Amanda Waller (Prime Earth)

Amanda Waller is a U.S. Government agent renowned for her brutal methods and ruthless approach. She was director of the government agency A.R.G.U.S. but still maintains her leadership over Task Force X, otherwise known as the Suicide Squad.

History

Early Life

At some point, Amanda married Joseph Waller and they had a large family together. They originally had five children; Joe, Jr., Damita, the twins Martin and Jessie, and Coretta. Their lives were a financial struggle, but they were happy together. Amanda began working hard to put all of her other children through college, then she put herself through college and earned a political science degree.^[3] In her career, she campaigned on behalf of Gravenport, a politician who worked to undermine the social programs on which her family relied, compromising her own beliefs and straining her relationship with her husband.^[4]

The Waller family suffered incredible tragedy and violence: Waller's son Joe, Jr. was killed by gang members, and her daughter Damita was raped and murdered by a drug dealer known as "Candyman." When Candyman escaped justice due to a lack of evidence, Waller's husband confronted him publicly. The two men shot each other to death, and as Joseph Waller was killed in the commission of a crime, his family was denied the payout of his life insurance. Faced with the consequences of taking the law into one's own hands, and embittered by the adulation received by masked heroes such as Batman for the sort of vigilantism that had cost her so much, Waller developed an intense hatred of vigilantes. Waller acquired a copy of the police reports on her daughter's death, and learned that local politicians, including Councilman Marvin Collins, had taken money from criminals like Candyman in exchange for ignoring their activities.^[5]

Waller insinuated herself into Collins' campaign for congress, citing her support for his anti-vigilante platform while covertly falsifying embezzlement of his political funds. During this time, Waller leaned on her surviving children to provide the support for each other that she was too preoccupied to give them, building resentment within her family. Waller arranged and secured evidence of infidelity by Collins' chief opponent to bring down his campaign. When Collins refused to use the material, Waller revealed her knowledge of his association with Candyman and used the false embezzlement reports to blackmail him into cooperation, through which he was successfully elected to congress.^[5]

Following various revisions to her origin, it is likely this event was erased from history, as it no longer aligns with her current history.

New 52

Team 7

Working as an agent of the United States Government, Waller was tasked with infiltrating "the Resistance," a cult led by William J. Warick, to extract a woman named Kelly, the niece of someone of influence.^[7] After Superman's public debut facing Brainiac, government official John Lynch created the Majestic Project, wherein a task force would be administered drugs and put under genetic experiments hoping that the extreme situations they would constantly be put into would awake any latent superpower in them, creating a being capable of facing Superman. At this point, Amanda Waller was a NSA operative campaigning against the Kaizen Gamorra's Basilisk terrorist group alongside teammate Dean Higgins. Waller and Higings were recruited into John Lynch's "Team 7", tasked with the cover mission of finding tactics to counter aggressive metahumans, and securing related technologies and knowledge. Waller and Higgins shared a team with Dinah Lance, Kurt Lance, Alex Fairchild, Cole Cash, Slade Wilson, James Bronson, Summer Ramos^[8], Valentine Chan^[9] and Adeline Kane.^[10]

Team 7 faced off against Gamorran mercenaries and Eclipso^{[11][12][13][14]}, before Gamorra used seers to predict a Team 7 member would become like Superman. In response, he sent an evil robot, Spartan, who killed Ramos, Alex, and his daughter Caitlin^[15] before heading for the Team 7 member who would transform, Bronson, and merging with him to turn him into Majestic.^[16] As the process killed all of Bronson's loved ones, he flew towards Gamorra Island full of anger, but Gamorra counted on it and planned to mind-control Majestic. Team 7 invaded Gamorra Island with a new pilot, Steve Trevor, where the crisis activated Dinah and Kurt's metahuman abilities as well. Realizing Gamorra would become too dangerous if he fell under his control, Majestic flew to the edge of space and then back down against the sea, causing a wave that sank the Island.^[17] Despite this, Majestic became corrupted by Gamorra's magical items, so Team 7 combined their efforts to take him down. Waller was also forced to shoot her director, Lynch, in order to be able to escape.^[18] After this, Team 7 was shut down, and Waller retrieved Kurt's unconscious body for the government to experiment on, something she kept hidden from his wife Dinah. Feeling guilty, Waller let Dinah know in advance a squad was coming to silence her so she could escape.^[19]

During the Parademon invasion which led to the creation of the Justice League, Waller was present with Steve Trevor when they met Maxwell Lord for the first time, who tried to use his Checkmate organization to take over the operation and target every superhuman on the scene, hero and villain alike.^[20] Losing faith in the government, Waller wound up in Malaysia, spending her days playing pinball in a bar. However, she wound up getting recruited by a CIA team led by Lawrence Duren, who asked her to help them fight a nearby Basilisk operation. Waller agreed, but in the end, she alone walked away from the mission. This tragedy, coupled with her Team 7 experience and the anger of the Duren family, led her to pursue a radical plan—to recruit bad people to do bad things, so that good people would be safe.^[21]

Amanda learned there had existed a team called the Suicide Squad in the 1950s, a branch of Task Force X with the remit of stopping extraterrestrial threats.^[22] "X" had been preceded by every letter of the alphabet, including Task Force U, V and W.^[23] Taking control of the metahuman prison Belle Reve, Waller set out to create a new Task Force X, or Suicide Squad, using expendable prisoners to deal with Basilisk and the metahuman problem. She began profiling the super-criminal inmates, including Evelyn Crawford,^[21] also known as Starling, who Waller had befriend and surveil her one-time Team 7 compatriot Dinah Drake, the Black Canary.^[24]

Forming the Suicide Squad

Waller's first Suicide Squad was made up by Cyclotron, Doctor Polaris, Emerald Empress, Johnny Sorrow, Lobo and Rustam. They were tasked with defeating Dictator Young of the island nation of Jangsun, after which everyone on the Squad except for Lobo and Rustam rebelled and tried to take over Young's weaponry. Waller convinced Lobo to kill Cyclotron, whose volatile body served as a failsafe bomb and was the only reason Waller had sent him on the mission. The Squad survived, but Waller imprisoned them all to hid all traces of US intervention in Jangsun. After this disaster, she got the idea to plant bombs in her agents,^[25] thanks to which she was able to keep the Squad's presidential sanction. Concurrently with the Jangsun mission, Waller discovered indiscretions in the past of her daughter's fiancé, Dante Jiménez, and confronted him with them, advising him to break off the engagement ostensibly in the interest of Coretta's protection. While the younger Waller was later able to talk her mother down from her position, Amanda had Coretta swear to confront even unpleasant truths.^[26]

Waller and the Suicide Squad's field leader, Colonel Rick Flag, differed in their philosophy on the program: where he saw it as an opportunity for the criminals involved to redeem themselves, to Waller they were merely a means to an end.^[27] The Squad's existence was discovered by Batman, who entered Belle Reve in the guise of a convict and fought his way through Waller's forces to face her down in an attempt to intimidate her. In retaliation, Waller sought out his secret identity, violating civil liberties to match fingerprints left in his cell to those of possible candidates. At a surprise meeting with her now-pregnant daughter, organised by Coretta and Morris—the elder Waller's personal driver who she fired for his involvement—Amanda Waller was confronted with the lies she had told her family by her daughter, who demanded that she clean up her act before coming into contact with her grandchild. After Coretta gave birth to the child, Waller attempted to visit them, but was kept from Coretta's hospital room by her twin sons.^[28] Early in the program's development, Waller caught the thief Catwoman in the process of attempting to access her files. Waller allowed her to leave unharmed on the condition that she voluntarily join her team for one mission at a later date.^[29] In addition to the Suicide Squad, Waller commanded Christopher Smith, the Peacemaker, who she sent to Siberia to keep an alien weapon out of Russian hands despite Flag's protestations over his troubled mental state.^[30]

Those that she chose for her team were implanted with explosive devices to ensure compliance and put through her initiation process—a faked abduction to filter out any team members who would expose her under pressure. Those who made it through to the end were assigned to Task Force X, which was informally called the Suicide Squad. For their first mission, Waller tasked them with wiping out the sixty-thousand occupants of a Mississippi sports stadium^[31] to prevent the spread of a techno-organic nanovirus with which they were infected, and with retrieving a newborn whose immune system could be used to create a cure.^[32] Waller sent the Squad to a nearby small town for exfiltration, and after they turned over the baby and were supplemented with new members to replace their casualties,^[33] they were redeployed to recover the virus' creator, Doctor Elisa Visyak, from Basilisk. On this mission, team member Captain Boomerang seemingly betrayed the Squad and was taken into Basilisk's custody,^[34] though his supposed defection had in reality been orchestrated by Waller to insert an operative among the terrorists.^[35]

Back at Belle Reve, Squad member Harley Quinn freed herself and released the prison's inmates to cover her escape. Waller held out against the rioting inmates until the rest of the Suicide Squad regained control of the situation,^[36] and then sent them to retrieve Quinn from a Gotham City Police Department precinct, faking a supervillain attack to cover their activities.^[37] With the Squad and a fatally-wounded Harley Quinn back in her custody, Waller worked with Visyak, who had turned her back on her Basilisk allegiance, to resurrect her. Though she failed to convince Savant, a supposedly-failed Squad member who had been working as a plant on her behalf, to stay on as leader, Waller worked to manipulate and control the members of her team, dehydrating King Shark to reduce his intelligence^[38] and controlling Deadshot's access to his daughter.^[36] At the same time, she assigned Kurt Lance, formerly of Team 7, to keep tabs on the young superhero team the Teen Titans,^[39] and ultimately to take them into custody in the name of their own wellbeing.^[40]

Waller next sent the Squad after Mitchell Shelley, a metahuman able return from the dead with new abilities each time he did so. She failed to disclose the nature of Shelley's powers to her team,^[41] and their mission was further complicated by the intervention of the mercenary Body Doubles on behalf of a rival government agency also interested in him. However, Waller was able to lure Shelley to a Task Force X field operations center, where she secured a sample of his regenerating tissue before turning him loose.^[42] While Waller convinced Yo-Yo, a Suicide Squad member she had left for dead, to work with and learn from her rather than seek revenge, the Squad's next mission went sour when a captive Basilisk agent died before he could be interrogated, leading her to conclude that the terrorist organization had infiltrated an operative into the team.^[43] Back at Belle Reve, Waller's files were breached by Grifter, an associate of Warick and another Team 7 veteran, who was forcibly teleported into the prison. Waller set the Squad on him, and bound him in restraints she falsely claimed were resistant to her telekinetic abilities. Waller revealed Warick's mental instability and past as a cult leader before releasing Grifter^[7] and following him to a meeting with Warick, who committed suicide to escape her custody.^[44]

Tapping her own mole within Basilisk, Captain Boomerang, for the location of their compound,^[35] Waller sent the Squad, bolstered by new members, to assassinate its leader Regulus, only for one new operative—another Basilisk agent—to trigger her own implant, destroying the team's transport and breaking their line of communication to Waller. Believing her team to have been wiped out, Waller was ready to shutter Task Force X, but was instead ordered by her superiors to ferret out any further Basilisk agents and begin again with a new roster.^[45] Returning, despondent, to her home in Lafayette, Louisiana, Amanda Waller found the Suicide Squad's traitor, Black Spider, awaiting her with her grandmother held as a hostage. Together, however, the Wallers overpowered him and fell back to their saferoom, from which they were able to subdue Black Spider and his Basilisk allies, though Waller's grandmother was killed in the process.^[46] Around the same time, Waller tasked Belle Reve inmate David Graves, a novelist-turned-supervillain, with the development of anti-Justice League contingency measures.^[47] She also learned of Simon Baz, a new member of the Green Lantern Corps and fugitive suspected terrorist, from Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Franklin Fed, and reported on Baz to United States President Barack Obama,^[48] who appointed Waller to take Colonel Steve Trevor's place as A.R.G.U.S. liaison to the Justice League when he was removed from the position.^[49]

Meanwhile, the Squad had connected with Boomerang and escaped from Basilisk, though Deadshot was killed in the process. Waller, with Quinn and Boomerang, attended a military funeral held for him, which was interrupted by the Joker, who, via Joker Venom, rendered unconscious all attendees save his one-time partner Harley Quinn, with whom he fled. After recuperating at the Belle Reve infirmary, Waller elected not to announce Quinn's escape and risk exposing the Squad, or to detonate her explosive implant:^[50] instead she watched her interactions with the Joker through contact lens cameras she had inserted into Quinn's eyes, anticipating that the Joker would come for her. Waller shared the footage with Yo-yo, who she hoped to recruit as an informant on the Suicide Squad and in Belle Reve, and granted release to Captain Boomerang for his undercover work within Basilisk, discovering at the same time that Quinn had escaped the Joker and voluntarily returned to her custody.^[51] Waller also attempted to recruit the undersea treasure hunter Black Manta, incarcerated at Belle Reve, onto the Suicide Squad, but her offer was declined.^[52]

Thanks to Doctor Visyak's work with Mitch Shelley's tissues,^[50] Deadshot was resurrected, though Waller claimed that he had merely been dealt a non-fatal wound. For their next mission, she sent the Squad against the Chinese criminal organization the Chang Gang^[53] to recover a captive Kurt Lance.^[54] In response to an attack by Atlantis on the surface world,^[55] Waller assembled a new Justice League under the control of the United States Government through A.R.G.U.S., led by Steve Trevor and composed of individuals chosen to counter the membership of the original League.^[56] When the Black Canary inadvertently destroyed a Gotham City power station, Waller was contacted by Starling to call off a government strike team sent to investigate,^[57] and she also met with Atlantean Justice Leaguer Aquaman, discussing the public perception of his home, all the while in contact with the Amnesty Bay Police Department as the prepared to arrest his partner Mera.^[58] Meanwhile, the Squad discovered that Basilisk was responsible for the abduction of Lance, and Regulus fled with him as his prisoner, driving Waller out into the field.^[54] She disabled the team's neck bombs, recruiting them for a personal mission to rescue Lance, and followed reports of Regulus' supposed location to the sewers of Gotham City, where she was knocked unconscious by the indigent Swamp Angels. Though Deadshot attempted to abandon the mission and Waller, the Unknown Soldier, another of her operatives, arrived to take control and ensure that Waller was safely retrieved.^[59]

Waller successfully lobbied against against pushback in the US Government for approval of her Justice League of America. Prior to their first mission, to flush out and engage the Secret Society of supervillains, they attended a press conference with the President,^[60] and Waller sent League member Vibe, her counter for the Flash, to test his abilities against Kid Flash of the Teen Titans. Though Waller gained valuable insight into Vibe's powers, he defied her orders and inadvertently freed an interdimensional captive from A.R.G.U.S. holding facility the Circus,^[61] threatening to incite war with the people of her home dimension.^[62] Investigating their one-time tail Kurt Lance, Titans leader Red Robin led his team in an assault on Belle Reve. While they fought with the Suicide Squad, he came to an arrangement with Waller, who allowed the Titans to leave freely.^[63] Waller sent JLA member Stargirl on a press junket while the rest of the team carried out their mission, to the latter's consternation. When the League returned, Colonel Trevor briefed her on their ambush by Justice League robots, the handiwork of the presumed-dead Professor Ivo, and proposed that criminal team member Catwoman be infiltrated into the Secret Society.^[64]

In addition to the Unknown Soldier, Waller also recruited serial killer James Gordon, Jr. to profile the rest of the Suicide Squad,^[65] and launched a search for the missing living weapon OMAC. However, Waller's one-time teammate John Lynch orchestrated a cyberattack on Belle Reve, which Harley Quinn exploited to hold Waller hostage and negotiate new terms for the Squad: their neck bombs would be removed and, after a further year of service, all team members—Quinn, Lawton, King Shark, and new recruit the Cheetah—would be released to serve as informants on the outside.^[66] When Vibe went rogue and allied himself with the circus fugitive, Waller deployed the Suicide Squad to return them to A.R.G.U.S. custody,^[62] and at the same time, infiltrated Agent Rhonda Pineda, equipped with a size-changing belt as the hero the Atom, into the Justice League as a mole for the JLA.^[67] Waller called in A.R.G.U.S. scientist Doctor Arthur Light to trace a Secret Society communicator to their mobile base, and sent the JLA to its current location in Minnesota's Superior National Forest. Waller found that Stargirl had skipped out on her press obligations to join her teammates on their mission,^[68] and when they returned—with A.R.G.U.S. agent David Clinton and several Society members, though not its leader, in tow—she used an empty threat of disbanding the JLA to test and reinforce Steve Trevor's commitment to the team. She observed Doctor Light, charged with light energy after an accident with the communicator, and was presented with an image reconstructed from wreckage at the Society headquarters: Pandora's Box, familiar to her from her time with Team 7.^[69] During a Suicide Squad mission to thwart an anarchoterrorist mass hypnosis plot in Las Vegas, Waller was informed by Belle Reve's science team that Mitch Shelley's resurrective serum was unstable, and could eventually prove fatal to its users—including Waller herself.^[70]

Tracing the Belle Reve hack and Vegas hypnosis to Lynch, Waller deduced that he was luring her into a confrontation which would serve as a demonstration of his superteam-for-hire to dictator Paris Mingowee III. In Mingowee's nation, the Squad neutralized Lynch's team while the Unknown Soldier infiltrated the dictator's bunker and assassinated him, and once her forces were clear for extraction, Waller called in a drone strike and killed her former teammate.^[71]

When diplomat Dr. Amadou Mambety was abducted by terrorists in Africa, Waller was lured into the field with Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark by her one-time teammate Dinah Drake, the wife of Kurt Lance who had been reunited with her presumed-dead husband. While Drake confronted Waller over keeping Lance's survival from her, the Squad did battle with Drake's team, the Birds of Prey, until they were forced to cooperate to protect Mambety from the terrorists. Resolving their conflict, Waller turned Mambety over to Drake and returned to the United States, where Lance willingly left his wife's side to work with Waller for the government.^[72]

Trinity War

Waller brought the newly-empowered Doctor Light onto the JLA and sent her team into the hostile nation of Kahndaq after the Justice League, aiming to retrieve the rival League and to cast them as irresponsible and unaccountable in the face of international tensions. While there, however, Light lost control of his powers in contact with the solar-powered Superman, and was seemingly killed by his heat vision.^[73] Following a clash between the Leagues, Superman surrendered himself into A.R.G.U.S. custody, while Waller seized on his loss of control as an opportunity to improve the JLA's standing and enlisted Firestorm, a matter-manipulating Justice League rookie, to synthesize Kryptonite to weaken and control the imprisoned Superman.^[74] However, when Superman was freed by the Question, a faceless investigator who blamed the mentalist villain Doctor Psycho for the hero's supposed crime, the gathered heroes—including members of Waller's own JLA—sided against her, and left with him in pursuit of Psycho.^[75] After capturing Psycho, the Atom admitted she was a Mole for Waller and Superman and his team returned to question her. Just as Superman and company confronted Waller at A.R.G.U.S., the Secret Society detonated a device on Dr. Light's corpse, and the resulting explosion knocked everyone back.^[76] Everyone survived only thanks to the efforts of Element Woman, whose quick thinking encased them all in hard metals. The team turned on Amanda, who professed her innocence, but when Firestorm admitted that she had had him create Kryptonite, the heroes' resolve was strengthened. Angrily, Waller admitedt that she had asked him to make the deadly material, but their focuses should lie with finding survivors, not infighting. Still sick, Superman agrees, though nobody believes Waller's claims.^[77]

Forever Evil

Following this, the Crime Syndicate invaded Earth. Waller first met them while she was attempting to recruit Black Manta into the Suicide Squad. He was reluctant because he knew that it was never just one mission with Task Force X; there was always another one coming. To sweeten the deal, she asked what he wanted in exchange for joining. Sternly, he responded that all he wanted was the death of Aquaman. The negotiation was interrupted, though, by an explosion. Two super-powered criminalss, Deathstorm and Power Ring, were on a mission to break the inmates free from several more prisons after this one.^[78]

Following the takeover of the Crime Syndicate, control of Belle Reve was placed in the hands of its inmates led by the Thinker, who trapped Waller within the prison with an explosive collar. Aided by Gordon, Waller continued to run the Squad clandestinely, recruiting the freed Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and Captain Boomerang to retrieve the living weapon OMAC from a facility in the Rocky Mountains.^[79] At the same time, however, the Thinker impersonated Waller to recruit a team of heroes—Power Girl, Steel, Warrant, and leader the Unknown Soldier—and sent them to retrieve the weapon for the Syndicate. After a brief conflict, the two teams uncovered the ruse, only to find that Quinn had stolen the OMAC for the Thinker. Once activated, OMAC brought down the mountain in which he had been held, trapping his pursuers before leaving for Belle Reve with Quinn.^[80]

At the prison, Waller gained King Shark's allegiance by freeing his father, the Hawaiian deity Kamo, and Gordon fitted the traitorous Quinn with an explosive collar, pitting them against the Thinker, who had transferred his mind into the powerful body of OMAC.^[81] Freeing themselves from the rubble,^[82] Deadshot, Boomerang, and the heroes joined the battle, while Waller, her enemy distracted, prepared to send him through an extradimensional portal concealed under Belle Reve. However, she was contacted through the prison computer by Kevin Kho, the original mind within OMAC, who sought to regain control of his body. To buy time, Waller had Deadshot shoot his teammates and himself with "magic bullets" granting enhanced strength and speed,^[83] and as a back-up plan, sent OMAC through the prison's floor to the dimensional gate, through which the Shark fell in a failed attempt to take OMAC down with him. Struggling with the Thinker, Kho took control of the OMAC just as Boomerang knocked him through the open portal. With Belle Reve back in her hands, Waller revealed that the "magic bullets" had contained new nano-bombs, reasserting her control over the Suicide Squad.^[84]

New Suicide Squad

In the wake of the Crime Syndicate's invasion, Amanda Waller was publicly blamed for the US government's lack of preparation, though she maintained her direction of the Suicide Squad—with increased oversight, an international mandate, and a renewed emphasis on covert operations—from a rebuilt Belle Reve, an underground detention facility disguised from above as a US Postal Service distribution center.^[85] At the new Belle Reve, active Squad members were held in A-block, and granted greater freedom than the general population of D-block.^[86] Waller was made subordinate to former Treasury agent Vic Sage, who recruited non-inmates Deathstroke and the Joker's Daughter to join Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and Black Manta for an investigation of a secret Russian project in Moscow. Waller chafed with Sage, as did Deadshot and Quinn with their seemingly redundant new teammates,^[87] and the mission collapsed when the Squad came under attack by their target, giant robots called "Rocket Reds." The mercenary Deathstroke joined the Russians when promised higher pay,^[88] while Deadshot was severely injured and captured, and the Joker's Daughter was beaten unconscious by Quinn.^[89] She and Black Manta freed Deadshot, who shot Deathstroke, and returned with their injured teammates to Belle Reve, where Waller was able to secure a degree of autonomy to Sage's consternation.^[90]

With Deathstroke and the Joker's Daughter removed from the roster and Deadshot in recovery, Waller added Captain Boomerang, the speedster Reverse-Flash, and a trio of Man-Bat Commandos to the Squad for their next mission, the destruction of a Chinese metahuman development facility. Quinn alerted the facility's subjects,^[91] and though they succeeded in destroying it—at the cost of the lives of two Man-Bats and the knee of the Reverse-Flash—the team was pursued by the program's sole surviving superhuman^[92] and his military handlers. The Chinese metahuman defeated the final Man-Bat, whose bomb Waller detonating in a mercy killing, but broke from his orders,^[93] saving Harley Quinn and coming under attack from his erstwhile allies while the Squad escaped to their extraction point.^[94] Waller tasked the Squad with searching for the location of hidden Rocket Reds, and in Ukraine, it came under attack from one of the robots, which Boomerang brought down with a stolen tank.^[95] Later, Waller sent the Squad to Smallville, Kansas to detain the fugitive Superman, but they were handily defeated by him and Wonder Woman.^[96]

Afterwards, Waller tasked the Squad with infiltrating a hardline faction of the League of Assassins to investigate their supply of supervillain-derived weaponry,^[97] a mission that costed the Reverse-Flash's life.^[98] When Deathstroke, in search of his daughter Rose Wilson, breached Belle Reve's walls and disabled its defenses via electro-magnetic pulse, the Squad's members joined their fellow inmates in rioting. While Deadshot and Black Manta fought against Deathstroke for his prior betrayal, Harley Quinn claimed to know his daughter's whereabouts in a bid to have him kill Amanda Waller.^[99]

Waller was forced by Sage into the role of a field agent, joining the Squad for a mission investigating superpower-granting drugs in Rio de Janeiro which she reoriented from a simple raid to an undercover operation. When their ruse was exposed, Waller killed the drug's distributor,^[100] and discovered that one company, the Calvary Corporation, was responsible through shell companies for many of their prior targets, and employed Vic Sage. She went rogue, breaking communication with Belle Reve and disabling the Squad's explosive implants, while claiming that they had been linked to her own life to secure their cooperation. Promising them release at the mission's conclusion,^[101] she led the Squad to the Calvary Building in Dallas, Texas, where she interrogated Calvary CEO Miss Pesta, who readily volunteered that the Rocket Reds, Chinese metahumans, and Lazarus pit refinery had been part of a now-abandoned plan to created a Calvary-controlled team of superhumans, and that Sage planned to destroy Task Force X on their behalf by leaking the Squad's existence through Black Manta. Claiming that Waler—and the United States of America—were powerless in the face of corporate interests, Pesta offered Waller evidence that would pin the scheme entirely on Sage.^[102]

Returning to Belle Reve with backup from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Waller and the Squad caught Sage and Manta as they attempted to flee. Manta, however, was able to outfight the Squad and was kept from killing Waller only by a bullet to the wrist from Deadshot. Reneging on her offer of freedom, Waller had the Squad members reincarcerated at Belle Reve, over which she once again had full control, while Deadshot asserted that she was no more able to leave the Squad than they were.^[103]

Later, Waller began working with Henry Bendix to complete the Unified, a military killer fueled by Kryptonian DNA and a fight computer like the one used by the Midnighter. Waller sent Deadshot into a Spyral black site in Boston to steal something called the Perdition Pistol,^[104] prompting Spyral to send the Midnighter to retrieve it from an orbital vault.^[105] However, Midnighter destroyed the gun, defying his orders. Later, Waller sent the Squad to capture Midnighter and take him to her.^[106] Waller tried to torture him for information about Spyral's counter-intelligence, but Midnighter counted with tiny bursts of super speed, so he vibrated the chair he'd been chained to every time Amanda blinked. Midnighter escaped from the facility^[107] and stole a ship. All Suicide Squad tech could be tracked, so he headed towards Bendix and the Squad protecting him. To reach Bendix, Midnighter used help from Apollo to get past the Squad. Meanwhile, Bendix obtained the Kryptonite DNA he needed. Amanda explained she was only helping him because they came up in the same house: him on Team One, and her on Team Seven. The Suicide Squad bombed Midnighter's apartment, shut down his teleporting doors technology and stole it for their own uses. While Spyral and the Squad engaged in war, at a Team One Safehouse, The Unified was activated and sent to attack the country of Modora for having invaded American soil a short time ago. Waller was on board until Bendix made it a public operation where civilians were in danger too; he wanted to spread fear.^[108] As Midnighter, Apollo and Spyral fought the Squad, Amanda ordered Bendix to stop, but he refused, explaining he planned to kill the entire population of Modora, so Amanda knocked him out. Amanda ordered her troops to stop, but they were made up of Multiplex clones, and they hated Midnighter too much to stop. As Bendix escaped through a door, Apollo and Midnighter killed the Unified.^[109]

Waller reunited with Lynch when he arrived asking for help. While trying to retrieve an undercover agent who had been made from Anatoly Gregori's regime, agent Walter Schmidt had rendered himself catatonic to avoid capture. Waller sent her Squad to take care of the undercover agent, and set out to try to heal Schmidt herself. Using a calming hormone and smooth-talking, she managed to wake up Schmidt, but he bit Waller and infected her with his psychic drug, causing her to suffer hallucinations in a catatonic state.^[110] In her psychic plane, she communicated with Schmidt, who showed her visions of her dead relatives and agents. Eventually, Amanda faced the side of herself that couldn't move past her tragedies, and she killed her, claiming she had moved on from pretending she was perfect and that she could admit she had made mistakes and wasn't always in control. Afterwards, she was able to wake up from the psychic coma and her Squad returned alive thanks to the training Waller had given them and hadn't been able to give to the agents she lost.^[111]

Later, Waller sent Deadshot to kill Guillermo "Che" LaPaz, a cartel member living in South America. After Lawton was unable to find him, Waller assigned Will Evans with Deadshot and directed them to find Guillermo's daughter. ^[112] However, Deadshot went off-mission to go see his father pass away, so Waller sent the Squad after him.^[113] All but Harley Quinn were incapacitated, but she convinced Lawton to come out with her for his daughter's sake. Outside, however, he was shot immediately by Will Evans and taken to Waller's institute to heal. As he lay in bed, recovering, Waller reintroduced Evans as the man whose backstory Lawton had stolen, and also as the new Deadshot.^[114] Waller sent the new Deadshot and the Suicide Squad to infiltrate a Red Marketplace, a convention of crime, to assassinate the cartel leader. One of Waller's crew, Olivia, commanded the mission from an escape helicopter, but Will went awry once the kill command was given - he ruthlessly killed their marks. Waller told him that she wanted them alive and ordered the other members of the Squad to stop him; Will shot El Diablo, became more erratic and deviated from the mission. Olivia conferenced with Waller and went to detonate his neck bomb, but Waller revealed that he had no implant because he volunteered to spite Lawton. Will shot Olivia, and caused the helicopter to crash and burn. The Squad returned to Belle Reve, but when Waller went to retrieve Lawton to track down Will, she found his room was emptied.^[115] Waller reviewed the tapes and they discovered that Lawton had used the cutlery delivered with his food to fashion a scalpel, leading him to surgically removing the implant in his cell. With it removed, he blew the doors open and stole the guard's armour - Waller had walked straight past him.^[116] Waller found Lawton in his daughter's orphanage, where she'd just been kidnapped by Will. Waller allowed Lawton to hunt his rival down, which he did, killing Will.^[117]

Waller sent the Squad on a mission in South America, where they faced off against an army of soldiers. Soon, the troops all retreated from the fight as another army of metahumans emerged. The Squad met their match and retreated just as a metahuman prepared to explode. The Squad managed to escape, but realized that they had left behind Boomerang, though they rationalized that Waller would not want them to return.^[118] In Illinois, the Squad fought off hoards of zombies when Rick Flag received a message from Waller telling him that the Squad's next mission was to retrieve Boomerang, which they do.^[119]

Waller later drugged Killer Croc and had him transported to his next mission, to find and shut down a terrorist operation. The land was overgrown and wild and Waylon soon found the local fauna was massively oversized. Before him, in a valley, were giant apes, dinosaurs and other various creatures. Soon, a giant falcon swooped in to pick up Croc, who knocked the bird to the floor in the centre of the giant monster's circle. Waller mocked Waylon as he fought the beasts away, though he managed to escape and found an electrical cable. He concluded that the "weapons" would not be able to sustain themselves alone. He followed the cable to a metal hatch, and in entering, lost all connection to Waller, who was irate.^[120] Once he'd freed the weaponized animals from the scientist controlling them, Killer Croc slaughtered them. Eventually, Waller arrived on the scene and tried to stop Killer Croc. She couldn't do anything, however, and Killer Croc fled.^[121]

Not long after, Waller dispatched Katana to stop King Cobra in Markovia.^[112] After Katana's overwhelmed, Waller sends the rest of the Squad as backup,^[113] with the secret mission to steal Katana's sword, Soultaker. The team was able to push back Kobra's forces, ultimately confronting him at a volcano base.^[114] Kobra killed Battleaxe, forcing the Squad to retreat.^[115] As the Prince of Markovia led a tank-assault onto Kobra's air-ship, the Squad used the chance to strike, finding a girl had been experimented on by Kobra and had gained powers after having been fused to an alien being.^[116] King Kobra escaped and the Squad left in one of the pods, while Katana took the girl elsewhere.^[117]

Waller sent El Diablo on a mission, where she asked him to burn down a church, but he felt conflicted over it. Waller visited him in his cell and refused to let him free, calling him a risk, but offered to let him run a new, gang-oriented, Task Force Y. Chato spit in her face. In retribution, she decided to show him the power of her new team - by letting them beat him senseless. During the beat-down, a representative of Checkmate arrived and demanded that he take El Diablo to join them. He beat down the prospective Task Force Y and left with Chato, where he hired him to work for Checkmate.^[122] After several weeks, Waller sent Parasite to take down Diablo, overpowered him and entered his memories. Upon reviewing Checkmate's training, Waller tried to convince El Diablo that he had been manipulated by them too, but the intervention of the mysterious Lazarus Lane and Azucar helped El Diablo escape yet again.^[123] Waller was eventually able to find El Diablo on the way to Texas, where she sicced Task Force Y on him.^[121] Their fight was interrupted by the appearance of the Mexican superteam Justicia, who became a common enemy until Deadshot showed up and shot El Diablo dead.^[110] Chato, however, came back to life after making a deal with Fallen Angel Chutriel which took over his body for a brief moment. Seeing he couldn't die, Deadshot shot Chato unconscious and took him to Waller. She asked Chato if he wanted to be part of the Squad again, but this time she included a priest who would be present in case El Diablo's demonic side took over again. This time, El Diablo agreed.^[111]

When Harley Quinn was contacted by Horus International, a human rights organization ostensibly seeking to liberate the Suicide Squad members, they faked their deaths and were ferried by Horus head Adam Reed to Schloss Blutstein, a castle in Germany where their explosive implants could be removed. Agreeing to join Horus' pursuit of justice, both for altruistic reasons and to strike against Amanda Waller, the Squad struck up a camaraderie with the Mercs, admirers of their work, only to find that they had been betrayed: Reed was in reality a member of the murderous cult the Fist of Cain, and both they and the Mercs had been lured there to die.^[124] Back in the United States, the survival and location of the Squad was leaked to Amanda Waller, who forcibly recruited Boomerang and Dorian Ashemore—a British Intelligence agent who was in reality the supervillain the Hunky Punk—to recover her team^[125] and save face for their loss, unwittingly springing a trap baited for her by Reed. While leader of the mercs Deathtrap and the Squad, working together, fared well against the Fist of Cain, they discovered that Rose Tattoo, the deadly Spirit of Murder, had been drawn to them by the bloodshed. When the Hunky Punk came to their aid, he was quickly slain by her, just as Waller was incapacitated by Reed,^[126] who planned to use her death to claim leadership of the cult. He seemingly goaded Deathtrap into shooting Deadshot, though unbeknownst to Reed the shot was intentionally non-lethal, before turning on and mortally wounding the Merc. With Deadshot and Deathtrap breaking his control of the situation, Reed attempted to detonate the Squad's explosive implants, only to lose his hand to one of Harkness' boomerangs. With Rose Tattoo forced back to her own realm by El Diablo's flames—with El Diablo himself in tow—the Squad made their escape, leaving Deathtrap to wipe out the remains of the Fist of Cain with a gun made from the castle itself.^[127]

DC Rebirth

While under threat of dissolution by US president Barack Obama, Waller deployed the Suicide Squad to Mongolia and tasked them with retrieving geneticist Mark Ljungberg from the terrorist organization the Dogra War. Ljungberg's creation, the metagene bomb, had been used to grant the terrorists superpowers, forcing the overwhelmed Squad to kill the geneticist to recover the bomb and keep him out of the Dogra War's hands. After triggering the weapon once again and removing the enemy's powers, the Squad was extracted by Colonel Rick Flag, now a disgraced Navy SEAL recruited to lend the team legitimacy and accountability as its field leader.^[128]

Waller sent the Squad on a covert mission to retrieve former US Secretary of Defense and Black Mountain Security head George Foster Carmody, abducted by the vigilante group Strikeforce Europa to be prosecuted for war crimes at the Hague. The Squad withdrew once their plan was unveiled, save Mad Dog, left for dead by Captain Boomerang, whose explosive implant was detonated by Waller to conceal their involvement. The Squad fled by boat to England, pursuit impeded by a fire set by El Diablo and a storm over the English Channel, and from there flew to the United States. With Carmody back on American soil and an international incident defused, Waller executed him for his crimes.^[129]

When Maxwell Lord attacked one of Waller's prison transfers trains, she imprisoned and interrogated him. During his interrogation, Lord managed to use his mental powers to force Waller to tell him the location of The Catacombs Superhuman Prison in Death Valley, California, where Waller kept her original Suicide Squad members prisoner. Lord then used his powers to manipulate his way out of Waller's compound.^[130] Lord freed the first Suicide Squad from their cells and convinced them to work for him in his plan to murder Waller. Lord and his new team infiltrated and slaughtered an island of shamans sworn to protect world-breaking secrets, revealing the location of the weapon he would use to fight the Justice League - the Heart of Darkness.^[131] Upon clashing with both the Justice League and the Suicide Squad, Lord revealed the artifact that he had stolen and unleashed it, giving him all the power of its entity Eclipso. Lord used his new power to eclipse the Justice League under his command.^[132] Lord used the mind-controlled Justice League to dominate the US capitol and moved into the White House, contemplating his next move. Lord had Superman bring Amanda Waller to him so she could he could brag about his victory, but Waller forced Lord to lose control of the Heart of Darkness and become completely possessed by the spirit of Eclipso.^[133] Killer Frost managed to purge Eclipso's essence from Lord's body, finally ending the conflict, and the madman was taken into Waller's custody. Lord later woke up inside a power-dampening jail cell and learned that his entire plan had been manipulated by Waller from the start. Every move he made was calculated by Waller ahead of time, even revealing the location of the first Suicide Squad, so that Waller's Squad would gain a better reputation with the Justice League. Lord, furious, was kept under Waller's control as she invited him to join a new Suicide Squad: Task Force XI.^[134]

Task Force XI was made up of most powerful telepathic beings, and Waller activated it to extract information from Brainiac after he abducted Earth's heroes, not knowing that he was trying to save the universe from the Omega Titans. The resulting strain killed the world collector as he tried to fight back.^[135]

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Infinite Frontier

When King Shark and Defacer broke into Belle Reve, Waller agreed to give Defacer a pardon in return for King Shark's return to the Squad.^[136] Waller later sent the Squad on a protection detail on Santiago Gallo, son of a Corto Maltesian general and US collaborator, but it turned out that Gallo was in fact a demonic sorcerer with plans to plunge the world into eternal darkness, so Weasel devoured him, saving the world at the cost of their mission.^[137] Waller returned from a vacation to find Superman in Belle Reve, claiming that a prison break by King Shark had been an urgent, unauthorized mission for the Justice League.^[138]

Operating under her own initiative without government sanction, Waller conceived of a plan to create her own Justice League and abandon her own Earth to invade another.^[27] When Rick Flag objected and attempted to interfere, Waller detained him and replaced him with "Superboy"^[139]—in reality a clone known as Match conditioned to believe he was Connor Kent.^[27] Waller also involved herself in Task Force Z, a team of undead supervillains resurrected with Lazarus Resin and led by Harvey Dent, providing the program with Clifford DeVoe, whose brain scans would allow the corpses of the Task Force to assume their former identities.^[140]

Waller sent the Squad into Arkham Asylum to recover the Talon William Cobb. However, Bolt was killed by the seemingly insane Cobb, and Film Freak and Shrike fell victim to a Joker gas attack,^[139] leading Peacemaker to call in reinforcements: "Superboy," with the super-strong Culebra, vampiric Nocturna, telepathic Mindwarp, and portal-creating Exit. Though the Squad was delayed by "Superboy's" desire to save the asylum staff and lost Mindwarp and Exit to the gas, the survivors were able to return to Belle Reve with Talon through a portal created before the teleporter's death.^[141]

Joined by Talon, the phytokinetic Branch, and new team teleporter Keymaster, Waller next tasked the Suicide Squad with capturing a speedster student of Titans Academy, Bolt, while she was away from the safety of Titans Tower, but the attempted escape and subsequent death of Keymaster, with "Superboy's" opposition to the mission, allowed her to escape. Rather than return empty handed,^[142] the Squad infiltrated the tower with the aid of Red X, a member of the academy whom Waller saw as a potential recruit. Drawn to mementoes of Conner Kent's history with the Titans, "Superboy" set off the academy's alarms before the team could escape with Bolt in tow. Set upon by the students and betrayed by Red X, the Squad abandoned Bolt and were extracted by Warp, another teleporter, taking their would-be ally captive instead.^[143] While Peacemaker fomented dissent against Amanda Waller within the Suicide Squad, Red X was able to trigger a prison break in Belle Reve and escaped in the chaos. At the same time, the imprisoned Rick Flag was freed^[144] by Talon,^[27] whose insanity was merely an act.^[144] Waller deployed a pair of Task Force X operatives to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis to investigate the Genesis Fragment, an alien power source. Breaking from their orders, they attempted to steal the fragment only to be caught by Atlantean forces, creating an international incident between the kingdom and the United States.^[145]

Waller sent Bloodsport to collect assets and intelligence from alternate Earths, but he was captured by Ultraman of the Crime Syndicate while hunting Black Siren on Earth-3, a world Waller deemed to be amenable to her control. To rescue him, the Suicide Squad—now equipped with a mechanical teleporter—captured the metahuman criminal Night Terror and used her vibration-based abilities to travel to Earth-3. While the Squad recovered Bloodsport and Black Siren, "Superboy" engaged Ultraman, only to be destabilized by his anger in battle, forcing Waller to divert the team to a Russian facility.^[146] There, they were confronted by the genuine Superboy, who had learned of the Squad's impostor from the Titans and was attacked by Match, who discovered his true nature as his body and speech broke down. With her machinations uncovered, Waller broke contact with the Squad to evacuate Belle Reve, leaving the team to venture the facility, a cloning laboratory formerly operated by Match's creators the Agenda, where they discovered further Superboy clones and the chemical used to preserve their clone's false identity. With the Justice League en route and Checkmate at the abandoned Belle Reve, the Squad was teleported by Waller to the remote Task Force X Island, their new headquarters as fugitives.^[27]

While the rest of the Suicide Squad was sent to Earth-3, Waller gave Peacemaker command of a splinter Squad, simultaneously testing his loyalties and tasking him with the capture of the Swamp Thing.^[146] Releasing a Prescot Industries bio-agent in India's Kaziranga Forest to draw their target's attention, the new members—Nightmare Nurse, Heat Wave, Parasite, and Chemo—were each defeated in turn, leaving Peacemaker alone against their quarry. Questioning his opponent's motivations, the Swamp Thing removed Waller's explosives from Peacemaker's body and freed him from her control.^[147]

The Suicide Squad was joined by Ambush Bug and given simulated training for a mission to Hell, to which they were teleported to retrieve a sample of the shield protecting the Rock of Eternity, sought by Waller to defend Earth-3. There, they were attacked by the Hell Squad, a group of deceased Suicide Squad members gathered by Waller in an initiative to put undead revived via Lazarus Resin into her service, while Ambush Bug secured their objective. Though Culebra was killed in action, her spirit immediately appeared in Hell, and Waller deployed Major Force, armed with a device capable of containing the spirits of the fallen Squad members. With the spirits subdued and target secured, Waller recalled the Squad and resurrected Culebra for their next mission.^[148]

Aboard a Kryptonian spaceship from an alternate Earth, the Suicide Squad traveled to a Green Lantern Corps prison, or Sciencell, on the planet Oa to rescue a prisoner dubbed "Yorick" by Ambush Bug, who modified their ship^[149] to operate under his remote control. Though the Squad was imprisoned in a Sciencell by Green Lantern Sojourner Mullein, Major Force had "Yorick" summon the ship to free them, while Culebra, dead again without further Lazarus Resin, freed fellow prisoner Black Hand while in her intangible spirit form.^[150]

Tying up loose ends, Waller withdrew her support for Task Force Z and sent a Squad composed of Copperhead, Madame Crow, Solomon Grundy, KGBeast, and Victor Zsasz to seize the Lazarus Resin supply, destroy the facility in which it was produced, and recover Deadshot, who had been resurrected to serve with the Task Force. Though they initially met with success, Lawton's corpse was seemingly destroyed by KGBeast against Waller's orders.^[151]

In preparation for her strike at Earth-3, Waller put "Yorick's" technical skills to work, deployed Bloodsport on a final recovery mission, and pitted the rest of the Suicide Squad against the Retaliators and Lightning Strikes of Earth-8 to prove their value to her future operations.^[152] Major Force, the only team member showing the ruthlessness Waller sought, was killed by Black Siren, prompting Waller to trigger her explosive only to find it disabled: Doctor Rodriguez, a mole for Flag within her operations, had disabled her systems in advance of an attack on Task Force X Island by his rebel Suicide Squad comprised of former members including Peacemaker and Bloodsport. Retrieving Talon, Match, and Black Siren, for whom she had further use, abandoning the rest, and luring Flag's Squad into the clutches of Clayface via hologram, Waller fled with her forces to Earth-3.^[153]

War for Earth-3

Waller's Suicide Squad seized control of the Metropolis of Earth-3, seeking to bait Ultraman into a confrontation. Instead, he sent his fellow Crime Syndicate members: first Emerald Knight, who was defeated by Black Hand, and then Owlman, who fell to Black Siren and Match. Finally goaded into action, Ultraman attacked with Superwoman. However, while Match fought Superwoman, Waller convinced Ultraman to turn over the burden of governing the world he ruled to her, winning his allegiance and that of the Crime Syndicate just as Flag's Squad—and the abandoned members of her own—arrived on Earth-3.^[154]

Overwhelming Flag's group, Waller's forces killed Culebra, captured Rodriguez and Nocturna, and forced the rest to flee. Waller then sent Johnny Quick of the Crime Syndicate to seize a Phantom Zone Projector from Ultraman's Fortress of Solitude^[155] and the Cosmic Treadmill from the Flash Museum,^[156] components of a device designed by "Yorick" to trap Ultraman and seal Earth-3 off from the Multiverse. Flag's Squad returned reinforced by the Titans, unwittingly bringing with them a group of Titans Academy students whom Waller forces were able to capture. Recruiting Nocturna into her Justice League with Match, threatening the lives of Bloodsport's brothers across the Multiverse, killing Talon, and leveraging the captured students against the Titans, Waller eroded Flag's support, claiming victory only to be set upon by Ultraman, motivated by Flag into reneging on his agreement. As Waller prepared to send Ultraman into the Phantom Zone, Flag, overcome by rage and distrust, destroyed the projector. As Waller made moves to flee and Superwoman distracted Ultraman, Flag's Squad had "Yorick" create a replacement projector with Emerald Knight's Ring of Volthoom. Though they successfully trapped Ultraman, they were sent back to their own Earth by Waller, who proceeded to activate "Yorick's" device, sealing off Earth-3 under the control of her and her Justice League.^[157]

Council of Light

Amanda Waller's time on Earth-3 instilled in her a fear of the potential threat posed by superhumans, and when she was eventually returned to her own Earth, she dedicated herself to working against them.^[158] At the conclusion of the Dark Crisis, Waller approached the Council of Light with a proposal to incarcerate the Earth's metahumans for the danger they posed to humanity. Finding her scope too narrow, the Light instead tasked Waller with the eradication of the superpowered community.^[159]

Dawn of DC

Seeking to obtain a meteorite fragment that could neutralize the powers of the being known as the Void from the nation of Vilnaya,^[160] Waller deployed her operatives Peacemaker and Peacewrecker to put down a coup in exchange for the stone, held by the local government. However, it was destroyed by Spartan, an android sent by the Void, before it could be secured.^[161] Waller contracted the shape-changing supervillain Everyman to attack and strengthen her nephew, a metahuman A.R.G.U.S. agent known as Deadeye. During a battle between the two, the villain's powers were altered by the Lazarus Resin storm, and Deadeye mentally contacted his aunt to demand an explanation. From Earth-3, Waller revealed her motivations and the nature of the Lazarus event, encouraging Deadeye to kill Everyman.^[162] In months of apparent inactivity after the war for Earth-3,^[163] Waller provided Malcolm Merlyn with time-travel technology, which he put to use in a scheme to divide the Arrow Family as revenge against Green Arrow,^[164] who Waller hoped to bait into pursuing her for her involvement and lure into a trap. At the same time, however, she had Merlyn implanted with an explosive and tracking device.^[158] She sent Earth-3 native Konfusion into the Bleed between universes to interdict Multiversal travel in the year that followed.^[165]

Waller dedicated herself to gathering resources:^[166] she had Peacemaker, Peacewrecker, and Gunsmith retrieve an artifact known as the Helmet of Hate from Lazarus Island, while she met with a gathering of supervillains to offer legal pardons in exchange for the killing of heroes.^[167] Few villains took Waller up on her arrangement, however, suspecting a trap.^[168] Waller covertly assembled a new incarnation of Stormwatch to recover items chosen to target specific members of the Justice League,^[169] resurrected her deceased agent Emilia Harcourt to hunt the supervillain the Weapons Master under the pretext that he had been her killer,^[170] and had federal agent Nuri Espinoza recruit the Penguin for a plot to take over the Gotham City underworld.^[171] During Insomnia's nightmarish assault on the waking world, Waller took advantage of the chaos and had her underling Bright retrieve the magical Nightmare Stone. Waller turned it and the Helmet of Hate over to an ally within the heroic community, who was thus empowered as Doctor Hate.^[172] When an immortality-granting meteor struck the Gotham Observatory, Waller sent government assets to study its effect, the creation of a Lazarus Pit.^[173]

Beast World

Waller clashed with the superhero team the Titans over the death of the King of Vlatava with their headquarters, Titans Tower,^[174] and later sought to engender public distrust of the team over their international operations^[175] and refusal to collaborate with the United States Government,^[176] just as trust in the Justice League had been eroded by Insomnia's attack.^[172] When Titans member Beast Boy took on the form of the psychic alien conqueror Starro in a bid to save the Earth, Waller had Doctor Hate repress the hero's mind, giving his bestial nature control and driving him to spread mutagenic spores across the world.^[177]

At the same time, Arrow Family member Arsenal, who had hunted for Waller at Belle Reve for her part in separating him from his daughter,^[163] was led by the criminal Cheshire to an underwater safehouse of Waller's, from which she surveilled Hate and the Titans' response. Taking the intruders by surprise, Waller shot them both.^[164] Though they survived, Arsenal was deceived into believing that the time-travel device implanted in his body was a bomb and was forced into Waller's service, while Cheshire was held hostage to further incentivize him.^[178] Waller was then betrayed by Hate, who attempted to use resources stolen from her and the other-dimensional realm the Kingdom to summon the Lords of Chaos to dominate the Earth. In response, Waller sent a reluctant Deadeye into the Kingdom, tasking him with destroying it with a psychic explosion to deny it to Hate, though with the aid of the superhero Vixen he was able to sever the doctor's access to the realm without harming it. Decrying her callousness, Waller's nephew turned his back on her, and joined with a group of heroes dedicated to protecting the realm from her machinations.^[179]

Though she was disturbed by the scope of the chaos he had wrought, Waller resumed working with Hate, and requested that the President of the United States activate the Bureau of Sovereignty, granting her further authority to resolve the crisis.^[180] Waller also took advantage of rogue Suicide Squad member Afterthought's planned assault on Belle Reve to assess the suitability of Naltorian hero Dreamer as an operative. Threatening to expose Dreamer's hidden hometown of Parthas to the world, Waller set the precognitives against each other while, unbeknownst to the hero, she massacred Afterthought's hired men. Dreamer defeated Afterthought, satisfying Waller that she would cooperate when those she cared for were used as leverage.^[181] Waller ordered Sarge Steel of the Amazon Extradition Entity to gather the foes of Wonder Woman to address the threat she and the Amazons were perceived to pose to the United States,^[182] and was escorted by Peacemaker to Stryker's Island Penitentiary, in which Lex Luthor was incarcerated, to obtain from him a stolen^[183] Justice League Teleporter.^[184]

Waller performed additional spore mutations in captivity on members of the superhuman community such as Black Manta and Dolphin, and enlisted Captain Boomerang to covertly sabotage Deadeye and Vixen's efforts to reverse Manta's transformation. Though Boomerang was unsuccessful, he learned of her nephew's opposition group and reported on it to Waller.^[185] On Waller's behalf, Peacemaker abducted the black hole-generating metahuman Chester Runk, while Sarge Steel publicly announced the Bureau of Sovereignty and their intent to take on Beast Boy themselves, claiming that the Titans were protecting their one-time teammate at the expense of the human race. With grudging assistance from Lex Luthor, Waller used his teleporter to insert Runk into Beast Boy's brain, bypassing his defenders in the superheroic community and seemingly killing them both with a black hole.^[184]

Waller was unveiled by the President as the head of the Bureau of Sovereignty, taking credit for Beast Boy's apparent death and framing Runk's participation as a willing sacrifice. Using the Bureau's authority to bypass presidential approval, she announced a campaign of drone strikes that would kill all those infected by the spores, over one million people. Though the Titans were able to breach the Bureau's headquarters, dispatch Waller's bodyguard Peacemaker, and confront her with the existence of an alternative, non-lethal solution to deal with the spores, she refused to call off the attack, forcing Cyborg of the Titans to hack into and divert the drones himself. Waller promised to use the heroes' intervention in conflict with the United States Military against them, and was defended from an enraged Raven, Beast Boy's partner, by Doctor Hate, who was revealed as an aspect of Raven herself.^[186] Though the Titans shared their suspicions of Waller's complicity with the President and were able to defuse the crisis by drawing the spores out of their victims, Waller portrayed them as risk-takers lacking in accountability in a Bureau of Sovereignty press conference at the Justice League's one-time headquarters the Hall of Justice, rechristened the "Hall of Order," to condemn the Titans and the rest of the superheroic community.^[187]

Absolute Power

In Cairo, Egypt, Waller put together a new Suicide Squad to steal the ornamental beard of Pharoah Hatshepsut from the neighboring nation of Kahndaq. She was approached by Catwoman, finally making good on her agreement to serve, who was implanted with an explosive device and given a place on the team. Although Catwoman and the Squad successfully recovered the artifact, it was of little value to Waller, and her involvement in the heist was revealed in the process. In retribution, Waller detonated Catwoman's implant and killed her, though her newly-acquired divine powers restored her to life and allowed her to teleport away.^[29] Learning that a copy of the supposedly-erased personal files of Sanctuary, a mental health facility for the superhuman community, existed in an isolated Justice League bunker, Waller sent Arsenal and a team of fellow Arrow Family members to steal them.^[178] She put her forces to work cataloguing the Justice League artifacts left behind in the rechristened Hall of Order for transport to a secure location off-site, and reconfiguring the Hall's defenses to keep out its former occupants. During this effort, Waller's trap for the Green Arrow bore fruit, and he was captured in an attempted break-in. She brokered a deal with him: she would turn over Arsenal, reunite the Arrow Family, and lead them to Malcolm Merlyn, in exchange for his completion of the Sanctuary mission,^[158] as her team had not returned and had broken contact.^[178]

Operating from Belle Reve, Waller tasked Dreamer, once again motivated by threats against her home, with breaking into the home of now-Senator Gravenport and recovering evidence of his pedophilia. Though her operative was successful, Waller elected to blackmail Gravenport into cooperating with her agenda rather than sending him to prison, to Dreamer's disgust. Waller would later abduct her in her sleep for her next mission: covertly bringing the Suicide Squad through the dream realm into the politically unstable and heavily defended nation of Gamorra to open its borders to US intervention^[188] and to take control of it herself.^[4] At the Hall of Order, Waller was approached by the demon Trigon, father of the Titan Raven, to eliminate her teammates and their influence on her. The demon offered to spare the Earth from destruction at his daughter's hand and to make Amanda Waller president, though she turned down the latter and negotiated a stronger incentive:^[189] complete dominion over the Earth.^[190] Though Dreamer uncovered and revealed Waller's plans for Gamorra, sowing dissent among the Suicide Squad, Clock King lowered the island's defenses, allowing Waller to enter the nation with an invasion force. To control the narrative of the takeover, Waller launched a search for Jay Nakamura, son of Gamorran president Sara Nakamura, who she sent Bizarro to kill. She had the rest of the Squad sedated, save Dreamer, who had escaped into the dream realm. In retaliation, Waller exposed Parthas' existence, and later, her dreams—in which her late husband berated her for the comprises she had made to her morals—were interrupted by Dreamer, who tried unsuccessfully to sway Waller from her campaign against aliens and metahumans. Waking, Waller began medicating herself to avoid sleeping and escape from Dreamer.^[4] Waller sent the Suicide Squad to recapture the Naltorian hero in Parthas, where she fought against anti-alien rioters,^[191] though Dreamer was able to free herself and hijack the Squad's jet en route to Gamorra, crashing it into a newly-constructed—but presently empty—prison complex. Waller, however, quickly arranged for reconstruction at a new site, and with the resurrected Deadshot by her side, confronted Dreamer, admitting to her own abuse of power while insisting that her methods were the only path to a better world. At the same time, Waller had rigged nanite explosives within Dreamer's father and sister to detonate in the event of her death. Discovering this, in a vision of a future in which she killed Waller, Dreamer backed down and agreed to lend her precognitive powers to Waller's cause.^[192]

To fulfill her bargain with Trigon, she enlisted roboticist Doctor T.O. Morrow to construct an android to kill the Titans.^[193] Once the Green Arrow had retrieved the Sanctuary records, she teleported him to the position of the time-lost Merlyn,^[194] and raided the headquarters of the superhero-centered research organization Terrifitech, where her forces uncovered data that implicated a disruption in the Speed Force, the source of super-speedsters' powers, in a series of reality-warping catastrophes. Taking advantage to further undermine the heroic community, she shut down a pro-superhero podcast, labelling it "terrorist propaganda," and commandeered its broadcast to blame the disasters on the Flash Family and to order them to cease using their powers.^[195] She met with Linda Park, wife of the Flash (Wally West), in the hopes of capturing her husband, but found that Park neither knew nor cared about his whereabouts.^[196] On the orders of the Council of Light, Waller negotiated a brief cessation of the United Planets' quarantine of Earth, allowing Brainiac's army of Czarnians into Metropolis. Waller sent Peacemaker and Peacewrecker on an unsuccessful hunt for Professor Ivo, another villainous roboticist, and had them pull a file on Brainiac from the defunct Task Force XI. Connecting Brainiac's signal to that of the Council of Light's broadcasts, Waller confronted her erstwhile benefactors, uncovering their identity as a group of multiversal Brainiacs, and cut ties with them, promising to take revenge for her manipulation.^[197]

Waller monitored the new Batman—an android known as Failsafe—from Gamorra, ordering her forces to keep to private networks to avoid his surveillance, but concluding that his public acts of violent authoritarianism would be a boon to their anti-superhero cause. To ascertain his identity, Waller sent a strike force to Wayne Manor, home of the original Batman, only to be set upon by Failsafe in her own headquarters. Despite threats against her, Waller took heart that he was unwilling to spark an international incident by taking her into his custody. Likening his goals to her own, Waller suggested that he may come to see the superhero community as she does.^[198] She provided US military assets to the final push of Gotham police commissioner Vandal Savage's campaign against Failsafe, during which the robotic Batman was destroyed by the original.^[199] Her efforts to destroy them unsuccessful, Waller was confronted at a supposedly-secure facility with a show of force by the Titans, who had defeated Trigon and learned of Waller's bargain with him.^[190]

Waller sent Dreamer and Deadeye into the Gamorran wilderness to track and capture Jay Nakamura, tying up loose ends, and used the time-warping hourglass of deceased supervillain the Time Commander to bring him back to life. Using his newly-restored life as leverage, she added him to the Suicide Squad and tasked him with "rewinding" the damage done to the recovered body of Failsafe. Predicting that he would attempt to escape through time, she used chronal routers to prevent him from traveling further back than the day of his resurrection. Once Failsafe had been restored, Waller put the Time Commander to work doing the same for six other androids of the same kind.^[200] Through shell corporations, Waller purchased ownership of metahuman prisons such as Stryker's Island, Iron Heights, Arkham Tower, and Blackgate Penitentiary, and drew from them a supply of energy-manipulating supervillains. Working with Failsafe, she had them pour their powers into a robot meant to absorb them, though the feedback between power source and sink consistently killed the metahumans instead of retaining their energies. At the same time, Waller consulted with Dreamer on her visions of the future success of her campaign and with the Green Arrow's help designed and constructed^[201] a number of Belle Reve-offshoot prisons.^[202] With Failsafe, she recovered the Brainiac Queen, a blank slate created by her foe. In a virtual reality program recovered from Sanctuary, where twenty simulated years passed in twenty real-life hours, Waller raised the Queen as her own daughter, indoctrinating her against superheroes while at once coming to truly care for her.^[200] In exchange for their non-intervention in Waller's machinations, the United Planets had Waller track down and capture the Green Lantern Hal Jordan, lending operatives such as Karshon, the Shark to her forces for the purpose.^[203] Despite his protestations against working for her in the field, Waller sent the Green Arrow to "Belle Reve North" to prevent a breakout by the Arrow Family^[202] and equipped him with Batman's "Justice Buster" armor to capture Barry Allen, the Flash—though the Arrow was unsuccessful, and allowed his former allies to escape.^[204]

In the first phase of her ultimate anti-superhero campaign, Waller had the Brainiac Queen hijack the internet to mass-disseminate doctored videos of superheroes turning on civilians to take advantage of a public primed by recent crises to distrust its heroes, inciting both anti-superhero violence and highly visible acts of heroism meant to create a counter-narrative. Despite disavowal from the White House of her operations, Waller announced her intention to respond to the manufactured threat, deploying Failsafe's Task Force VII: Amazo androids in the likenesses of the Justice League, dispatched to drain and take on the powers of the heroes drawn out into the open, be they biological, technological, or mystical in origin. In addition to the United Planets' quarantine of Earth and the blockade of the Multiverse, Waller sealed off the Microverse and Timestream, forcing the superheroes of the world into hiding or captivity.^[205] For herself, however, she prepared an escape route: using a Mother Box, a piece of Fourth World technology, she created a Boom Tube between a base hidden in the jungle of Okinawa, Japan to the planet Czarnia. There, she had the bodies of her deceased family members transferred to a mausoleum protected by a force field and her operative Gunsmith.^[206] To hunt down the Marvel Family, the strongest of the heroes to retain their abilities, Waller stripped the Parasite of his hunger-suppressing armband and used his appetite for power to lead Last Son, Task Force VII's Superman analogue, to them.^[207]

Meanwhile on Gamorra, she and Karshon interrogated the captive Hal Jordan in an attempt to learn the new power source of his Green Lantern Ring.^[208] Waller sent Task Force VII's Depth Charge to depower Aquaman and take control of his kingdom of Atlantis, receiving with consternation the Amazo's report that Atlantis had instead been destroyed and that Aquaman, though powerless, had escaped.^[209] With her war council—Failsafe, the Brainiac Queen, Dreamer, and the Green Arrow, Waller discussed the capture of eighty-percent of the world's heroes, and made plans to target the underground remainder. She shot down the Queen's suggestion that they be drawn out by targeting their civilian allies with the claim that these ordinary people were the ones her campaign was meant to protect, and gave her council their assignments: while Arrow and Failsafe monitored Task Force VII, the Queen would be guided the fugitive's headquarters the Fortress of Solitude by Jon Kent—the cybernetically-controlled son of Superman—to launch a frontal assault, a diversion to cover Dreamer's infiltration of the Fortress with an Amazo through the dreams of an unconscious hero. Kent's transformation was too much for Dreamer, who turned on Waller and allowed the heroes to escape before the fortress self-destructed. Assuring Sarge Steel that Kent and the Queen had survived the explosion, and that the former remained under the latter's control, she ordered Dreamer's apparent death to be kept from the Green Arrow,^[210] and deployed the Suicide Squad to Okinawa to guard the earthly end of her Boom Tube.^[206]

Waller's campaign of mass incarceration extended to the supervillains of the world, and at the Gamorra Island prison, she put them to work^[211] constructing a Multiversal bridge.^[212] She berated Peacemaker for his failure on a mission to capture Lex Luthor,^[213] and with the bridge complete, had the villains transferred to other prisons to make room on Gamorra for the remaining fugitive heroes, who she tasked Jon Kent with hunting down. Waller completed her takeover of the country she had once served, dissolving the US government and using secrets stolen by the Brainiac Queen to ensure acceptance of her coup from the international community. She was alarmed to learn that the Task Force VII androids showed signs of taking on the morals of their victims along with their powers, and had Failsafe reboot them to correct it. Meanwhile, Brainiac Queen reported to Waller her discovery of the heroes on the island of Themyscira, home of the Amazons. The Queen attacked with Kent, but he was able to regain control of himself and used his link with her to show her the falsehood of Waller's anti-superhero indoctrination. Enraged, Waller took direct control of the Queen's body, but it was sent to Pluto through a Boom Tube created by Waller's Mother Box, which Batman had recovered,^[214] allowing the heroes to escape once more and leaving Waller wanting revenge for the loss of her "daughter."^[215]

Through the Multiversal bridge, she met with and recruited Superwoman and her Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 to her cause.^[212] Detecting an observing intruder, Steve Trevor, she set the prison's guards on him. and sent Task Force VII's Paradise Lost to drain the powers of the metahuman dead in Themyscira's Well of Souls and to seal off the island as punishment for the Amazons' collaboration with the fugitive heroes.^[215] Having twice failed to capture the group of fugitive heroes, Waller planned to target their leadership, the trinity of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, but found her operatives unavailable and fighting amongst each other.^[216] She sent the last Amazo of Task Force VII to target the international heroes who had once made up the team the Global Guardians, dubbing it "Global Guardian" after it succeeded in draining their powers. At the same time, however, a prison break at her Gamorran facility had been orchestrated by Wonder Woman and Robin,^[217] and she prepared for the reunited heroes to take the offensive against her.^[216]

As the fugitive heroes finally invaded her base, she was caught off-guard by the weapons given to her troops turning against them, realizing that Green Arrow had been against her the entire time. Nightwing and Jon Kent broke through her defenses, only for Failsafe to capture Nightwing and Jon incapacitated with Green Kryptonite. Waller ranted that she was ready to kill all metas, that they "escalated" it to that level. However, Waller's plans crashed when Arrow was able to tag an Amazo with a device Time Commander made, shutting down Failsafe and Task Force VII, restoring the heroes' powers. Waller warned Nightwing she still had her Multiversal Army and threatened him with a gun, only for Dreamer, alive and healed, appearing and attacking Waller. Backed into a corner, Waller ranted that the heroes' goodwill was gone, that she fooled the entire world into believing they were a threat and would run them off-world. However, Nightwing prepared for that and had Air Wave broadcast the rant through every electronic device. 48 hours later, Waller awoke in Belle Reve, having been judged by the World Court to be sentenced to life imprisonment for her actions. Dreamer was there, telling her this, when Waller mocked her, claiming she'll be out once she reveals all the information on the metas. However, when Dreamer asks her various pieces of info, she realizes she can't remember them. Dreamer reveals that she altered her memories just enough that she can never access that information, thanking her for her training. As one last parting shot, she tells her to not think too hard as there's other things in her head, making Waller believe she has a bomb in her head.^[218] Amanda Waller was publicly put on trial for her actions,^[219] and visited in incarceration by the Green Arrow, who threatened to kill her should she ever move against his friends and family again.^[220]

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

• Deception
• Firearms
• Hand-to-Hand Combat (Basic)^[221]: Amanda is a good fighter and was able to hold her own for a while against Green Arrow.^[222]
• Indomitable Will: Amanda was able to resist the mental persuasion of Maxwell Lord which was previously unheard of.^[221]
• Interrogation^[221]
• Leadership
• Tactical Analysis

Weaknesses

Mental Blocks: Thanks to Dreamer altering her mind through the Dreamworld, Waller is unable to recall anything concerning the meta community's secrets.^[218]

Notes

• Amanda Waller was created by John Ostrander and John Byrne, first appearing in Legends #1. However, in the Prime Earth continuity, Amanda Waller first appeared as part of the New 52 DC Universe in Suicide Squad (Volume 4) #1 by Adam Glass and Federico Dallocchio.
  

Trivia

• Waller was aware of Batman's true identity^[223] until Dreamer placed a mental block and cannot remember.^[218]

Related

• 413 Appearances of Amanda Waller (Prime Earth)
• 130 Images featuring Amanda Waller (Prime Earth)
• 49 Quotations by or about Amanda Waller (Prime Earth)
• Character Gallery: Amanda Waller (Prime Earth)

Footnotes

Suicide Squad member This character is or was a member of the Suicide Squad, a team of imprisoned super-villains who perform high-risk missions for the U.S. Government in exchange for commuted sentences, in any of its various incarnations. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Suicide Squad members" category.

A.R.G.U.S. member This character is or was a member of A.R.G.U.S., a government agency that supports and researches the United States' super-humans, in any of its various incarnations. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "A.R.G.U.S. members" and "Government Agents" categories.

Justice League member This character has been a member of the Justice League of America, or the Justice League in any of its various incarnations, sworn by a duty to act as guardians of America and the world by using their skills and/or superpowers to protect Earth from the clutches of both interstellar and domestic threats. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Justice League of America members" category.

Checkmate Member This character was a member of the top secret government organization Checkmate. This template will automatically categorize articles that include it into the "Checkmate members" and "Government Agents" categories.

Crime Syndicate/Society member This character is or was primarily a member of the the CSA (Crime Syndicate of America • Crime Syndicate of Amerika • Crime Society of America), in any of its various incarnations, either on Earth-Three, Earth-3, Earth 3, or in the Antimatter Universe. As with all other CSA members, they are an evil version of a hero of the mainstream DC Universe, primarily the Justice League. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "CSA members" category.

Justice League Villain This character is or was primarily an enemy of the Justice League, in any of its various incarnations. This template will categorize articles that include it into the category "Justice League Villains."

Titans Villain(s) This character has been primarily an enemy of the Teen Titans, the Titans, or any of the other various Titans incarnations. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "Titans Villains" category.