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androxys · 5 months

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Task Force What? An Incomplete (Yet Still Very Long) Guide to Some of the DCU’s Government Groups [Part 1]

So, you’re reading DC comics and a government agency pops up that you’re reasonably sure doesn’t exist in the real world. Who are they? What’s their deal? Here’s a quick primer on some of the groups that you may encounter.

A few notes and disclaimers: This writeup is primarily based on post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint/New 52 comic canon. I’ve tried to note every exception to that general rule. Also, several of these groups and comics use historical markers tied to the real world, which makes less and less sense as we-as-readers get farther away in time from when these comics were originally published. DC eventually stopped using real people and events so frequently in comics to help with their timelessness, but I’m going to include the historical figures and times as depicted in the source material, even if that means the same Batman is supposed to have been active in the 70s and also in 2011. Just don’t worry about it.

This writeup is split into three parts, described below. This section is the most dense, dealing with the history of 13 agencies, some of their key players, and the organizations' general missions. Special thanks to my editors and beta readers for helping me shape this up.

Part 1: Organization Descriptions and Histories

Task Force X

Argent

The Suicide Squad

Checkmate

Central Bureau of Investigation

The Agency

Project: Peacemaker

Department of Extranormal Operations

All Purpose Enforcement Squad

Project Cadmus / The DNA Project

Human Defense Corps

A.R.G.U.S.

Spyral

Part 2: Timeline

Part 3: Reading Suggestions

Task Force X

One of the most famous of DC’s government groups, Task Force X is sometimes used interchangeably with “The Suicide Squad.” However, that’s (at least originally) not quite accurate! Task Force X was a government program that housed two clandestine programs: Argent and The Suicide Squad. Task Force X was originally started in the 50s by President Truman to make up for the disappearance of the Justice Society of America after Senator McCarthy summoned them before his House of Un-American Activities Committee and tried to force them to unmask. Task Force X was designed to deal with the “extraordinary” (read: metahuman and alien) threats that might face the U.S. government. Argent was the domestic program, while the Suicide Squad was international. The leader of Argent took his team and disappeared in the 60s, while the Suicide Squad disbanded soon after due to budget cuts.

Task Force X would be revived in the 80s when then-congressional aide Amanda Waller would present to President Reagan a plan to revitalize The Suicide Squad, this time utilizing supervillains for high risk, clandestine missions in exchange for reduced prison time. Waller also envisioned the reorganization of intelligence group The Agency, which would become the intelligence-focused division of Task Force X. The Agency would be led by former Doom Patrol member Valentina Vostok until its reorganization into Checkmate, at which point Harry Stein was named Checkmate’s King. Although Central Bureau of Intelligence leader Sarge Steel had significant reservations about Task Force X, the President ultimately approved the project.

After an inter-departmental war known as the Janus Directive, Task Force X was dissolved as an umbrella organization. The Suicide Squad and Checkmate were made fully independent of one another, with Sarge Steele assuming direct control of Checkmate from Waller, who stayed on as the director of the Suicide Squad.

Argent

Argent was the U.S. based division of the original, 50’s Task Force X that dealt with domestic and civilian “extraordinary” encounters. Originally led by a man named only as “Control,” Argent went underground after Control killed a man connected with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Control’s vision for this new, even more secretive Argent was an internationally focused spy agency for justice, though little is known about how effective he was. Presumed defunct, Argent was not revived when Amanda Waller proposed her new Suicide Squad. Eventually, the new Suicide Squad made contact with the remenants of Argent, and were witness to the ultimate end of the program.

The Suicide Squad

Originally, the Suicide Squad was the self-given name of WWII platoon with a depressingly high fatality rate. Over the course of the war, the squadron found themselves on Dinosaur Island, which certainly didn’t help those numbers. Richard Montgomery Flag Sr. was brought in to help lead the group, turning the squadron around into a highly decorated division of the Army.

In 1951, after the Justice Society was driven underground, President Truman created Task Force X to be able to combat “extraordinary” threats now that there were no costumed heroes to rely on. Truman requested that Flag Sr. lead The Suicide Squad, which focused on international threats. This group was largely composed of veterans of the WWII Squadron S. This version of the Suicde Squad was disbanded after the death of Flag Sr.

A third version of the Squad was created by General Stuart, tapping Rick Flag Jr. to be its leader. This team continued to deal with extranormal threats, but disbanded after a mission in Cambodia that saw the loss of half the squad. It was also revealed that regardless of the fatalities, budget cuts demanded the end of the program.

The most famous version of the Suicide Squad was proposed by congressional aide Amanda Waller to President Reagan in the 1980s, following the Legends event. Waller envisioned a revival of Task Force X as an umbrella program, with the new Suicide Squad being staffed by incarcerated supervillains. These villains would undertake high-risk, clandestine operations in return for reduced prison sentences. Part of the appeal of this model was the deniability: in the event that an operation went poorly, the government could simply blame it on the supervillain. President Reagan approved the program–Waller was the leader of Task Force X, which included both the Suicide Squad and The Agency, which was soon remade into Checkmate.

This Suicide Squad operated out of Belle Reve penitentiary, which was a maximum security prison specializing in holding supervillains. The initial administration of the Suicide Squad consisted of Amanda Waller as its director, Belle Reve’s warden John Economos, psychologist Simon LaGrieve, bureaucratic assistant Flo Crawley, and pilot Briscoe. Waller brought in Rick Flag Jr. to serve as her field leader and Ben Turner, the Bronze Tiger, as second in command. While the Squad certainly lived up to its name and reputed high mortality rate, notable team members include Eve Eden, Nightshade; Floyd Lawton, Deadshot; June Moone, Enchantress; and George Harkness, Captain Boomerang. I’m not going to spoil the whole Oracle plot for you, but know that Barbara Gordon actually debuted as Oracle in the pages of Suicide Squad, so consider this your sign to go read Suicide Squad (1987).

After the events of The Janus Directive, Task Force X was dissolved as an umbrella organization. While Waller was left as the director of the Suicide Squad, she no longer had any leadership in Checkmate, which had passed into the control of Sarge Steel, director of the Central Bureau of Investigation.

After a number of missions, Waller eventually disbanded the Suicide Squad, finding herself disillusioned with the Squad’s goals. However, because this is comics, the Suicide Squad would not stay dead for long. Waller would periodically create new incarnations of the Squad to address spontaneous issues that would arise, often crossing over with other superheroes' adventures. During Lex Luthor’s presidency, Waller would be appointed Secretary of Metahuman Affairs, taking Sarge Steel’s place.

After Checkmate was rechartered as an United Nations organization, Amanda Waller took a position as the White Queen. To limit conflicts of interest, this effectively meant that the Suicide Squad was permanently disbanded, as Waller was prohibited from operations and could not be involved in the leadership of both organizations. This didn’t stop her, however, and Waller formed a new incarnation of the Suicide Squad that began Operation: Salvation Run. This project involved rounding up all supervillains and deporting them to a prison planet via Boom Tube (yes, really) where they were supposed to stay indefinitely. Waller was eventually ousted from Checkmate, but not before she and her Squad managed to deport the majority of Earth’s villains. The Suicide Squad would have to confront its ghosts during the Blackest Night event, when zombified fallen members of the Squad came after living members, but further adventures were cut off by Flashpoint.

Checkmate

Checkmate started from The Agency, a quasi-independent intelligence focused division of Task Force X led by former Doom Patrol member Valentina Vostok. Vostok brought in former NYPD lieutenant Harry Stein, who soon reorganized the group into Checkmate. Borrowing from chess’ hierarchy, Stein was King, working with his Queen counterpart to coordinate various agents. Bishops oversaw Rooks, who planned missions for support agents–Pawns–and special agents–Knights. Checkmate operated out of Konig Industries in Shelby, Virginia until the events of the Janus Directive. During that event, Checkmate lost roughly 40 Knights and its Konig cover was blown. With only a third of its agents, Checkmate was subsequently forced to relocate to a NORAD base in Colorado.

Harry Stein resigned as head of Checkmate after his son was shot, leading Sarge Steel to promote Phil Kramer to King and Kalia Cambell to Queen. They would lead Checkmate against Jade Nguyen, the assassin known as Chesire, during the time she took control of several nuclear warheads and bombed the nation of Qurac. At some point Checkmate would establish their division between black side, which ran operations, and white side, which was primarily intelligence.

Bishop Jessica Midnight recruited Sasha Bordeaux, Bruce Wayne’s former bodyguard, into Checkmate. Bordeaux had been imprisoned due to suspicion that she was an accomplice to Bruce Wayne's alleged killing of Vesper Fairchild. Checkmate faked Bordeaux’s death in prison and provided her with plastic surgery to assume a completely new life as a Checkmate operative.

After Kramer, former Knight David Said would become the new King of Checkmate. He would lead Checkmate against Batman in Gotham City, a campaign that saw them abduct Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, and install her as Queen in an attempt to have her share secrets from Batman. This arrangement was actually a plan between Batman and Huntress, however, and Bertinelli ended up serving as a mole for Batman on Checkmate.

For this next section, I choose to believe that Checkmate was a victim of Superboy-Prime’s altering of reality in the leadup to Infinite Crisis. Checkmate is suddenly headed by Maxwell Lord, Said and Bertinelli are nowhere to be seen, and Lord’s motivations are massively different from any of his previous appearances. Regardless, under Lord, Checkmate amassed information on every metahuman on Earth with plans to eliminate them. To do this, Lord was given access to the Brother Eye satellite, and together they controlled over one million OMACs–civilians that had been injected with nanotechnology to make them unwitting cyborg sleeper agents. When Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, discovered what Lord had been up to, Lord killed him and instructed Bordeaux to dispose of the body.

Sasha sent Blue Beetle’s goggles to Batman, alerting him of Kord’s death. Once Lord knew that Batman was on his tail, he accelerated his plans, using his mental manipulation powers to take control of Superman and send him on a rampage to keep other heroes occupied. When Wonder Woman caught up with Lord, she bound him in her Lasso of Truth and commanded him to tell her how to set Superman free. The only option he gave her was for him to die, so Wonder Woman snapped his neck. Upon Lord’s death, Brother Eye immediately activated all OMACs and began the King_Is_Dead protocol, which involved killing every current Checkmate agent. Bordeaux, who had been imprisoned by Lord after he discovered her subterfuge, escaped, though not before her own unique OMAC programming activated. Lord had intended for her, as his Knight, to be a special type of OMAC, leaving her somewhere between human and machine. Later, Bordeaux would team up with Batman and other heroes to take down Brother Eye.

After Infinite Crisis, Checkmate was recharted by the United Nations to be an international group with a stronger system of checks and balances. Checkmate operated under a system of twos: two Kings and two Queens, with a Knight and Bishop for all four royals. Most specifically, the U.N. charter set out a Rule of Two: each position had to be balanced with meta and non-metahumans. As before, Black side was operations while White was intelligence. Bishops advised their royals, while Knights were special agents. Rooks were an elite Black Ops unit, while numerous Pawns were standard agents.

At the time of its chartering, the new Checkmate had the OMAC enhanced Bordeaux as its Black Queen, Taleb Beni Khalid as its unpowered Black King, JSA Green Lantern Alan Scott as White King, and Amanda Waller as White Queen. After Scott resigned as White King his Bishop, fellow JSA member Michael Holt–Mister Terrific, took his place.

This Checkmate frequently clashed with Kobra, the international cult intent on bringing a new age of chaos to the world. However, they also had a non-insignificant amount of infighting. Significantly, Waller was forced out as White Queen after she tried to preemptively remove Bordeaux and Holt, knowing that they were getting close to uncovering her illicit Suicide Squad and their Operation: Salvation Run.

After the events of Brightest Day, Maxwell Lord returns from the dead and uses his power to make nearly everyone on Earth forget about him. He immediately begins to try to regain control of Checkmate, beginning a misinformation and discrediting campaign against Checkmate’s leadership.

Central Bureau of Intelligence (C.B.I.)

The Central Bureau of Intelligence is a sort of corollary to the Federal Bureau of Investigation within the DC Universe. The organization primarily focuses on information gathering from domestic and international sources, then utilizing that information for operations. However, while other groups are focused on “extranormal” threats, the CBI is primarily concerned with “normal” missions. When special assignments do come up, special agents are dispatched.

The CBI was known to be active when Task Force X was being revived by Amanda Waller. While Sarge Steel was both known to be involved in the CBI and important enough to sit in on Waller’s meeting with the President of the United States, it is not clearly stated that he was the director of the CBI at that time. However, Sarge Steel would officially be the director of the CBI by the time of the Janus Initiative. Despite the massive reorganization at the time, the CBI was left largely alone. Steel would be promoted to the Director of Metahuman Affairs, a Cabinet level position wherein he would oversee all metahuman related operations for the federal government.

Among the most notable CBI agents are the aforementioned Sarge Steel, King Faraday, and former Teen Titan Roy Harper. After leaving the Titans, Harper would work for the CBI as a special agent–it was during this period he met Jade Nguyen, the assassin known as Chesire, and conceived their daughter Lian.

Eventually, the CBI would be incorporated into the Department of Extranormal Operations.

The Agency

The Agency was a group led by former Doom Patrol member Valentina Vostok that aimed to monitor superheroes. When Amanda Waller presented her plan to reform Task Force X, the Agency was reorganized into Checkmate. Among its divisions was Project: Peacemaker.

Project: Peacemaker

Project Peacemaker was the program that created and maintained Christopher Smith’s activities as Peacemaker. Originally, Project Peacemaker was a division of the Agency. When Task Force X was revived under Amanda Waller’s proposal, the Agency was reorganized into Checkmate, and Project Peacemaker is implied to have been made its own entity. However, when Task Force X was dissolved after The Janus Directive, Project Peacemaker became folded into Checkmate under the supervision of Sarge Steel.

The Department of Extranormal Affairs (D.E.O.)

In terms of real-world publication, the DEO began in 1998 as DC’s effort to begin consolidating all of the various federal metahuman organizations under one umbrella. In this author’s opinion, this was for the better.

The Department of Extranormal Operations is the U.S. government’s most modern and comprehensive agency to assess and combat metahuman threats through intelligence gathering, field operatives, and their own research.

The DEO conducts extensive research on metahumans and extranormal entities, with various degrees of transparency or consent. The DEO has been depicted to hold individuals against their will in order to study them, to the point of sending either their own agents or other affiliated groups to hunt down subjects that escape. This research seemed to be, in its early depictions, its primary focus. However, the DEO would take broader forays into intelligence, using that information for good… and sometimes to blackmail heroes into working for them.

In most depictions, the DEO is led by Director Bones, a former member of Infinity Inc, who reports to the federal Director of Metahuman Affairs. Bones is the direct supervisor of operative Cameron Chase, who has proved herself an exceptional agent. Through Chase, Kate Spencer–the Manhunter–was brought in to work for the DEO for some time.

The DEO is expansive enough to have several subdivisions within it. One such group was the Department of Metahuman Affairs, where Wonder Woman would work after Infinite Crisis. This subdivision would focus specifically on gathering and preparing intelligence on active metahumans, should the government need it. This subdivision would be led by Sarge Steel, who had left the White House upon the election of Lex Luthor and Luthor’s subsequent appointment of Amanda Waller to Secretary for Metahuman Affairs.

Another group known to be active during Luthor’s presidency was Knightwatch, a more militaristic division that responded to possible metahuman attacks on federal personnel and buildings.

The DEO’s research facilities are detailed in various comics across the 90s. It is gradually revealed that the DEO either maintains or sponsors a variety of training camps and research facilities, sometimes called “orphanages,” that hold metahumans under various states of duress. One example is Secret, the Young Justice member who is shown escaping from a DEO orphanage, and later gets Young Justice’s help shutting down similar experimentation programs. A group of metahumans who escape from the DEO collectively get taken in by the Titans. Conversely, some of the individuals who go on to be the Relative Heroes are depicted to be in a more traditional fostering environment, though it is still connected to the DEO.

Within the continuity of the Supergirl TV show, as part of the Arrowverse, the DEO is a governmental organization that specifically deals with extraterrestrial threats and encounters.

All Purpose Enforcement Squad (A.P.E.S.)

The All Purpose Enforcement Squad is an international, interdepartmental group of highly trained special agents. APES features most prominently in the Young Justice series, represented by Donald Fite and Ishido Maad.

While APES has connections to international organizations such as Interpol and Scotland Yard, they seem primarily U.S. based, as APES was the primary group trying to recover Secret, a metahuman who escaped from a DEO research facility.

Project Cadmus

Project Cadmus, sometimes also known as the DNA Project, is a government supported genetic research lab. Cadmus is involved with cloning and gene sequencing for the purpose of creating new life, with their most famous creation being Superboy.

Originally led by Director Paul Westfield, Cadmus employed various scientists engaged with genetic manipulation. The most notorious of these scientists was Dabney Donovan, who created “DNAliens” with inhuman powers. These DNAliens include Dubbilex, the grey skinned, horned telepath who would serve as a mentor to Superboy. Cadmus also employed the adult members of the original Newsboy Legion. These adults cloned themselves to create a new Newsboy Legion, and additionally cloned former NYPD officer Jim Harper–the original Guardian. This new cloned Guardian would serve as head of security of Cadmus.

Donovan was eventually fired from Cadmus due to the extremity of his experiments. Donovan would go on to align himself with The Agenda, another genetic lab responsible for their own Superboy clone: Match. Cadmus would also have an enemy in the form of the Evil Factory, led by Mokkari and Simyan, servants of Darkseid.

After a virus affecting clones and DNAliens breaks out, Cadmus began to receive intense scrutiny. A purification by fire was attempted, with missiles aimed to destroy sections of Metropolis and stop the virus. After the missiles were stopped, Donovan revealed himself to be the mastermind of the virus and killed Westfield, leading Mickey Cannon to be named the new administrative director of Cadmus. This scrutiny forced Cadmus to withdraw from the public eye, going deeper underground.

Under Cannon, Dabney would be kept imprisoned in Cadmus to serve as a scientific advisor under armed guard. Cannon also brought in Serling Roquette to be the new head of genetics–Roquette would eventually be responsible for curing Superboy of the genetic quirk that kept him from aging. Cadmus would continue to withdraw from attention, especially under the presidency of Lex Luthor.

Human Defense Corps

The Human Defense Corps was a group started under President Luthor’s administration with the goal of having an entirely non-metahuman taskforce that could respond to meta-level threats. This was in line with Luthor’s goal of reducing dependency on superheroes, and as such only recruited from decorated military veterans.

A specific subgroup within the Human Defense Corps was Squad K, a division specifically armed and trained to take on Kryptonian targets.

A.R.G.U.S.

You may have noticed that I didn’t put what A.R.G.U.S. stands for up above. That’s because sources disagree. According to the wiki, A.R.G.U.S. stands for Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-humans. A.R.G.U.S. was created post-Flashpoint to be a governmental organization associated with the Department of Homeland Security. Specifically, A.R.G.U.S. aims to support super- and meta-human endeavors, rather than having an antagonistic relationship with the superhuman community.

A.R.G.U.S. took on a life of its own within the TV Arrowverse shows, where it’s called the Advanced Research Group United Support. There, A.R.G.U.S. is the de facto government agency for dealing with metahuman threats. It was formerly led by Amanda Waller before leadership passed to Lyla Michaels.

Spyral

Before I start to give the details on Spyral, I have to disclaim a few things about it. Spyral was first mentioned in the New Earth timeline, during Grant Morrison’s time with Batman Incorporated (2011). This was immediately before Flashpoint and the New 52 reboot. However, this run of Batman Incorporated kept going within the New Earth continuity past when Flashpoint happened, meaning that the comics had to disclaim that they were still the old continuity, even though the reboot happened. But then! Batman Incorporated (2012) was a direct sequel to the New Earth run, even though this Volume 2 explicitly happens in the post-reboot continuity.

All of this to say, Spyral is an organization that has roots in the New Earth continuity, but was largely fleshed out in the post-Flashpoint universe. Because of the relative lack of information in the pre-Flashpoint continuity, however, we can assume a lot of the later established details can be retroactively applied.

Technically, Spyral is not a U.S. agency. Originally, Spyral was founded during the Cold War to be a United Nations affiliated spy group. The U.N. made former Nazi spy Otto Netz, under the pseudonym Agent Zero, the head of the organization. He was subsequently tasked with recruiting Spyral’s agents and building the organization for the U.N.

Spyral continued into the 80s, at which point Netz was revealed to be a double agent and imprisoned in a lighthouse. Though the organization seemingly collapsed at that point, Spyral’s operations continued. At some point before his imprisonment, Netz recruited Gotham City socialite Kathy Webb Kane into Spyral and tasked her with discovering the identity of the Batman. Kathy developed the Batwoman persona to get close to Batman, though the revelation that Netz was her father caused her to break off contact with both Batman and retreat from Spyral. Kathy Webb Kane was believed to have been killed by Ben Turner, the Bronze Tiger, during his period of being controlled by the League of Assassins.

Netz would be broken out of his imprisonment by the Leviathan Organization, which is a militaristic group led by Talia al Ghul, after her estrangement from her father Ra’s al Ghul. Leviathan seeks to undo much of modern society in order to rebuild the world in a “better” way. Talia set Netz up as Doctor Dedalus to combat Batman and his Batman Incorporated initiative, designing elaborate traps across the globe to keep Bruce Wayne and his operatives occupied. Netz was eventually killed within one of his traps by Damian Wayne, who was attempting to save his father.

It was revealed after Netz’s death that Kathy Webb Kane was still alive, and had faked her own demise in order to become the secret headmistress of Spyral. After Netz’s death, the U.N. officially reactivated Spyral in order to combat Leviathan’s continued growth.

Spyral operates out of St. Hadrian’s Finishing School for Girls. Initially in the New Earth continuity, the school had been a Leviathan facility, training young women as infiltrators and assassins. It was the site of Stephanie Brown’s mission as Batgirl on behalf of Batman Incorporated, and she and Batman managed to stop the Leviathan plot. In the post-Flashpoint continuity, St. Hadrian’s is Spyral’s base, where elite students are trained as spies. It’s assumed that Spyral just took control after ousting Leviathan.

After Dick Grayson was publically unmasked as Nightwing, he joined Spyral to investigate the organization. During this period, he worked with Helena Bertinelli, who was working as the Matron of Spyral. Grayson would continue as Agent 37 of Spyral for some time, until his identity was restored. At that point, he and Bertinelli both returned to Gotham to take up the mantles of Nightwing and Huntress, respectively. With Bertinelli’s departure, directorship of Spyral and the title of Patron passed to Agent-1, the operative known as Tiger.

#dc comics #amanda waller #suicide squad #sasha bordeaux #checkmate #meta #my writing

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