Today, we look at how the Suicide Squad was tasked with recruiting the villainous monster, Doomsday, during the Superman crossover, Our Worlds at War.
This is "Can't Cross Over," a feature where I look at instances when comic book writers had to adjust their stories to deal with crossovers.
IS AMANDA WALLER A VILLAIN?
One of the interesting things with "grey area" characters is that that grey area really depends on who is writing the character. For instance, what might be seen as "grey" For one writer might be seen as just flat out evil for another and thus, when they get the chance to write that character, they will be depicted as evil more than "grey." Another area that determines how a character is treated is whether they have their own series as, well, just naturally, if you have your own book, people will tend to defer to the way that the writer of that book depicts the character. If you're writing Character X as grey in their own series, it would be considered tacky of another writer to then write them as evil in another book (this is not a foolproof thing, though, of course).
Therefore, around 2000/2001, Amanda Waller was in a perfect position to get more of an evil take on her than a grey area one, as she had been without her own series for some time and so when Lex Luthor was elected President, Waller became a major part of his administration and she was not exactly depicted as working in a grey area. She was pretty much just a recurring bad guy at this point.
That brings us to the crossover series, Our World at War, where the villainous Imperiex was cutting a path through the universe on his way to destroy Earth. Imperiex was so powerful that he had these smaller versions of himself that worked as probes and those smaller Imperiex were almost too much for Superman to handle.
A NEW SUICIDE SQUAD IS FORMED
Therefore, in Adventures of Superman #593 (by Joe Casey, Mike Wieringo and Jose Marzan Jr.), Amanda Waller recruited a number of major heavyweight villains including Chemo, Shrapnel, Mongul and Plasmus working under the direction of Manchester Black (the head of the Authority substitute known as The Elite) to go on a special secret mission as a new Suicide Squad specifically to help even the odds against Imperiex. But how?
We learn that answer in the next issue, when Superman is notified that they had lost contact with the Suicide Squad and they need Superman to go check in on them. So Superman flies to the moon where he meets Manchester Black, who is on the way out (as he has successfully found a way to reprogram the alterations that the government made to his brain that prevented him from betraying them). He noted, though, that he did what they asked him to do. He also then noted that one of Superman's friends was secretly on the mission, as well (something that Waller revealed to Superman, as well, earlier in the issue) and we discover that Steel was on the mission and he, like the other members of the Squad, has been fatally wounded...
MISSION: RESCUE DOOMSDAY
We then discover the intent of the whole mission, which was to free the creature that had killed Superman years earlier, Doomsday! In Superman's last meeting with Doomsday (the miniseries, Superman: The Doomsday Wars), Superman had defeated Doomsday by leaving him trapped in four different Justice League teleporters, with no one teleporter having any more than 25% of his body, so that he could not escape, since his body was in a constant teleporter feedback loop and if anyone tried to free him by tampering with the teleporters, they would instantly send Doomsday to a location only Superman knew of (the teleporters all had enough battery power to hold Doomsday like this for hundreds of years).
Well, Steel was along to find a way around that failsafe and he did, in fact, free Doomsday from the feedback loop and Doomsday promptly killed the Squad members and wounded Steel fatally. However, Manchester Black was telling the truth, he HAD altered Doomsday's brain so that now the creature would fight on Superman's side against Imperiex.
DOOMSDAY AND SUPERMAN FIGHTING SIDE BY SIDE
Superman and Doomsday made quite the powerful team fighting side by side...
They were SO powerful that they drew in Imperiex Prime, who had to deal with them personally. Superman was shocked, though, when Imperiex Prime then destroyed Doomsday like he was nothing...
Imperiex then turned his energies on Superman, as well, and things would have been donesville for the Man of Steel had it not been for the intervention of Darkseid, who teleported Superman to Apokolips as Darkseid wanted to defeat Imperiex, as well, as Imperiex's ultimate plan was the destruction of the universe and Darkseid couldn't very well have that as he wants to RULE that same universe...
In addition, Darkseid helped basically bring Steel back to life through some Apokoliptian armor. Shrapnel really isn't someone who can really be KILLED, per se, as he is sort of just a collection of metal, but Plasmus' death in this story was just outright ignored by future stories (Chemo can't really be KILLED, exactly, either). Mongul seems like he gets killed and brought back every other week. Killing off Mongul in a crossover is sort of a DC tradition nowadays.
Luckily, the Luthor administration did not last all that long, so Amanda Waller was free to return to being more of a grey area villain in future storylines in the pages of Checkmate (and John Ostrander's brief return to the Suicide Squad for the Raise the Flag miniseries). I don't have a problem with more villainous takes on Waller, but I prefer to keep her grey, if I had my druthers.
Okay, folks, feel free to suggest ideas for a future Can't Crossover to brianc@cbr.com!