The fifth installment in Mike Carey’s ongoing series, Suicide Risk, hit shelves on September 4th, and without a doubt it is by far the best issue of the series released to date. In a break from the ongoing storyline established in issues #1-4, Suicide Risk #5 takes readers back in time, before they met Leo, before Memento Mori and Diva (and the rest of the series’ unusual superheroes and villains), to the story of Ada Robins.
Note: This recap may contain spoilers!
Ada Robins’s life was miserable — husband out of work, his incontinent elderly mother living with them, and two teenaged kids to support by working shifts at the local grocery store, where the manager made advances on her in exchange for flexible hours and pay advances. Through it all, Ada was positive. Until her 18-year-old daughter, Jane, found out she was pregnant, her son Bax screwed up and had drug dealers threatening to kill him, her mother-in-law, Roseanne, got sick and the insurance refused to cover the medical bills, and her supervisor cut back Ada’s hours at the store.
That’s enough to get anyone down.
Then a mysterious woman offers Ada the solution she never even dreamed of: superpowers.
Ada might’ve turned the offer down, but when her husband Kyle walks out on her, she scrapes together every last cent she can get her hands on and makes the investment of a lifetime — superpowers — specifically, the ability to wish any object she desires into existence with nothing more than a thought. Gifts. Money. Even men.
The thought is disturbing, but wishing things like money into existence certainly helped solve a lot of Ada’s problems.
A repeating thread in Carey’s series is the idea that power corrupts, and unfortunately Ada is no exception to that rule. A sweet woman, trying to do the best she can for a family that takes her for granted; it’s no wonder that she goes a bit off the deep end when she’s finally given the means to achieve things she never thought possible.
Kill her pervert of a boss?
Check.
Take over the local drug trade?
Check.
Sexy new supervillain name (Instant Access)?
Check.
But as fans of the series already know, nothing in Suicide Risk comes without its price. And if Ada’s increasingly strange dreams are anything to go by, her story is far from over.
Suicide Risk #5 is written by series creator Mike Carey, with art by Joëlle Jones (Dr. Horrible, Troublemaker, House of Night), colors by Emilio Lopez (Detective Comics, Batman Beyond Universe), lettering by Ed Dukeshire, and covers by Tommy Lee Edwards (Batman, Hellboy, Disavowed) and Stephanie Hans (limited edition variant; Avengers, Black Widow).
