Black History Month Superhero #14: Amanda Waller

Name: Amanda Waller — 1986
First Appearance: Legends #1

Bio:

Amanda is cold blooded. She’s an anti-hero/villain in a whose-side-is-she-really-on fashion. She’s mostly evil, ruthless, laser focused, mean, mostly evil, resourceful, mostly evil, deadly, fearless and mostly evil. Her upbringing shaped her hard exterior as she grew up in the projects in Chicago and her son, daughter and husband were all….you guessed it….murdered.

She becomes a government aide who is associated with Checkmate (she was known as the White Queen) and A.R.G.U.S. but it mostly known for being the director of the Suicide Squad (Taskforce X) and being involved in project Cadmus. She always justifies her actions with her dedication to the protection of the United States.

After receiving her doctorate in political science, she became a congressional aide and presented the White House with the third incarnation of the Suicide Squad. Once the project was approved, she was placed in charge and it resulted in quite the tumultuous relationship as she disliked the villains she worked with and they disliked her.

She also disliked the Justice League and I know she’s a bad guy but she made some valid points about them not having accountability and operating without any checks and balances. We’ve seen this theme in comic books before (like Civil War) but her character does an amazing job of pointing out some legitimate concerns we would have if super powered individuals were real.

Amanda has received a lot of love in televised media, which is really cool. I can’t say I’ve seen another black female comic book character aside from Storm more than her. She’s been in animated shows Young Justice and DC Super Hero Girls but her biggest impact was in Justice League Unlimited (2004–2006). Voiced by C.C.H. Pounder we were able to see a tough as nails Waller who wouldn’t take crap from anyone. C.C.H. did such a good job of making you feel scared and this was a cartoon ya’ll! She’s appeared in animated films as well voiced by other actresses in Batman/Superman: Public Enemies and Batman: Assault on Arkham to name a few. She’s also appeared in several Batman or DC video games.

In live action television, she’s shown up in Smallville (the legendary Pam Grier) and Arrow (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). Both do an amazing job of keeping Amanda’s no-nonsense-you-can’t-trust-me-I-will-smother-you-in-your-sleep-and-kick-your-puppy persona alive.

Angela freaking Bassett played Waller in the movie-that-won’t-be-named starring that dude with a green ring. She was good — the movie wasn’t. This is also the case with Viola Davis in Suicide Squad: great interpretation of Amanda Waller, terrible movie.

Powers:

She doesn’t need powers because she’s scary as hell.

Here’s a compilation video of her and Batman having words.