Suicide squad. [1], Trial by fire
(Graphic Novel)

"Originally published in single magazine form in SECRET ORIGINS 14, SUICIDE SQUAD 1-8."

"In the late 1980s, a secret government program designed to neutralize super-powered threats to national security was reactivated. Task Force X had gone through many transformations since it was first created during World War II, but one thing had never changed: its members called themselves the Suicide Squad, and they lived up to their name. Faced with a rising tide of metahuman crime and terror, the program's hard-headed director Amanda Waller sold the President on her vision of an updated Task Force X: a covert action team comprised of incarcerated super-villains who earned time off their sentences for every mission they completed. Deniable, disposable, and deployable to any spot on earth, this new Suicide Squad would be the perfect weapon of last resort-- as long as they could be kept under control" -- page 4 of cover.