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When did the Suicide Squad start to contain villains? Given the initial squad seems to have been formed of heroes. So here goes my question:

  1. Name the issue and launch date of the first villain to join the team.
  2. When (issue and launch date) the group consisted of majority villains?
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Legends #2, December 1986

While the original team wasn't made up of heroes, it was made up of soldiers who'd been convicted to serve on the most dangerous missions. However the soldiers had volunteered in order to redeem their past errors.

Star-Spangled War Stories #116

In Legends #2, under the command of Rick Flag Jr., Amanda Waller has Rick Flag recruit Deadshot to the secret team named "Task Force X". Over the next two issues, Amanda and Rick compiled the team of super villains to take on high risk missions. This team includes Blockbuster, Bronze Tiger, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot and Enchantress.

The Core team

After 1986, the team continued to be made up of various groups of villains, the full list of which can be found here

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    As a additional note: It has certainly not been unheard of for heroes to be affiliated with the Squad - logically enough, they often serve as the field leaders of the team. They have tended to associate with the team either due to feeling a need for redemption (Bronze Tiger being the best exemplar of this; Katana may fall into this group as well), or because they believe Task Force X can help them accomplish some task (Nightshade, who wanted help to find and rescue her brother; Rac Shade, who wanted to get home).
    – RDFozz
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 17:03
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    Also, the villain group known as the Secret Six (again, a team with previous incarnations of normal humans that we would generally consider the "good guys"), pre-Flashpoint, has frequently been considered as a related team. Generally, they were a group of villains who were not necessarily acting as one would expect a group of villains to act (taking down heroes, committing major heists, etc.). The presence of Deadshot in the Secret Six, when he had generally been associated with the Suicide Squad since 1986, helped boost the connection.
    – RDFozz
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 17:09
  • "soldiers who'd been convicted" convicted of what? Conduct unbecoming? A felony? Some might consider a dishonorably discharged soldier (or a soldier convicted of a crime) a villain.
    – TylerH
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 20:05
  • They were convicted of crimes, they were criminals, however they weren't villains in the superhero terms. Which tends to be antagonists to a hero, they were convicts of petty crimes.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 20:12
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This happened in Legends #3 in January, 1987.

The new team initially consisted of Rick Flag Jr.,Blockbuster, Bronze Tiger, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and Enchantress (all villains, except Rick Flag).

The original Squad was quite different. It wasn't made of superheroes or supervillains, but rather a group of adventurous normal humans. It included Rick Flag Jr., the team leader and the only original member to be included in Waller's Squad, physicist Jess Bright, astronomer Dr. Hugh Evans, and flight medic Karin Grace.

It wasn't until Amanda Waller showed up that the Squad was reformed as we know it today.

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  • Rick Flag Sr. was in the original team, not Jr. Rick Flag Jr. is his son.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 13:43
  • @Edlothiad - I believe it's a bit more timey-wimey-Crisis-y than that, to coin a phrase. Karin Grace appeared in the early issues of Suicide Squad (1987), and clearly at that time the Rick Flag in the book was the same one who had been in the original team (Or, no one thought it was creepy that he was interested in his dad's ex). At some point the Rick Flag in that book definite did become Jr., and those early SS issues with Karin may have been retconned out of existence, but they are part of the book at the time.
    – RDFozz
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 16:26

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