Warning: contains spoilers for Future State: Suicide Squad #1!
Everyone in the U.S. Government fears Suicide Squad, hip of which is a one-way ticket to a Hell-on-Earth experience for villains that even the most sadistic freaks see as cruel and unusual punishment. Planting bombs inside villains' heads to ensure they obey orders? That's cold.
But a new version of Waller's Suicide Squad makes her earlier abominations look like Teen Titans Go!, as revealed in Future State: Suicide Squad #1 written by Robbie Thompson and Jeremy Adams with art by Fernando Pasarin and Javier Fernandez. Known as the Justice Squad, its not only don costumes that eerily resemble those of the Justice League but have been imbued with their powers. There's a Batman, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash and, of course, a Man of Steel spearheading this demented facsimile.
But the reprehensible aspect of this sinister troupe isn't wholly based on their resemblance to a well-respected organization of superheroes. Some of its actually view their facade as an attainable dream and believe that their endeavors will wipe away their respective villainous pasts so that they may one day become actual heroes. The most heart-wrenching tale comes from the group's Flash stand-in, aka Bolt. As she reveals this issue, outside forces beyond her control led her to a life of crime growing up; one that she later tried to remedy by staying on the straight and narrow. To her, ing the Justice Squad was her final hurdle before attaining forgiveness. But that was before she learned the team regularly kill their targets.
Waller views the team very differently, considering them villains who have shown they shouldn't be given the luxury of choice. In fact, when Clayface, disguised as Martian Hunter, refers to himself and his colleagues as heroes, she scoffs, saying, "Who the hell said any of you were heroes?" Their desire for that to be true, and Waller's disdain for the idea, is the ingredient that makes the founding of this new Suicide Squad so much more disgusting than the original.
With the original Suicide Squad, Waller had a single threat of death to keep her villainous victims in line. This time around, she can manipulate her charges through many different means, threatening their lives, reputations, and futures to force them to do what she wants the way she wants. Amanda Waller has never had such precise power over some of the mightiest people in the world - people who, for all they protest, secretly hope their service could make them heroes. The Suicide Squad has always been a deplorable idea, but this time, Waller has gone too far, and she's loving it.
