically and digitally sold.

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About The Author


Andrew Dyce
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Screen Rant Editor Andrew Dyce was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Despite calling the vast nothingness of the Canadian prairies home (or perhaps because of it) film and television have been a passion since birth. As a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a degree in English Literature, Andrew has grown to appreciate the story and writing behind everything from blockbuster comic book movies to schlocky B-movie action.

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