Amanda Waller

Amanda Waller

## Biography

### Early Life

Amanda Waller was born Amanda Blake and grew up in Chicago, Illinois, where she lived in the Cabrini-Green housing projects. However, she always aimed big, and enlisted in the marine corps after finishing high school.

In the corps, she met Joseph Waller and fell head over heels for him. After both completed their service commitment, they married and moved to St Roch, Louisiana. Joseph enrolled in police academy while Amanda began taking political science classes at a community college.

Amanda was unaware that while taking classes, her husband was struggling on the police force, refusing to be a bagman for local gangs, making him no friends on the force. Thankfully, an old military friend pulled through. Jacob Kane approached the couple and offered both of them a spot on a covert ops team simply called Team 7. Joseph accepted and Amanda was going to when she discovered that she was pregnant.

They moved to the newly established National City, where Jacob’s connections landed Amanda a job as a congressional aide, while Joseph would drop off grid for weeks at a time to complete an assignment. She gave birth to their first daughter, Leota, while Joseph was away. Her cousin, Florence Crawley, helped take care of Leota during the early months of her life. The next few years went on that way, with Waller growing in favor and making political connections. She had two more kids, Jesse and Coretta.

One day, a knock came at the door and Jacob Kane told her that her husband had died. But he couldn’t offer any further details and even couldn’t let her see his body. The next day, Waller stormed into his commanding officer’s office and demanded to know what happened to her husband. He revealed that Joseph had given his life in an attempt to save Kate, Gabrielle, and Elizabeth Kane’s lives following their kidnapping. This put Waller on the outs from Kane.

### The Wall

Through her connections, she secured a job in the recently formed Department of Extranormal Operations. There, she was one of a few people to gain favor with the DEO’s secret leader, Mister Bones. When Maxwell Lord left his position of Executive Director of the UN sponsored ARGUS, Bones put in a strong recommendation for Waller to fill the newly opened leadership position.

As the new Executive Director, Waller ran a tight ship, earning her the not so flattering nickname of “the Wall”. However, with the Metahuman population boom, Waller began to realize that the world needed a different way to fight these battles.

In the early 2000s, Jesse joined the United States Air Force and was killed when Thaal Sinestro staged a coup against the Green Lantern Corps in the Mojave Desert. Angered by the careless collateral damage, and not wanting to see any more good American soldiers needlessly killed, and inspired by the efforts of Jacob Kane’s Team 7, Waller turned in a proposal for Task Force X.

Task Force X became her own personal pet project, offering reduced sentences to Metahuman and super criminal inmates of Belle Reve Penitentiary in exchange for their services to the US Government (and occasionally other nations) on top secret, ultra dangerous black-ops missions. Bones was a fan of the idea and let her put together the first iteration.

Waller commanded the Force’s first mission on March 30th, 2006, when they were dispatched to Star City to save June Moone, who was trapped in the city in the midst of a demonic invasion. The mission was a success, but lost only one of their members, gaining the team the nickname “Suicide Squad”, due to its danger. Bones commanded Waller on a job well done, and so Task Force X became a thriving government enterprise. She relocated back to St Roch to be closer to the team’s main base of Belle Reve. She got her own office in the penitentiary where she attended to all of her ARGUS duties.

Her time on Task Force X would encounter a few difficulties. First, one of their agents, code named Duchess, turned out to be an Apokoliptan Fury in disguise and led an attack that got an Intergang associate out of Belle Reve. Later, the Squad was tasked by congressman Derek Tolliver to infiltrate the pirate nation of Coryana, where one of the members was revealed to be a traitor resulting in field leader Rick Flag being shot and suffering a psychological break.

Waller condemned Tolliver for sending them on the mission, eventually punching him in the face. She was later confronted by Batman, who encountered the team in Coryana. He threatened to expose the team, prompting Waller to threaten to expose his involvement in the League of Assassins, his black ops team “the Outsiders”, and even his secret identity.

While Flag recovered, Waller assigned Barbara Minerva as the field leader for the next mission. Following that mission, Waller discovered that her position as commander of Task Force X had become open knowledge among much of the U.S government, resulting in senators, congressmen, and business owners attempting to hire the team’s services. Feeling disillusioned with the team’s thesis, Waller shut down the operation, and threatened to reveal Bones’ true position as leader of the DEO to the public should she catch wind that the squad was still operating.

She stayed on as director of ARGUS and focused her free time on spending time with her daughters. Coretta was putting herself through college to become a schoolteacher, and Leota had joined Checkmate as a security courier. When the death of Jason Todd occurred, Waller personally served the Justice League with their cease-and-desist order and detained the Founders until they shut down the League.

Reminded of her own son’s pointless death, Waller reinstated Task Force X and assembled a group of operatives to track down Joker’s Laugh Pack allies, eventually capturing Harley Quinn, where she became a mainstay on the team. However, in order to bring the team back, the government demanded a more effective contingency policy, opting to inject bombs into the necks of Squad members instead of explosive arm braces.

She met with then presidential candidate Lex Luthor, who congratulated her on her well-oiled machine in the Squad, and then offered her a position as Vice President in his cabinet should he win. Waller refused, instead submitting a recommendation list of other candidates.

After speaking with her daughter, she learned about some mysterious goings-on at Checkmate. She captured six former Task Force X operatives and under the alias of Mockingbird assigned this "Secret Six" with investigating Checkmate's OMAC Project. Only one operative knew of her identity as Mockingbird. The Six crossed paths with another group of investigators - including Blue Beetle and Huntress. The Six teamed up with them, later helping the Birds of Prey battle the League of Assassins in Gotham City.

After the OMAC Project was dissolved and Luthor was impeached, Waller began to question the loyalty of several of ARGUS' operatives, including their Chief of Logistics, Emilia Harcourt, Chief of Security John Economos, agent Clemson Murn, and asked Leota to be her man on the inside. She assigned all of them to the top-secret Project Last Line, and sent them to Evergreen, WA with the second Peacemaker to investigate a believed alien colony. They eventually discovered the town was infested by the Imperium and Waller ordered its destruction, however J'onn J'onzz revealed himself to be Clemson Murn and talked her down.

Since then, Waller has gotten Task Force X back up-and-running and is much more selective in the team members and choices for their missions, and is careful to keep it way off-the-books.

## Notes

* In Earth 76, there has been great effort to make Amanda Waller NOT a villain. She operates in the grey, yes, but it is more akin to her original characterization as someone who has a care for the Squad members as people, rather than her more recent completely callous portrayals.
* Her look is inspired by *Justice League Unlimited*.
* Several of her actions and her origin is from the original John Ostrander run of *Suicide Squad*.