Task Force Xceptional: A Dirty Half-Dozen Recommendations for DC’s second-chance Squad

The story of the Suicide Squad is one of second-chances. When DC Comics relaunched all their series following the Crisis on Infinite Earths event in 1986, a lot of characters were left untouched, particularly a lot of the minor villain characters like Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and Count Vertigo. Inspired by The Dirty Dozen, writers John Ostrander and Kim Yale and artist Luke McDonnell gave these characters a new lease on life as Task Force X, a team of super-criminal prisoners doing covert missions for the government in exchange for shorter prison sentences. The team is supposed to be both deniable and expendable, a fact that their leader, the aggressively pragmatic federal agent Amanda Waller, rarely lets them forget. Many team members would wind up losing their lives over the course of the series, a rare thrill in a medium where characters rarely stayed dead for good. Though the series has been retooled and rebooted numerous times since 1986, it’s so good a premise that it rarely stays gone for good.

Now the team is getting a second-chance at a movie with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad this August, which is said to be directly inspired by both the original 80s run and The Dirty Dozen, so we’ve assembled a rag-tag ‘dirty half-dozen’ recommendations to get you prepped. Whether you’re interested in the origins of the team or just want to see how many people King Shark can eat in one issue, we’ve got you covered!

Suicide Squad [4] : the Janus directive / Ostrander, John
When Amanda Waller begins to send out Task Force X for her own secret agenda, it draws the attention of every covert ops organisation in the DC Universe, and bring the hammer down in response. Little do all they know that Waller is being manipulated by another mysterious higher power. Part of the classic Ostrander/Yale/McDonnell run, The Janus Directive was one of the defining arcs of the original 80s series.

Suicide Squad. Volume 4, Discipline and punish / Kot, Ales
The highlight of the ‘New 52’ run on Suicide Squad is Ales Kot’s all-too-brief tenure on the book from 2014. After several missions gone awry, the team gains a consultant in the form of James Gordon Jr., the ‘recovering psychopath’ son of Commissioner Gordon, to help them better acclimate to prison life and find out what motivates them. Discipline and Punish (named for Michel Foucault’s book about the institutional origin of prisons) takes a more psychological spin on the team reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs while still managing to be fun and breezy, a rare balance that Kot nails so well you wish they stuck around longer.

Suicide Squad : hell to pay / Parker, Jeff
Based on the animated film of the same name, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay follows the team being recruited to obtain a mystical artifact that seems too good to be true; a ‘Get Out of Hell Free’ card that allows the holder to completely absolve themselves from eternal damnation. Of course, sending a bunch of hardened criminals with rap-sheets longer than Plastic Man’s arm after such as card is quickly revealed to be as short-sighted an endeavour as it sounds, but it makes for a great exploration of the characters as they come to terms with their past deeds.

Suicide Squad. Vol. 1, The black vault / Williams, Rob
Part of the DC Rebirth initiative and drawn by DC boss Jim Lee, this run of Suicide Squad ties in closer to the then-recent David Ayer film. The team’s first mission sees them trying to break their newest potential recruit out of the ‘The Black Vault’, a secret Russian prison guarded by its own Suicide Squad, the equally dangerous Annihilation Brigade. A alum of Britain’s premier anthology comic 2000 AD, Rob Williams’ writing is a perfect blend of over-the-top action and gallows humour that makes for a great Suicide Squad story.

Justice League vs. Suicide Squad / Williamson, Joshua
Sooner or later, the Suicide Squad comes into conflict with the Justice League, who aren’t exactly pleased that the villains they work so hard to put away are out on the streets and being co-opted by the government. One of the better DC Comics crossovers in recent memory (I also rated it in my Justice League recommendations), it’s genuinely impressive that every member of both teams gets a moment to shine, a hard task for a brief series with two massive casts slammed together.

Suicide Squad : bad blood / Taylor, Tom
The most recent Suicide Squad run sees the team behind the smash hit series Injustice: Gods Among Us, writer Tom Taylor and artist Bruno Redondo, take the reins. Once again under new management, the Squad is tasked with defeating and recruiting a team of anarchist superhumans called ‘The Revolutionaries’, allowing the creative team to introduce a slew of new characters to the DCU, any one of whom are bound to be a fan’s new favourite (mine being the out-of-shape speedster Jog and the Indigenous Australian tracker Thylacine).  Taylor’s signature humour and knack for great plot twists and Redondo’s expressive art that defined Injustice make this short run on the series one a must-read.