Suicide Risk #3

"Grudge War," Part Two
written by Mike Carey
art by Elena Casagrande

Suicide Risk is a dark series not because it is itself particularly bleak, though the stakes of Carey's story are significant.  It's dark mostly because it takes such a soberingly honest look at the unmentioned consequences of superpowers.  Suicide Risk's heroes and villains have, for the most part, variable spins on common superpowers.  Take Joel Focarilo, the Alchemist, a man able to impose very specific emotional cocktails in his clients.  They may pay generously, but it's barely half a step from mind-control.  And though the legality of his talent remains unchallenged, Leo calls it as he sees it:  rape, at least in the case of Mr. Focarilo's lover, whose independent agency he has usurped.  The same is true of his manipulation of the San Diego detectives, or Grudge War himself for that matter.  It's violation, however colored, and it's a violation that too many comics seem unduly dulled to.

But if Leo's astute instincts make him attractive as a protagonist, his willful stupidity in pursuing his own leads—which, by the way, lead him precisely to the same location as his detective colleagues—and confronting the villains responsible for hospitalizing his partner make him frustrating.  Between his reluctance to share his condition with anyone—his wife and family, his brother, his colleagues—and his brash use of them despite not knowing yet how to control them, Leo continues to jeopardize himself and those around him.  He feels the guilt, even for Anne Paxton, the catty accessory to Voiceover's crimes, caught in the sonic blast created during the conflict.  Leo puts people in danger, and however much he tries to justify it to himself, the guilt remains.

The genius of Carey's world is that the boundaries between villain and hero are so porous they're non-existent.  Certainly, the traditional superhero categories of law breakers and law enforcers is on full display here, but unlike more conventional series, the law provides no reliable moral yardstick.  Despite the psychosis that seemed to accompany her new powers, Memento Mori (formerly, Ginette Lorraine Kidson) is imprisoned rather than institutionalized for the murders of her children whom she no longer recognized as her own, or indeed as human.  It's easy to understand, and the trail of bodies (or dust) she continues to leave behind after her escape make it seem reasonable, but her conviction despite the shadow of her obviously diminished capacity still seems unjust.

The finest surprise, though, comes in the issue's final few pages, an unexpected intervention by superhero-turned-villain Diva, who saves Leo from Grudge War and the Alchemist but who calls him Requiem as though they'd met before.  All of a sudden the fear in Dr. Maybe at seeing Leo takes a different color.  So does the nature of where exactly these powers are coming from.