Rob Williams On How the Movie Informed His Take On Suicide Squad’s Rebirth

This week, just days before Suicide Squad makes its way to theaters for an expected $100 million-plus box office opening, DC Comics will launch a new, ongoing Suicide Squad series from writer Rob Williams along with artists Philip Tan and Jim Lee.

Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1 will be in stores on Wednesday, and while we were at Comic Con International: San Diego last week, Williams joined us to talk about the series, the movie, and how his creator-owned hit Unfollow fits into all of this.

Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1 will hit be available at your local comic shop on Wednesday. You can pre-order a digital copy on ComiXology now.

Doing Rebirth with the movie coming out the same week, and Jim Lee on art. Are there any variables that you can think of that would have made more people scrutinize this book?

Oh wow. No, possibly not. It’s a different level, absolutely.

The weird thing is you can’t let that effect you at that all. It’s the same process as when I write I Follow, my Vertigo book, or any number of books I work on. You just got to try to tell the best story you can really and do the best job. You’re aware of mistakes really, but it’s exciting.

Who wouldn’t embrace it, because you get a chance to work with someone like Jim, one of the greatest artists in the comics industry the last twenty years. When the call comes through and it says, “Jim wants to draw your Suicide Squad pitch,” there’s nothing negative about that, but it’s just all positive. It’s exciting.

Obviously one of the things about Rebirth is that aesthetically there have been a lot of similarities to the movies and TV, but story wise I’ve been diverging very wildly. Is it a relief to go into this big thing at the same time as the movie and to know that you’re not being expected to reflect that necessarily?

We’re not looking to reflect the movie. All that Rebirth entails is going back to the core of these characters. The Rebirth issue is very much stating to new readers, “This is who these guys are. They’re are the worst of the worst. They’re being put together in to this strike team so they can do some good.”

Then we get one little, sort of done-in-one adventure which really showcases who are they are, but under the uneasy moral choices that they will make that the other heroes in The DC Universe won’t, which is why they’re unique. I mean genuinely no one at any point in the process has said, “You need to do this because the movie is this.” That just hasn’t happened.

I think tonally the trailers have influenced what we’ve done, because the trailers were so good. The trailers were just great. They were funny and dark and high action, great visuals, all the things that we want the book to be. We’re kind of doing our own thing. The heart and soul of it is the same I guess.

I was listening to an interview with John Ostrander the other day. He was talking about how just one-shot is going to be very Amanda Waller-centric. She’s obviously a very interesting character in the sense that she’s kind of lurking in the background of these stories…

No, she’s to the forefront. If anything with the ongoing story that you’ll see, it’s kind of her story more than anyone else. It’s her choices that set everything in motion.

We’re going to give her a choice to make a long the way, which could easily be seen as something of a Faustian pact. She wants to protect as many people as she can. She’s going to try and do that. In doing that you can let a genie out of a bottle. There’s always sacrifice in these stories.

One thing I would like to say is, John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad books are like the totem for this stuff. We went back, re-read them. He did some great work. Hopefully we’re trying to live up to that really.

Unfollow has been a big success, and earned a lot of acclaim. You’ve already got people who want to meet with you for TV and movies. Is it gratifying to have that happen before this? I feel like so many writers it’s like, you get on the big superhero book, you really make a big hit out of it and then finally people pay attention to your creator-owned work.

Which would be nice you know what I mean? We’re very proud of Unfollow, we love the book, we’re very excited about it. Every issue it’s great working with Mike Dowling, the artist Unfollow is an amazing artist. It’d be great if Suicide Squad drives more eyes in that direction, because as you said, we have been fortunate to get some really great reviews.

I think it’s a very pressing story for this time. What we see social media doing in America and in the UK where I’m from and across the world. People thought it was going to be the Arab Spring. Social media was going to set people free. I think what we’ve seen instead it’s fracturing people, bringing out anger and a lot of people are very angry.

I think people feel they have a voice in social media and it in flames things. Again like we said with Suicide Squad, sometimes you let a genie out of a bottle. You think social media is going to be one thing. Instead of reflecting perhaps the good in people, it reflects the bad. That’s very much what Unfollow is about, because a billionaire lead character who is going to die from terminal cancer. He has his entire fortune and he’s seen … He set up social media, because he felt that he could bring out the humanity and he sees the bad.

Before he dies he set a social experiment in place and he says, “I’m going to give my money to 140 people equally and if one of you dies, 139 of you will get the money. If 139 of you die, one of you gets the money.” He says, “Go off, do your thing. I want to see what humanity is.”

Now is there a philosophical cross over that you can bring there? Again you have some people who don’t think of themselves as being bad, doing some pretty awful thing to Unfollow. In Suicide Squad you have self-described villains who find themselves in a scenario where it benefits them to do the right thing.

In Suicide Squad, the sort of a theme is really like, can bad guys do good? Can bad guys be good? Any bad guy is the hero of their own story. You want to humanize them, even while they’re doing appalling things.

You want to do things like The Sopranos did so well. You love a character and he does a horrendous thing and vice versa. You think of a horrendous character doing a kindness. Unfollow is like that as well. That’s what you have to do with these stories is, you put people in peril, they make tough choices and sometimes they make bad choices. Unfollow is very much about, who are we as a people? In that sense, yeah, people do some really crappy things in Unfollow, just as they do in Suicide Squad.

How do you perceive Amanda? A lot of the time I think writers perceive Amanda as a person who’s incapable of feeling compassion.

I don’t think that’s true at all. I think she’s hard as nails up front, but there’s all kinds of things going on under the surface, just as they are with anyone. Their nickname is The Wall. Behind The Wall there’s many emotions as anyone else.

You’ve got to remember with this woman, she is driven to do what she does. It’s almost like a crusade for her, because of tragedy that she had in the past. I think we’re going to explore down the road, which goes back again to the Ostrander origins. She feels a hell of a lot, but yeah you wouldn’t mess with her.

She’s a fantastic character. She’s a strong female characters. She has no super powers who controls the most horrendous supervillains and she controls them through force of will — and importantly the bomb that’s being put in their heads against their will.

Again, she’s gone to a morally bad place just doing that. That’s in her name. She’s willing to do it for the greater good and that’s the difference with her with other people.

We have this scenario where somebody like Amanda Waller is weilding huge dramatic power in the DC Universe. At the same time as we have Lex Luthor suiting up in a Superman costume. What do you think her take on a guy like that would be? Somebody who is essentially getting away with everything?

You’re going to find out, because in issue … I can’t remember which issue. Waller goes to Lex and they have a meet. That’s a very interesting dynamic between the two of them. You have two people, Luthor will tell her, you’re no different from me. She’s going to say, “No that’s not the case at all.”

Luthor may well have a point, which Waller doesn’t want to admit. That’s a lot of fun. I think we’re all very excited by that issue. It’s a real neat thing to DC icons and trying to define the difference between the two of them.

I like the idea of having Amanda essentially as a point of view character, because I feel like so often she is used as almost a plot device. She’s the immovable object. It’s easy to make her the end of the conversation. I think the only time I’ve ever seen her interact with Luthor, it was almost a punch line. She just owned Lex and moved on.

The way we’re doing it is kind of like … It’s kind of like a seductive thing. They are the dinner and Luther is trying to seduce her, essentially, to come to the bad side. There’s an element of flirtation about it as well. It’s much more than that.

It’s The Thomas Crown Affair. Do you know that movie? That’s how I see that meeting. It’s interesting to explore that.