Is DC Launching A Second Suicide Squad Book? Or Is It Something Bigger?

Spoilers ahead for the end of Justice League vs. Suicide Squad

At the end of DC’s latest big event miniseries, Justice League vs. Suicide Squad, the bad guys are defeated and scattered — some of them simply escape, while others join Batman’s Justice League America. Maxwell Lord, who brought them all together in the first place, finds himself in the last place he would want to be: In the custody of Amanda Waller.

He’s of course too dangerous for the Suicide Squad; the nature of his powers, coupled with his brains and ambitions, would make him almost impossible to control in the field.

He mocks Waller, then, as she’s basically being forced to care for him without getting anything out of it — and of course everyone knows that Waller doesn’t do anything unless she can get something out of it.

Which is when she drops the bomb that she thinks he would be perfect for “Task Force XI.”

The Suicide Squad, of course, is Task Force X, and for as long as we can recall, we’ve just assumed that the X was as in “X-factor” or to denote an exceptional or unusual threat, a la The X-Files.

It never occurred to us, even though Marvel has done substantively the same thing with the Weapon X Project in the past, that it could be the Roman numeral 10.

If Task Force X is a 10, though, it raises a few questions.

First and most obviously, what is “Task Force XI,” and how will it be different from either the Suicide Squad we know now, or the “beta version” of the Squad which Lord harnessed to make his attack on ARGUS in this miniseries?

There’s also the question of whether X being a 10 and XI being an 11 could have larger implications for the DC Universe. Does it imply, for instance, that ARGUS’s Task Force X, which has ties to Checkmate already, is also somehow tied to Team 7, the paramilitary group that saw (at least in its New 52 iteration) Amanda Waller team up with William Fairchild, Slade Wilson, and the parents of Black Canary?

Going in the other direction, then, the obvious question becomes whether Gen 13 is, in the Rebirth Universe, going to be reimagined as yet another generation of the concept?

Time will tell on this one. In the meantime, Justice League vs. Suicide Squad has turned out to be a really enjoyable event, so if you haven’t read it yet, check it out at your local comic shop or buy it digitally.