Who are the Suicide Squad
The Suicide Squad is DC’s disposable team: criminals handed deadly missions in exchange for shorter sentences, run by people who consider them expendable. It first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #25, cover-dated August 1959, by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru, though the version everyone knows came almost thirty years later. The roster is built to lose members, so the eras below track what the team became.
Task Force X (1959)
Roster: Rick Flag and a small non-powered military unit.
The original Suicide Squad was a war-and-adventure team: ordinary soldiers and specialists taking on monsters and menaces too strange for the regular army. It had the name and the idea of a high-risk mission unit, but none of the supervillain hook the brand is now known for.
Ostrander’s Squad (1987)
Roster: Amanda Waller running Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Bronze Tiger, the Enchantress, and a rotating cast of convicts.
John Ostrander’s relaunch is where the Suicide Squad became itself. He added Amanda Waller, a government handler with no powers and no patience, and staffed the team with imprisoned villains wearing bombs that would kill them if they ran. Members died regularly, which made the book genuinely tense, and the premise has anchored every adaptation since.
The modern era
Roster: shifting, but always built around Waller and a few marquee villains.
Later relaunches kept Ostrander’s formula and leaned on the names audiences know, especially after the character of Harley Quinn became a fixture of the team in print and on screen. The lineup turns over constantly; Waller and the collar-bomb leash stay.
Notable issues
- The Brave and the Bold #25 (1959): first appearance of the Suicide Squad (Task Force X).
- Suicide Squad #1 (1987): John Ostrander’s relaunch; the modern, Waller-led team.
For collectors
Two keys, two reasons. The Brave and the Bold #25 (1959) is the original first appearance and the scarcer book. Suicide Squad #1 (1987) is the first modern Squad and the more sought issue, because it is the version the films, games, and shows are based on.
