Take The Dirty Dozen, populate with supervillains and obscure DC characters, and plug them into Mission: Impossible-style plots. This is the recipe that John Ostrander and Luke McDonnell used to launch Suicide Squad, a series that takes place in the same mainstream post-Crisis DC Universe inhabited by Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, but takes a very different look at the place of superhumans in it, while also casting a suspicious eye on Cold War-era U.S. interventionism. We’ll discuss how Ostrander spun this series out of little more than a name recycled from the Silver Age, his working method with McDonnell, and one of this run’s most enduring legacies in the DCU: Amanda Waller.

WARNING: Does not contain Harley Quinn (despite what some trade paperback covers may suggest).

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