Janus Directive

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The Janus Directive was a 11-part comic book crossover first published by DC Comics between May and June of 1989. Among the creators who contributed to the storyline were writers John Ostrander, Kim Yale, Paul Kupperberg, Cary Bates and Greg Weisman and artists John K. Snyder III, Rick Hoberg, Rafael Kayanan, Tom Mandrake and Pat Broderick.

1 History
2 Plot
3 Major players
4 Cover gallery
5 Bibliography
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] History

The storyline did not have its own series, but ran through several titles - mainly Checkmate! (1st series) and Suicide Squad (1st series), though Manhunter (2nd series), Firestorm (2nd series) and Captain Atom (5th series) all had individual issues which were involved in the crossover. Checkmate! and Suicide Squad were published biweekly for the duration of the event.

The storyline focused on the covert operations super-teams and organizations that existed in the DC Universe at the time. Suicide Squad leader Amanda Waller began to send her agents on missions in the apparent pursuit of her own private agenda, the so-called "Janus Directive," one that brought the Squad into conflict with other metahuman villains and government agencies. Eventually all-out mayhem broke out among these groups, involving various metahumans associated with the United States military:

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Eventually, it came out that Waller had not gone rogue, but had been nearly assassinated by the cult leader Kobra. Kobra had tried to murder Waller and replace her with a subservient doppelgänger in order to then manipulate and mislead the various government agencies to keep them from stopping his own plan: to activate a massive space-based microwave pulse cannon that would fry all electronic systems (not to mention human nervous systems) in the eastern United States, unleashing the Kali Yuga, the age of chaos he thought it was his destiny to commence. Waller had gotten the drop on her double and murdered it instead, but decided to play the role of the double in order to ferret out the true mastermind behind the Janus Directive. Eventually, the truth was revealed, and the groups united and stormed Kobra's space ark, capturing him and destroying his weapon.

The fallout of the Janus Directive saw a very irate President Bush reorganize the various agencies to bring them more tightly under executive control; he dissolved Task Force X, the umbrella organization under which both Checkmate and the Squad operated and the component agencies becoming autonomous, and made Sarge Steel a Cabinet-level official with overall control of all governmental metahuman activity on the civilian side. General Wade Eiling was made his equivalent in the Department of Defense. Waller was put on probation by Bush because of her "lone wolf" tactics, much to her displeasure.

Waller would soon thereafter be imprisoned for taking matters into her own hands one time too many, after she led an assassination team to personally liquidate the Vodou-oriented drug ring called the Loa. This led to the shut-down of all Suicide Squad operations for one year.

[edit] Major players

While individual operatives like Firestorm (Ronald Raymond), Firehawk and Manhunter (Mark Shaw) did play a part in the storyline's resolution, they were nowhere as important as the characters in this chart.

Project Atom	C.B.I.	Checkmate!	Force of July	Project Peacemaker	Suicide Squad
Major Wade Eiling	Sarge Steel	Harry Stein	Major Victory	Peacemaker	Amanda Waller
Professor Heinrich Megala	King Faraday	Harvey Bullock	Lady Liberty		Bronze Tiger
Captain Atom	John Chase	Valentina Vostok	Mayflower		Vixen
Major Force	Cherie Chase	Gary Washington	Silent Majority		Ravan
		Black Thorn	Sparkler		Captain Boomerang
		Checkmate Knights	Abraham Lincoln Carlyle		Duchess
					Shade, the Changing Man
					Count Vertigo

[edit] Cover gallery

Part One (Checkmate! #16)	Part Two (Suicide Squad #27)	Part Three (Checkmate! #17)	Part Four (Suicide Squad #28)
Part Five (Checkmate! #18)	Part Six (Manhunter #14)	Part Seven (Firestorm #86)	Part Eight (Suicide Squad #29)
Part Nine (Checkmate! #18)	Part Ten (Suicide Squad #30)	Part Eleven (Captain Atom #30)