SS Issue #0: Writer's commentary

Present Day: Washington D.C. - An
Undisclosed room in the white house.

A man walked into the room, handed the President a file, and sat down. "It’s done, Mr. President,” he said. “The Suicide Squad is dead. The file on them is closed."

"And Waller?" The President asked.

"Waller was confirmed dead last night, Sir." The man replied, “And anyone else associated with her and or the Squad is either dead, or in deep hiding"

"Well," the president said as he leaned back in his chair, pushing the file across the desk in front of him. “I told her that the success of the squad would depend on her ability to be a team player."

"You can't win them all, Sir." the man sighed as he got up and headed towards the door.

"Eiling." the President said, standing up and walking toward the man.

"Yes Sir?"

"Sorry about your lose."

"It was a set back, Sir. But we will be up and running again in no time." Eiling headed out the door. Once outside, he followed a narrow path that lead to a limousine parked along side the road. Another man was standing next to the limo, waiting for him.

"You finished briefing the President so soon, General?" the man asked taking a step away from the limo.

"Well there wasn't much to say. Everything was in my report." General Wade Eiling said as he approached the man and stood next to him.
"Everything? Even the senseless deaths of American heroes?"

"Heroes huh?" General Eiling clinched his teeth "Steel, we are talking about thieves, murderers and criminals; not heroes. The day people like that become heroes is the day I resign." Sarge Steel just smiled at him. Eiling looked at him for another few seconds and then opened the back door of the limo. "And another thing...." He started to say as he got in the limo but before he had a chance to finish his sentence, Steel shut the door and the limo drove off. Sarge Steel took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. Someone on the other end picked up.

"Now it’s finished, Sir." Steel said and then hung up.

This was the first scene I wrote after I pitched the SS idea to David back in November ’05. I always thought that beginning a story at the end was cool. Was this a truly original scene? No! But I was inspired by classic tales that showed the heroes either in peril or ‘dead’ then the story flashed back to see how they got themselves in the current situation.
I was happy that when the final scene was written months later, that it looped perfectly back into this epilogue because once this came out in February there was no way to change it once this scene was repeated in issue #3.

"Work. Right.” Rick grunted. “Well, message delivered. Tell Waller next time to call me if she needs me."

"Next time, don't disappear without telling anyone where you are going.” Floyd Lawton said as he threw his cigarette out over the balcony. "Oh, and Flagg, tell Ms. Eve Eden" Lawton gestured with his head towards the woman still sleeping in the bed, “Waller wants her on this one too."

"Get out of here Deadshot, before I shoot the messenger." Rick snapped as he took another drag of his cigarette. Deadshot climbed down the balcony and disappeared into the night.

Rick Flagg knew his vacation was over. He had led the Suicide Squad on their first three missions, five members killed in action, two injured, and one lost in action. So far, Amanda Waller’s experiment of using convicts and costume criminals hadn’t exactly been a smashing success. It also hadn’t been a complete failure either. If you want to call using criminals to do the governments dirty work, where everyone one is expendable, a win-win situation. Rick followed orders. He worked with whom he was told; it wasn’t up to him to decide what was acceptable or who was expendable.

Since I wanted to establish a little history for the Squad I wanted to make sure that they had been on a few missions before this story took place. Mentioning that a member of the Squad went missing on a mission was another sub-plot that was going to be explored later but I was never able to fit it in anywhere. It wasn’t till recently that I figured out that I could use that little bit of back-story in the SS Annual that comes out in Nov ’06 making it seem like it was planned all along!

After four years in the Air force, an unnamed agency within the government recruited Rick to work for them. He led several undercover missions, one of which was infiltrating and spying on a group called the Forgotten Heroes. Things didn’t turn out so well but Rick completed his mission like he was ordered to. Four months after the disaster with the Forgotten Heroes, Rick was recruited to serve as leader to the newly formed Suicide Squad. That was six months and three missions ago. Rick took one last drag of his cigarette and pitched it over the balcony. It was time to go back to work.

Another thing I decided early on was I wanted to stay true to the original origins of characters as much as possible. I think one of the goals at DC2 is to tell stories that aren't hampered by years of continuity. Give everyone a fresh start but not alter their origins too much or change what makes them a character. The freedom I have with some of these characters that are in the Squad is, their origins aren't as well known so they can be tweaked to fit the story's better.

In the pre-crisis DC universe, Rick Flagg was a member of the Forgotten Heroes and group and only appeared a handful a times and then literally forgotten after Crisis in 1985. I knew I wanted to explore this further in the next story arc. Little did I know at the time that this would be one of worst things I ever decided to do story wise. My first mistake would be seen in the following issue.

With that in mind, they named the facility Belle Reve; which means "Beautiful Dream" in French. But for most, that’s where the dream ends. Belle Reve is designed to be the most secure prison ever built. It houses some of the most dangerous of the dangerous offenders. Most of the inmates are confined to their cells twenty-three hours a day and are not allowed to see or associate with other offenders. Doors are controlled electronically and by remote control. The facility is divided into six varying security levels, based upon each inmate's security classification. There are several support services available to inmates, such as health services, educational programs, gymnasium, and even a chapel. Belle Reve currently houses over five hundred inmates, thirty-eight of which fall under the "super-villain" or "meta-powered" classification.

After doing a lot of research on prisons I thought it would be cool to include some of that info to build the back-story on the home base of the Squad. Looking back now I realize that there is a lot of dry info here that slowed down the story.
Belle Reve really does mean "Beautiful Dream" in French. Everything about the prison is factual based on my research, except for the 38 inmates that are super villains! At one point I did make a list of all of them too!

Afterwards, she swore that she wouldn’t lose anyone else she loved to the streets. Amanda swore to God she would get them out no matter what. She was at an all time low when she went on welfare to keep her and her kids alive. It burned her up inside that she was powerless and needed government assistance to survive. But the bitterness was short lived as she pulled herself and the remaining members of her family up and out of the slums of Chicago. She got her three kids through college and then she herself got a degree. She had at last begun pursuing her dreams she had given up so long ago. Shortly after receiving her bachelor’s degree in political science, she targeted Washington. She found a Congressional candidate who was way behind in the polls. After telling him he had a strong campaign platform but no shot in hell of getting elected, she became his campaign director. Through Amanda’s efforts, he won the election and is now a powerful voice in Washington. She stayed on for a couple years but soon found that she was aspiring for bigger things. Amanda Waller found it after she stumbles across files on a former government strike force named Suicide Squad.

I wanted to give the back-story on Amanda Waller early on. I knew that she was the most well known of all the Squad characters (except for maybe Deadshot) but I wasn’t sure that anyone would really know where she came from or how she got to be the person she was. Her ‘origin’ wasn’t changed at all from the original DC version. I thought it was perfect just the way it was.

This was it. After months of planning and research it was time to face the three men who would help decide the fate of her new favorite project. The man on the left was Wade Eiling. He has served in the U.S. army and achieved the rank of General. Eiling was the chief architect of the failed Atom Project in the 1980’s but went on to serve as chief military advisor to three presidents including the current chief of staff, Maxwell Lord. Amanda Waller didn’t know a lot about Eiling, but she knew his type. His was a type she often butted heads with. But when she was floating around the idea of the Suicide Squad in Washington, Eiling contacted her and informed her that he had the pull to take her proposal to the President. Amanda wasn’t too sure she could trust him, but he did have a history with Meta-humans and he was currently an advisor to the Secretary of Defense.

I really had no desire to use Wade Eiling originally since I think he was used as a ‘bad guy’ a little too much in the DC universe, but he was essential to what I was planning in the first story arc so I fit the bastard in.

And last but not least was the third man in the group of men sitting in front of her; President Maxwell Lord. She never liked Lord. He got under her skin. The fact that he had always been there in the shadows, seemingly trying to undermine everything she’d done since coming to Washington, didn’t escape her either. But Amanda Waller knew she would have to play it cool and focus on the facts if she was going to get him to go along with this.

"Mr. President, the U.S. has always been involved in this type of situation in one form or another for over one hundred and twenty years." she sat back in her chair and began her pitch. " In the late 1800's, prison officials realized that prisoners could be money makers for their facilities. Some were contracted out by private businesses that paid for the use of the inmates labor and they provided the materials while prison officials supervised the process. Prisons were paid by private industries according to the number and quality of goods manufactured. The prisoners were even thrown a “bone”, for lack of a better word, from time to time. That idea was so successful that some industries were entirely prison owned and operated, and goods were sold in the free market. Several prisoners were taken to a work site under armed guard and turned over to a private contractor who made them work. Some prisoners were used for maintenance of roads, highways, public parks and public and recreational buildings. Labor unions and the Great Depression effectively ended prison labor in the early part of the 20th century."

"Mrs. Waller. Amanda. I do appreciate the history lesson but is there a point here?" Lord said with a disinterested look on his face.

"Just a little background information so you can appreciate the situation we are in now" she replied.

"Well then, by all means, continue." He lifted his arm up to look at his watch.

"After that time, prison administrators were mandated by the federal government to focus on security and custody. Prisoner’s daily routines became monotonous and frustrating. Prisons became a terrible place to be." Eiling spoke up, interrupting her, "Imagine that." Without pausing, she continued, " Prisons then began to focus on treatments for offenders, which led to psychiatry and medicating the prisoners. Also, tests, psychological profiles, group therapy, behavior modification, shock therapy, and individual counseling were administered. This, plus rising crime rates, led to the overcrowding of prisons, which in turn led to more tax dollars being used to build more prisons. At the same time, prisoners began to demand basic rights and became more interested in conditions of prisons. All of which prompted the facilities to a move away from psychological treatment in prisons and to move towards programs designed to enhance offender's opportunities to become successful citizens outside of prisons. Even still, the crime rate continued to rise over the years, forcing the reinstatement of the death penalty in thirty-eight states and more severe sentences for career offenders. Along the way, the focus has been lost. The reason we need to punish offenders is retribution. It doesn’t matter if punishment deters or rehabilitates. We are losing the battle as the prison population grows at a rate of seven percent annually with the ratio of incarceration being four hundred and ten inmates for every one hundred thousand citizens. We need to get back to what works just on a larger scale, and making the prisoners work for their early parole"

Again looking back this appears to be a lot of dry information but I had a couple of goals when writing this issue. One of them was to use factual data (which it all is) to show that the Squad could be formed in the real world based on past incidents involving prisoners.