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"Under & Over": After Harley Quinn and OMAC dropped an avalanche on top of both Amanda Waller's and the Thinker's Suicide Squads - the latter

Quote1 The hard part - the part of my job that is less technical and quite literally more of an art - is getting the good guys and the bad guys to do exactly what I want. Quote2
Amanda Waller

Suicide Squad (Volume 4) #27 is an issue of the series Suicide Squad (Volume 4) with a cover date of March, 2014. It was published on January 15, 2014.

Synopsis for "Under & Over"

After Harley Quinn and OMAC dropped an avalanche on top of both Amanda Waller's and the Thinker's Suicide Squads - the latter of which having been created as an elaborate ploy to gain OMAC - are striving to stay alive. Power Girl's endurance in holding the mountainside up, preventing them from being crushed, is waning. Impulsively, Steel smashes through the debris to reveal a clear area, with a tunnel below and a stairway leading upward. They split up in the hope that one of the two avenues will lead to freedom.

Frustrated, Power Girl muses to herself that she shouldn't be there. Having come from another world completely, the idea of being tricked into fighting for a villain was as alien to her on her homeworld as she is to this world. She was universally loved, though no one knew he she was. She'd had a family there. This world, though, is darker than hers ever was, and the woman she had been there died upon her arrival here. And while she doesn't know just who she is anymore, she knows for sure that Amanda Waller will answer for her deceptions.

Once, the Unknown Soldier was just one man, but that man was lost along with his family when they died in an act of terrorism. After that, he became the perfect covert agent, adopting disguises within disguises and acting as double, triple, and quadruple agents to the point that the identity he gave up is forgotten. Even so, he has more work to do to prevent further random acts of violence, and that means getting out of this frozen tomb alive, and getting answers.

Steel, too, is seeking answers when he gets out. He learned early on that having the power to do good makes one perhaps too sensitive to spotting those who might do evil. And that sensitivity is what prompted him to leave Metropolis. For years, he watched the Superman fighting titans across his city, and he finally decided that he would go to places where people had real problems; places where basic food and shelter needs were not being met. He learned, through his travels that a real hero isn't defined by the fights he wins, but by the conflicts he prevents. From that unique perspective, he suspects that Amanda Waller is the architect of the same evil she is trying to fight. A woman like her could put her resources into doing some legitimate good - and he intends to see that she does, when he gets free.

Captain Boomerang's mother was an aborigine, and when he was a boy, she had told him an old folk tale about a snake called Bobbi-Bobbi. In that tale, the snake had seen a starving boy who could not reach the fruit of a tree for sustenance. Bobbi-Bobbi could not reach the fruit either, and so he gave the boy one of his ribs, which became the first boomerang. With it, the child knocked the fruit from the tree. When the tree's fruit began to run out, though, the snake ate the boy.

When he was young, he had been given a boomerang himself, and he used it at first to kill small things like snakes, then dingoes, and then other boys. After a life of crime, he wound up at Belle Reve, and Waller had recruited him for the Suicide Squad. When he is free, he hopes to become the snake in the story, rather than the boy, and kill both Harley Quinn and Amanda Waller for what they did to him.

Warrant, meanwhile, had done his homework, training and serving for ten years with the Israeli special forces. He used that training to serve justice, tracking down potential terrorists before they even took action. Officially, his vigilantism was condemned, and he was deported. Unofficially, they set him up in Metropolis with an expense account - with the same mission as before. And while it may appear that he was duped by a fake Waller, taking the bait was just one step in getting closer to one of his targets: Deadshot.

Deadshot, on the other hand, never wastes a bullet. While he may spray them around, he remembers each one, and each one had a purpose. He remembers as far back as ten years ago, when he put a bullet through a gangster's ear from fifty yards away. He takes such care that he can't even conceive of firing his weapon recklessly. He is a professional - and that means not a single shot is fired if he doesn't get paid. In some ways, though, he envies - even admires - Harley Quinn for her chaotic behaviour. But if she's responsible for burying him there, she will die by his hands.

As Deadshot and Warrant scout the tunnels, they discover a waterway beneath it when Warrant unexpectedly falls into it. As Warrant clings to a hunk of scrap metal for his life, Deadshot muses that killing him now would be too easy. Instead, he fires two shots at the metal handhold, forcing Warrant to let go and be swept away by the current. Now, Deadshot will have the luxury of being able to tell the truth when he says he didn't kill Warrant. After all, he only kills for money.

Amanda Waller's job has always been to tell the good guys from the bad. A harder aspect of that job, though, is convincing the good guys and bad guys to do what she wants them to do. To her, they are assets, and right now, she hopes that if her assets survived the mountain's collapse, they will be motivated to come back to Belle Reve to help her. Clearly, OMAC is dangerous - and certainly too dangerous to be in the hands of the wrong person. If her plan to make King Shark and Kamo take OMAC down fails, then she has no other choice - she has to hack into the Thinker's personal computer terminal.

When Waller does just that, she is surprised to find someone else on the Thinker's network. It is Kevin Kho, and he is begging for help after being trapped inside OMAC.

Appearing in "Under & Over"

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Notes

  • During Captain Boomerang's flashback, his mother calls him "Owen" instead of George or Digger. This may have been an editorial error, whereupon the creative team confused the characters Captain Boomerang (George "Digger" Harkness) and Captain Boomerang, Jr. (Owen Mercer).



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