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How was it taking her into this area of the DCU?
Nicole Maines:It’s really gratifying!
I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time.
I had the Justice League, Teen Titans, Suicide Squad, and the Lantern Corps.
Everyone was like, “Suicide Squad?!
That wouldn’t make any sense!”
and I was like, “Challenge accepted.”
C’mon, that would be on top of Amanda Waller’s wish list!
The only villain that we have is Clock King.
Bizarro thinks he’s a hero.
Black Alice is sitting dead center in the middle of the morality chart.
I love Harley and Dreamer, but I knew I was going to love that.
They are the two most good characters, if that makes sense.
It was giving her a new cast that offsets her very well.
Even in that first issue, he kind of goes at her a little bit.
He’s kind of a mean girl!
Dreamer’s faced adversarial foils before, but how did you dig into that friction with Clock King?
I ask myself what everybody wants from being on the Squad.
What is everybody working towards, hoping to accomplish?
DC had sent me Batman: Killing Time, which was the last big Clock King issue.
It’s just something to kill time."
I wanted to delve more into him being this insecure and kind of petty figure.
Of everybody on the Squad, he stands to gain the most from working with Amanda Waller.
I love this for me!"
Coming out of Titans: Beast World, Amanda Waller is publicly recognized as a world hero.
How does the Suicide Squad, and especially Dreamer, see her?
She wants to get a full write-up on her new favorite toy.
How do the rest of the Squad fit into all of this?
His approach is different from Dreamer’s.
Whereas Dreamer has come to the conclusion that Waller is the bad guy, Deadeye is much more calculated.
He’s got to be more thoughtful about how he fights back against his aunt.
Then you have Harley, who has been through this so many times.
She was the kid who got out, and now she’s found herself back on Task Force X.
Does she want to throw it all away by fucking with Amanda Waller?
Black Alice is a complete nihilist.
She was like, “I’m never going to be controlled by another person again.
I’m done being a pawn for other people.”
At the end she goes off and people hope that, wherever she goes, she’s happy.
Right away Waller snatches her up.
And Bizarro - you could’t tell him that he’s not already a hero.
And Clock King is Clock King.
You’ve got Eddy Barrows and Eber Ferreira on Suicide Squad: Dream Team.
How has it been seeing those pages come in?
This book is so beautiful!
I’m really excited for people to read it.
We give a couple references to Bad Dream.
That was talking about the graphic novel.
I put the graphic novel on the backburner to write that.
I had my first meeting with DC in February 2020 to give my pitch for an ongoing.
Hopefully, people will go back through and see little Easter eggs.
She’s one of my favorites.
How did you want to reconcile these two different versions of the character?
With Superman, there are a couple constants: His family sent him away before their planet exploded.
With Spider-Man, you know Uncle Ben is going to die.
You have certain things that make a character.
For Dreamer, it was that her mom is going to die.
She comes from this alien commune and she is both human and alien.
From there, you might do whatever you want.
She’s listing all the different facets of her identity that make her who she is.
When you started Bad Dream, Supergirl was still on the air.
How did that show coming to an end inform how you wrote Dreamer’s comic stories?
It just started a new fire.
InDC Pride, I had her kick butt.
I get to bring this character into places we didn’t have the time or budget for.
I’m constantly thinking of how to try and get Brainiac 5 in the 21st century of the DCU.
The only thing I can say is that she’s smack dab in the middle.
Dreamer is not the only unexpected character to join the Suicide Squad.
In Catwoman #62 Selina Kyle also signs up with Task Force X.Here’s how it all goes down…
