"The End" Week: Suicide Squad #15!

The Suicide Squad premiered in America 08/05/21, then the Peacemaker show premiered 01/13/22, and this hit the racks 05/03/22: really seems like there should've been more of a boost in sales, but I maintain it's not really a Squad without Firestorm villains, like a martini with no olives...or gin. From 2022, Suicide Squad #15, "Defunded, part 2" Written by Dennis "Hopeless" Hallum, pencils by Jesús Merino and Eduardo Pansica, inks by Jesús Merino and Júlio Ferreira.

Although some other plotlines seem to be coasting to a stop, this one is mostly the Squad vs. Lex Luthor; as with Amanda Waller out of the picture, the team has to maintain their funding somehow. (Without reading the earlier issues, it looks like they were freelance under Rick Flag.) They make multiple attempts to kidnap Lex, to then ransom him for...actually, they haven't planned that far ahead. Lex is also more than a match for them, easily capturing almost all of them, but all according to plan.

The Squad at the time was Flag, Bloodsport, Peacemaker, Ambush Bug, Mirror Master, and...some others? Including a bunch of Superboy-Bizarros, Match. Matches. Bunch of 'em. Lex ends the issue, and the series, almost looking directly into the camera, "Task Force Lex? We'll see." The whole thing feels like a bit of a laugh for him: he might've underestimated them, but probably still could've turned it around.