| Amanda Waller | |
|---|---|
 Amanda Waller as the White Queen Art by Jesus Saiz |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Legends #1, (November 1986) |
| Created by | John Ostrander (writer) Len Wein (writer) John Byrne (artist) |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Dr. Amanda Blake Waller |
| Team affiliations | Checkmate Suicide Squad United States Government Agency Shadow Fighters |
| Notable aliases | The Wall, White Queen, Black King |
| Abilities | Highly trained in logistics, strategic management, military tactics, game theory, and espionage. |
Dr. Amanda Blake Waller is a character published by DC Comics. She first appeared in Legends #1 in 1986, and was created by John Ostrander, Len Wein, and John Byrne. In 2009, Amanda Waller was ranked as IGN's 60th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time. [1]
Contents |
Publication history
The people most responsible for shaping the character in her earliest appearances were John Ostrander and Kim Yale in the pages of the second Suicide Squad series in the late 1980s.
Nicknamed "the Wall", she is a former congressional aide and government agent often placed in charge of the Suicide Squad, a semi-secret government-run group of former supervillains working in return for amnesty. She also was the former leader (code rank: White Queen) of the covert-ops organization, Checkmate. She later served as Secretary of Metahuman Affairs under President Lex Luthor, before being arrested in the wake of Luthor's public fall from grace. Waller was recently reassigned to the leadership of Checkmate as White Queen, but has been forced to resign because of her involvement in Operation Salvation Run.
Fictional character biography
Early history
Amanda has been established as a widow who escaped Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects with her surviving family after one of her sons, one of her daughters and her husband were murdered, Waller eventually obtained a doctorate in political science (as revealed in Checkmate v.2 # 1 where she is addressed as "Doctor Waller") and became a congressional aide. During that work, she discovered the existence of the first two incarnations of the Squad. Taking elements from both of these, she proposed the development of its third incarnation to the White House and was placed in charge upon its approval.
Federal service years
The Agency was formed by Amanda Waller to serve as a small, quasi-independent branch of Task Force X. Valentina Vostok brought former NYPD Lieutenant Harry Stein into the Agency as an operative. Amanda Waller later promoted Stein to the command position and demoted Vostok. Harry Stein would later reorganize the Agency and name it Checkmate.
Waller's tenure as the official in charge of the third Suicide Squad was tumultuous and controversial. Despite many successes, she developed a habit of defying her superiors in Washington in order to achieve goals both legitimate and personal on more than one occasion. The earliest conflict between her and her superiors revolved around the leadership of the Suicide Squad. Although she proposed that the Bronze Tiger, the man she had helped out of his brainwashing, lead the team he was instead relegated to second-in-command, and Rick Flag Jr. was made the leader. Waller resentfully presumed the situation to be racially charged, related to not only her own status as a black woman, but also Bronze Tiger's own skin tone, although the Tiger himself did not believe this was a factor.
Her relationship with the Squad itself was one of mutual dislike. Most of the team's criminal members didn't really take to Waller's methods (most notably Captain Boomerang), and even the team's heroes were often at odds with Waller. Waller's inability to deal and compromise with her people led to Nemesis' departure from the team and the death of a US senator, which indirectly caused the death of Rick Flag Jr. Those type of conflicts, however, were not only limited to her superiors and her team, but also extended to Batman, who opposed the forming of the Suicide Squad (although he would later help to reform it). Nonetheless, the team remained loyal to her, often choosing to side with her instead of the government.
It was ultimately revealed that the reason that Amanda Waller even kept the heroes such as Nightshade around, was in order for them to act as her conscience. Over the course of her first run with the Suicide Squad, her actions became increasingly erratic as she fought to retain control of the Squad. This was heightened by the public revelation of the Suicide Squad, and her being officially replaced, although her 'replacement' was in fact an actor, and Waller remained the team's director.
Even that secret would eventually be revealed and Amanda Waller would be put on trial. During this time, the Squad also became involved in an interagency conflict in a crossover between the Checkmate and Suicide Squad titles called the Janus Directive.
One of the field missions is against her will, as many members of the Squad, Waller included, are forcibly kidnapped and taken to Apokolips. This is because team member Duchess remembered her past as Lashina of the Female Furies and wished to return home with suitable sacrifices. The Squad suffers fatalities battling Apokolips forces, with Waller personally confronting Granny Goodness.
She eventually found herself serving prison time for her pursuit of an organized crime cartel based in New Orleans called the LOA and killing its leadership, using Squad operatives in the process.
The Squad's rebirth
Waller is eventually pardoned and released a year later to reorganize the Squad as a freelance mercenary group at the behest of Sarge Steel to deal with a crisis in Vlatava, Count Vertigo's home country. Afterwards, the Suicide Squad performs a variety of missions.
During the course of her renewed tenure with this team, Amanda Waller became closer to her operatives, even accompanying them on their field missions. This allows for her and her team to bond more effectively, although she retains her dominant and threatening personality.
Waller quits after a later field mission, in which she personally takes down the seemingly immortal dictator of a small, South American island nation.
Soon after, Amanda Waller organizes many superheroes to confront the villain Eclipso. Again, she would confront Sarge Steel. Her first attempt at a team, formed with the assistance of Bruce Gordon and his wife Mona, did not go well. Most of the team are brutally murdered infiltrating Eclipso's stronghold. Her second attempt with a much larger team has much more success.
She eventually rejoins federal service, initially as Southeastern regional director for the Department of Extranormal Operations. She is promoted to Secretary of Metahuman Affairs as a member of the Lex Luthor Presidential Administration.
International Service
Lex Luthor's brief tenure in office leads to Amanda Waller being jailed. This doesn't last long. She is released and Luthor's successor, Jonathan Vincent Horne, orders her to take command of the secret agent organization Checkmate. The organization had been shaken up due to the OMAC Project debacle and the related murderous leadership of Maxwell Lord, whom Waller has had previous history with. Waller takes the rank of Black King until the United States and United Nations decide what to do with that organization. In the latter issues of 52, Waller is shown commissioning the imprisoned Atom Smasher to organize a new Suicide Squad to attack Black Adam and his allies. This ends with the death of Squad member Persuader and the expected public relations turn against the Black Marvel family.
In the revamped Checkmate series set in the One Year Later continuity, Waller is shown to have been assigned by the UN to serve as Checkmate's White Queen, a member of its senior policy-making executive. Due to her previous activities, her appointment is contingent on her having no direct control over operations.[2] Regardless, she continues to pursue her own agenda, secretly using the Suicide Squad to perform missions in favor of American interests[3] and blackmailing Fire.[4] It is also implied that she may have betrayed a mission team in an attempt to protect her secrets[5] and facilitated an attack on Checkmate headquarters for her own gain.[6]
She then is in charge of Operation Salvation Run, an initiative involving the mass deportation of supervillains to an alien world. When this was discovered by the rest of Checkmate, she was forced into resigning as White Queen in exchange for their delay in revealing what the US government was doing.[6] She continues to run the Suicide Squad, and has been implanted with nanotechnology to allow her to directly control Chemo during missions.[6]
During the Superman/Batman storyline "K", it is revealed that Waller has hoarded Kryptonite and used it to power an anti-Superman group called the Last Line, and a Doomsday-like creature codenamed "All-American Boy", who has Kryptonite shards growing out of his body. All-American Boy, (real name: Josh Walker) was deceived into an experiment to use Kryptonite to bond cell scrapings taken from Doomsday to a human host, battles Superman, devastating Smallville in the process. Batman, with the help of Brannon, the Last Line's leader, locate Josh's parents, who convince him to stop. Waller is forced to pay towards repairing Smallville in return for her dealings in the AAB project to remain secret.
In other media
Television
Justice League Unlimited
Amanda Waller appears in the animated television show Justice League Unlimited, played by Emmy-nominated voice- actress CCH Pounder. This version of the character leads the top secret Project Cadmus, a group that was formed at the behest of the United States government to create a counterforce to the Justice League should they go rogue. She is at first distrustful of the League, which, aside from Cadmus' projects, manifests itself in her frequent dealings with Batman, which form most of the interaction between Cadmus and the League. In her first appearance, she is able to rattle Batman by subtly hinting that she knows his secret identity ("rich boy"). When Batman discovers her identity, she calls him out on the very real threat the League would pose if they went rogue, and Batman is actually convinced that she might be right in "The Doomsday Sanction".
Two projects in particular Cadmus creates under her watch are the Ultimen and Galatea. The Ultimen are a team of superheroes reminiscent of the lesser known Super Friends (specifically Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, the Wonder Twins, and Samurai). They are artificially-created lifeforms programmed with implanted memories, intended to be a superhero team that would remain loyal to the government. However, the cloning process only gives them a lifespan of a year or two at most. Galatea is a clone of Supergirl (though her costume is modeled after that of Power Girl), aged to maturity so as to make her stronger. In contrast to the Ultimen, there is no apparent problem with her lifepsan.
When the Question discovers the project and is captured, Waller and Lex Luthor give orders to Dr. Moon to interrogate him. Shortly after the Question is rescued by Superman and the Huntress, Lex Luthor takes advantage of the incident to momentarily hijack the binary fusion cannon equipped on League's satellite headquarters, using it to obliterate the since-evacuated compound, causing massive collateral damage. This has the effect of both falsely implicating the League and drawing off a large number of their members to assist in rescue efforts. In response, Waller sends an army of cloned Ultimen under Galatea's control against the League, intending to overload the reactor on the Watchtower with the team on it. Batman presents evidence of Luthor's deception and Waller calls off the attack; though Galatea ignores the order, the attack fails anyway.
With the founding members of the League in tow, she personally goes to arrest Luthor and stops his attempt to transfer his consciousness into a copy Amazo. It is revealed that Brainiac implanted a nano-holistic copy of himself within Luthor's body years earlier, during the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Ghost in the Machine", and the Justice League is forced to defeat the two of them combined. Unknown to them during this battle, Waller had ordered a massive airstrike on standby to kill the combined villains, heroes, and even herself had the heroes had failed to stop the menace. All this occurred in the four-part arc in the second season, including the episodes "Question Authority", "Flashpoint", "Panic in the Sky", and "Divided We Fall".
The final episode of the first season, "Epilogue", is set sixty-five years past the current Justice League timeline and 25 years after the events of the Batman Beyond series. In the episode, McGinnis discovers that he is a partial genetic copy of Bruce Wayne; knowing that the Cadmus Project was the only group to have technology advanced enough to alter DNA, he seeks out Waller to find out about his own origins. Waller reveals that she was responsible for changing Terry's father's genes, having done so in an effort to create a replacement for the current Batman, who was noticeably losing his edge. She even arranged to have Terry's parents murdered by Andrea Beaumont (also known as the Phantasm from the 1993 animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm) whilst he watched in order to replicate Bruce's childhood; Beaumont ultimately refused, as it would dishonor all Bruce stood for. Waller gave up on her project, but the murder of Terry's father by Derek Powers provided the necessary motivation. Despite her belief that Terry taking up the role of Batman is a sign from God she encourages him to make his own choices. Waller also admits that many of her actions have been reprehensible, and she will have much to account for with God when her time comes, thus showing she is not a self-deluding villain.
Smallville
Pam Grier will be playing Amanda Waller in multiple episodes of Smallville's ninth season.[7]
Film
Superman/Batman Public Enemies
CCH Pounder reprises her role as Amanda Waller in the movie adaptation of the comic book: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. In this version, Waller is depicted as a more sympathetic character, though visually more obese than previously seen in animation.
Smallville: Absolute Justice
Pam Grier will also be playing Amanda Waller in Smallville: Absolute Justice, the movie that takes place inside the events of Smallvilles ninth season.
Supermax
She is reportedly featured in David S. Goyer's script for an upcoming Green Arrow film project entitled "Super Max". [8]
Toys
Mattel will release Amanda Waller as a figure in their Justice League Unlimited toyline at some point in 2009.
References
External links
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