"The End" Week: Suicide Squad #66!

For this feature, I collect last issues throughout the year, and then usually start writing the posts around September. I'm a week away from this posting, but this was an issue I didn't think I would find easily: from 1992, Suicide Squad #66, "And Be a Villain!" Written by John Ostrander and Kim Yale, breakdowns by Geof Isherwood, finishes by Robert Campanella.

Although the roster had changed many times, this was the final mission of Amanda Waller's Suicide Squad; although she would be back at it later. In the jungles of Diabloverde, she leads the team against a knockoff Suicide Squad: villains working for hire and appropriating the name. The faux Squad is bodyguarding the seemingly deathless Guedhe, who seems like a metagene powered voodoo doctor with an army of zombies. On the way, Amanda and most of the rest face their personal demons in the jungle: for her, it's the guilt over all those who had died for the Squad. When it's over, that drives her to break up the team, and think about what to do with her life going forward.

The series ends with Count Vertigo trying to decide if he wants to live or not, by looking down the barrel of Deadshot's gun. There's also a nice retrospective from Ostrander on the book, where he mentions letters of input from Karl Kesel, who would be the next writer to use the Squad, in Superboy #13-15. Per Wikipedia, Kesel says he nearly killed off Captain Boomerang there!