It’s been a whirlwind year-and-a-half for director James Gunn, who was fired from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, then hired to direct DC’s The Suicide Squad, and then subsequently rehired for the third Guardians film. After all that James Gunn must be ready to get back to work and he is doing just that. James Gunn has started filming The Suicide Squad, and to commemorate the occasion, he was given the perfect gift from a friend. Check it out below:
It sure is nice to have great friends, and James Gunn clearly has a great friend in his agent, Charles Ferraro. The Suicide Squad has begun production, and to mark the start of shooting on the creative venture, Gunn received the perfect gift, as seen on his personal Instagram page: a comic book. It’s not just any comic book, though, because this is actually DC's first appearance of a team called the Suicide Squad.
The comic, which appears to be in a heavy-duty plastic holder to protect and preserve it, is DC Comics’ The Brave and the Bold #25. This issue first came out all the way back in 1959, and as James Gunn notes in the image caption, it features a very different Suicide Squad than the team that readers and audiences are familiar with today (including what we will see in Gunn’s film).
The original Suicide Squad, who made their first appearance in The Brave and the Bold, was not a team of villains performing black-ops missions with low chances of survival. The original team was a group of heroes operating during World War II, earning the name because of a high mortality rate among members. This was happening just shortly before (three issues to be exact) the debut of the Justice League in 1960's The Brave and the Bold #28.
The Suicide Squad in this first issue consisted of Dr. Hugh Evans, Karin Grace, Jess Bright and Rick Flag Sr., the father to the later Rick Flag Jr. It wasn’t until Legends #3 in 1987, following Crisis on Infinite Earths, that the Suicide Squad became the more modern, villainous version of the team we are accustomed to today.
Although this comic likely bears little resemblance to the 2016 Suicide Squad or James Gunn’s upcoming reboot/reimagining/sequel/whatever, it is still where this team’s history began. That makes it an awfully generous and extremely thoughtful gift to give to the writer/director as he embarks on filming.
James Gunn won't have much time to read it, though, as he has a movie to make! The director has assembled a brilliant and fun cast for his DC movie, which is expected to be tonally very different than the first.
The Suicide Squad opens in theaters on August 6, 2021. Check out our guide to see what DC movies are headed your way in the coming years, and stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all the latest movie news.
