Suicide Squad (1987) #14-19

Suicide Squad #14-19

Originally released in 1988

Written by John Ostrander

Art by Luke McDonnell

Things start to get more politically-charged in these issues of Ostrander's run on Suicide Squad, though it doesn't start out that way.  In order to rescue the brother of one of the team's members, Nightshade, the Squad travels to a hellish dimension where said brother was trapped.

Unfortunately, he's been possessed by a spirit known as Incubus, who's the brother of the Enchantress spirit that's possessing June Moon.  Bronze Tiger serves as the field leader while Rick Flag is recovering from a fight with Batman, though his methods are unconventional.  When Boomerang refuses to come back on a mission, Bronze Tiger manages to get Boomerang to drink until he passes out - as a result, Boomerang's present for the mission, but he alternates between being passed out and hung over, so he's not much use.

The team manages to escape, but at the cost of the Enchantress spirit, leaving June completely powerless.  While escaping, they pass through another dimension where someone known as "Shade the Changing Man" is trapped.  Unable to return to his home dimension, seemingly as a result of Crisis on Infinite Earths, he goes back to Earth with the Squad and joins them.

Meanwhile, Amanda Waller is under pressure from a man named Tolliver, who wants her job.  Tolliver is trying to get the Squad to help with the election of a senator named Cray, and if they don't, he'll expose the team's existence to the world.  President Reagan, not wanting a black mark on his presidency, more or less forces Waller to do what Tolliver says, though Waller finds a way to delay the process.

Complicating matters is that a team called the Jihad, from one of the earlier adventures of the team, is attacking New York City out of revenge for their homelands being attacked by Americans or made worse by American foreign policy.  The team has very different methods for dealing with these terrorists; in some cases, they go for non-lethal methods, while Deadshot shoots his foe in the face.

Captain Boomerang is by far the least effective member of the team in these issues, between his hang-over in the first story and him accomplishing absolutely nothing in the Jihad story.  From the cover of issue 20, it looks like he'll play a larger role there, though it leaves one to wonder (aside from a lack of options) why someone like Waller would have someone like Captain Boomerang on the team.

Issue 19 focuses mainly on Amanda Waller and the sort of personnel conflicts and personal conflicts that she goes through on a regular basis.  It's a different tone for this book and helps to flesh her out as a character, along with hinting that she's found a way to deal with Tolliver or at least get him off of her back.

These issues were an interesting sign of things to come, as I'm curious to see what extent this series focuses on Amanda Waller's political maneuvering as it goes on, particularly as it nears the end of the Cold War in 1990.  There's still going to be superhero action, of course (one member of the team, the amnesiac woman who goes by "Duchess", is a Female Fury from Apokolips named Lashina, and Waller suspects that she's faking her amnesia for a darker purpose), but I could see this having a similar tone to the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier as it goes on.