Rick Flag
41 years ago - Rick Flag is born.
24 years ago - 17-year-old Rick enlists in the military and qualifies for special forces training.
21 years ago - 20-year-old Rick works in combat zones worldwide.
16 years ago - 25-year-old Rick starts working as an Argus covert operative.
14 years ago - 27-year-old Rick is recruited by Amanda Waller as her primary agent. He becomes the field leader of the new government-controlled Freedom Fighters.
5 years ago - 36-year-old Rick dies on a mission with Taskforce X.
If we had to guess, we'd say most fans know Rick Flag from the two Suicide Squad movies where he's played by a very charsimatic Joel Kinnaman, where the huge uptick in likeablility from one movie to the next was really evident in this character in particular. This was a good indication of just how tricky it can be to take a character meant to be the no-nonsense leader and make them cool, but in this case the role he plays in such a dynamic book is really what makes Flag a character you want to include.
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Rick Flag's Comic HistoryWhen John Ostrander rebooted the Suicide Squad in 1986, introducing the idea of a government team using supervillains as operatives and created one of the most dynamic and innovative new characters in the DC catalog in Amanda Waller, he also included one more character that was a throwback to the original Suicide Squad from their appearances back in the Brave and the Bold in the sixties, where the team was led by Rick Flag. Here we meet Flag's son, Rick Flag Jr. They younger Flag is a career military man and agent who agrees to lead the team, and tries to be their moral compass.
It's a pretty thankless position, forcing Flag to often pay the role of babysitter to a team full of reprobates, but the overall series was so interesting and well written that he managed to be a complex and compelling character, right up until his death in issue #26. His death heightened the stakes of the series, showing that no one was safe. There have been a ton of subsequent Suicide Squad series, and of course it was only a matter of time before Flag's death was retconned. He's gone on to appear in practically every one of those follow-up series, especially after he was featured in both Squad movies, but his time with the 'original' Squad and his death, are easily the biggest contribution he's made to DC's overall continuity. |
Our Rick Flag StoryTo begin, we're not doing an earlier version of the Suicide Squad before the Amanda Waller version, so we don't need a separate Rick Flag Sr & Jr. By making him the main operative for Amanda Waller, we get to do more with him by making him the first field leader of the Freedom Fighters before the team is taken away from her, setting him up to become the leader of Waller's new pet project.
Like we said earlier, Flag's biggest contribution to the overall continuity is his death. It's a massive moment in the development of the Suicide Squad, and we're taking it even further, making it a major moment in the development of the team overall, with several members escaping before a new lineup can be assembled. The fun of the Suicide Squad is in how morally complex it can get, but part of what makes that work is having a straight shooter like Flag in the mix. It's really cool when you have a character with such a clearly defined role to play. |
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