Warning: Spoilers for Let Them Live!: Unpublished Tales from the DC Vault #1!

The first issue of DC’s new digital-first series Let Them Live!: Unpublished Tales from the DC Vault just answered one of DC’s biggest mysteries. This issue focuses on The Suicide Squad, giving the team a new target, and this target provides the answer to a major lingering question.

The Suicide Squad was not originally an expendable team of villains when it first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #25 in 1959. It was originally a team led by Rick Flag, Jr., that dealt with such perilous situations as giant serpents and meteor storms. In 1987, it became the villain team that fans know it to be, in the pages of Legends #3. It was given the code name Task Force X. Since then, The Suicide Squad has appeared in multiple animated features, the 2016 movie, and its upcoming reboot/sequel directed by James Gunn.

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Let Them Live!: Unpublished Tales from the DC Vault #1 features a team made-up of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Cinderstare, and Sledge. The target they are after is Dima Kondrev. Kondrev is a geneticist-engineer who Amanda Waller calls a madman. This character has never been mentioned or featured before. When the Suicide Squad arrives at their specified drop zone, they locate Kondrev and uncover the secret that ties him and the Squad together intrinsically.

The Suicide Squad is a team that works predominantly because of the nanite bombs placed in every member’s neck. In very few instances within the comics, enough pressure can be applied to team members to keep them in line without detonating them, but most teams are controlled through just the threatening presence of these explosives. So who made them? Dima Kondrev did. Kondrev tries to bargain with The Suicide Squad, telling them that he is being targeted because of his role in developing the nanites. He claims he can diffuse them, making it a tough call for the team to have to make. What do they do when presented with the guy who can potentially free them, but who also made them government pawns?

Kondrev spends several panels trying to convince Deadshot and the rest of the team not to kill him. He says he can free them using a certain frequency. Since he created them, this sounds plausible because he knows how they work. Dima even crafts an argument against Amanda Waller, calling out her tactics of manipulation. The standoff presented by the end of this issue and the opportunity given to The Suicide Squad is intriguing, but ultimately The Suicide Squad will call the shots on this mission. Regardless of Kondrev’s fate, The Suicide Squad and readers alike now know who created the technology that can make villains save the day or carry out hits based on the government’s (and/or Amanda Waller’s) whims.

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Samantha King
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Samantha King is a Comic News Writer for Screen Rant. She has a B.A. in English & American Literature with a concentration in Shakespeare and a minor in Creative Writing from UTEP. She also has a M.S. in Library Science from the University of North Texas.

Samantha used to get in trouble for reading comics in class back in high school, but she gets the last laugh. She took a graphic novel course in college and now gets paid to write about comics. She runs her own blog at: www.therealworldaccordingtosam.blogspot.com

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