Paul Kupperberg

Suicide Squad by John Ostrander, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Suicide Squad by John Ostrander Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the run that invented everything the concept is known for: Amanda Waller, the bomb in the neck, and the certainty that some of the team will not come back. Ostrander writes it as a Cold War espionage book that happens to use supervillains, and it remains far sharper than any adaptation of it. Amanda Waller keeps sending convicts on missions the government will deny, and in the second omnibus the bill starts arriving: congressional hearings, defections, and a body count among characters readers had come to like. Ostrander wrote the political thriller everyone else has been copying since.

Aquaman: The Death of a Prince Deluxe Edition collects the 1970s run in which Black Manta murders Aquaman's infant son and the character never fully recovers. It is the darkest thing DC published about Arthur Curry for decades, drawn largely by Jim Aparo, and it is the origin of the grief that every later writer — Peter David, Geoff Johns, Jeff Parker — has had to work around.

Suicide Squad by John Ostrander Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the run that invented everything the concept is known for: Amanda Waller, the bomb in the neck, and the certainty that some of the team will not come back. Ostrander writes it as a Cold War espionage book that happens to use supervillains, and it remains far sharper than any adaptation of it.