The following contains spoilers for Flashpoint Beyond #1, on sale now from DC Comics.
Letting a small group of convicted supervillains out into the world is already dangerous enough. Turning them into an entire army? That’s asking for trouble. Amanda Waller is able to control her Suicide Squad thanks to the bombs she places in their necks. If any get out of line, she can easily kill them. It’s an effective threat. It keeps the Squad in line. But that wouldn’t work on a large scale.
Even still, that’s what Waller’s alternate timeline counterpart is doing in Flashpoint Beyond #1 (by Geoff Johns, Jeremy Adams, Tim Sheridan, Xermánico, Mikel Janín, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Jordie Bellaire and Rob Leigh). As Thomas Wayne’s Batman began his investigation into who killed Barry Allen, the Batcave’s monitor gave a glimpse of some of the events going on in that twisted world right now. One of these things was Amanda Waller turning the Suicide Squad into a Suicide Army.
With the rising threat posed by the warring Amazons and Atlantis, this world’s Waller decided to take her original pitch and supersize it. Rather than create Task Force X as an off-the-books project made of a select group of metahuman convicts, she wanted an actual army. She took the idea out in the open too, to the US Congress, and asked that every metahuman convict be drafted into her proposed army.
Whilst recruiting supervillains to fight Aquaman and Wonder Woman seems like their only option, especially with so few heroes in this world, it’s a disastrous idea in practice. The usual deterrent for the original Squad, the bombs in their necks, cannot work on a large scale. There’s no way to keep track of whether all of the world’s supervillains are staying on mission. Some will escape and, with the amount of time it would take for anyone to notice, they could have removed the bombs in their neck and begun a new reign of terror.
Because of this problem, the Flashpoint Waller has a different solution to keep her Suicide Army in line – but it’s far from foolproof. She recruited the Martian Manhunter rip-off, Jemm – Son of Saturn, to telepathically control all the members of her new fighting force. Controlling that many people would be difficult enough for Manhunter, so the idea that his lesser-known analog could do this with no problems at all is hardly believable. Inevitably, Jemm will be unable to keep control of some or, most likely, all the Suicide Army’s members. When that happens, Amanda Waller will have unleashed every captured supervillain upon the world.
This plan is destined to fail. That’s the whole point of the Flashpoint universe, really. Everything that readers know about the DC Universe is twisted to the point that it’s the worst version of itself. That’s why Waller was unable to get Martian Manhunter himself to control her Suicide Army. He suffered a horrifying fate in this world too. He was captured by the Russian government and tortured, like Flashpoint Superman was in the US. This was in the hope that he would be their answer to that threat. After rebelling against those who punished him, he ended up dead.
Knock-offs are all Waller has then. This is a half-baked idea at best and the end of the world at worst. With every other element of the Flashpoint universe edging towards breaking point, this idea was inevitable. The end result, where the supervillains break free and wreak havoc, won’t even be the worst thing that will happen. The Suicide Army will just be one of a number of impending disasters that will destroy the World of Flashpoint – for good.
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