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Task Force Z is the DC Universe’s latest black ops team and their mission puts them right on a collision course with the Suicide Squad. Here’s why.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Task Force Z #1 and Suicide Squad #8, on sale now from DC Comics.
The DC Universe officially has a lethal, new black ops team with Task Force Z, which Jason Todd heads an ensemble of not-quite-undead supervillains to carry over top-secret missions on behalf of the government. The missions that Task Force Z take on primarily involve the team busting up smuggling rings dealing in Lazarus resin, a substance derived from the life-giving Lazarus Pits around the world, with the resin also used to keep the zombified members of Task Force Z in their twisted state of unlife. However, this mission directive is also poised to pit Task Force Z against another clandestine DCU team: Task Force X, the team better known as the Suicide Squad.
Recently, Amanda Waller and Suicide Squad went on the run after Waller was exposed to be secretly manufacturing a line of Superboy clones as she expanded Task Force X’s directive to encompass the newly reborn DC Multiverse. After the Suicide Squad’s mission in Hell took a disastrous turn that left new team member Culebra being in action, Waller resurrected Culebra, revealing she has a supply of Lazarus resin herself. In Suicide Squad #8 — by Robbie Thompson, Eduardo Pansica, Dexter Soy, Julio Ferreira, Marcelo Maiolo and Wes Abbott — Waller notes that she intercepted a Lazarus resin shipment to seize it for her own nefarious purposes.
Meanwhile, the new Task Force Z comic book series — by Matthew Rosenberg, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Adriano Lucas and Rob Leigh — has Jason forced to lead the team after he is apprehended by the authorities for his vigilante activities. In addition to using Lazarus resin edibles to keep the zombified supervillains on the team relatively docile and compliant, Jason quickly notices that every mission he and his team are tasked with involves tracking down other villains that have the resin themselves, with Crazy Quilt and Mister Freeze among their first targets. And while Task Force Z’s opening missions have kept the team focused on assignments within Gotham City for now, it’s only a matter of time before the undead team’s scope takes them to the wider DCU.
If Waller stole the Lazarus resin from the government, this likely puts Task Force X quickly at the top of Task Force Z’s top targets once the zombie team finally earns their stripes on the field. And with an undead Deadshot slated to appear in Task Force Z’s upcoming adventures, the zombified Floyd Lawton likely has plenty of unfinished business with Waller making a potential showdown between the two black ops teams all the more personal should Jason and his team get the nod to pursue the fugitive Waller and Task Force X and get the stolen supply of resin back.
Between the Teen Titans Academy and Earth-3’s Crime Syndicate of America, Waller has made her fair share of powerful enemies lately, with even former members of her own team now gunning for her. And in her obsessive drive to take the Suicide Squad into a multiversal direction at any cost, Waller’s theft of the Lazarus resin may have inadvertently led to a very different kind of super-powered team now targeting her. Task Force Z is admittedly overcoming some undead growing pains, but they could be the ones to topple the Wall.
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