The Brave and the Bold #25
The Brave and the Bold #25 planted the seed for one of DC's most durable and culturally resonant concepts: a government-sponsored team of expendable operatives willing to take on missions too dangerous for anyone else. By introducing the Suicide Squad — field leader Colonel Rick Flag, medic Karin Grace, physicist Jess Bright, and astronomer Dr. Hugh Evans — writer-editor Robert Kanigher brought survivor's guilt and psychological weight to a genre aimed at ten-year-olds, a striking tonal choice barely five years after the Comics Code Authority's establishment. The issue simultaneously transformed The Brave and the Bold itself, retiring its historical-adventure anthology format after twenty-four issues and relaunching the title as a try-out vehicle for new characters and concepts — the same structural role that would soon produce the Justice League of America in issue #28. Though the original non-powered Squad never earned its own series, John Ostrander's celebrated 1987 reinvention folded these characters into his supervillain-staffed Task Force X, giving the Silver Age originals a permanent place in DC continuity and connecting a children's adventure comic to films, television, and video games decades later.
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Robert Kanigher, who had been editing B&B through its historical-adventure phase and was DC's chief war-comics architect, wrote, edited, and shepherded the Squad's debut himself, with penciler Ross Andru and inker Mike Esposito — his regular collaborators on the war and metal-men beats — handling the art. Executive editor Whitney Ellsworth oversaw the broader line. The pivot of B&B from period-adventure anthology to try-out title mirrored what DC's Showcase had already proven could work, and Kanigher's Squad was the first concept auditioned under that new mandate. The story's four-person team structure — one leader, one science specialist, one medic, one additional scientist — consciously echoed the Challengers of the Unknown template while swapping borrowed-time survivor camaraderie for the weightier motivation of guilt-driven obligation.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of the Suicide Squad (also designated Task Force X), Colonel Rick Flag, Karin Grace, Dr. Hugh Evans, and Jess Bright — all debuting in the lead story 'The Three Waves of Doom!'
- Written and edited by Robert Kanigher; penciled by Ross Andru; inked by Mike Esposito; lettered by Gaspar Saladino; Whitney Ellsworth served as executive editor.
- Cover date September 1959; the issue's publication marks the deliberate relaunch of The Brave and the Bold as a DC try-out title beginning with issue #25, abandoning its prior historical-anthology format.
- The original Suicide Squad consisted entirely of non-powered humans — a military pilot, a flight medic, a physicist, and an astronomer — each bound by survivor's guilt from separate wartime tragedies, an emotionally grounded premise unusual for the era.
- The team received six total try-out appearances across B&B #25–27 (1959) and #37–39 (1961), but never graduated to its own series — making it, per contemporary commentary, the first B&B or Showcase tryout to fail to earn an ongoing or starring anthology slot.
- In 1987's Secret Origins #14, John Ostrander retroactively split the original Rick Flag character into Rick Flag Sr. and Rick Flag Jr., weaving the Silver Age Squad into the continuity of his modern supervillain-staffed Suicide Squad.
- The story was reprinted in Spanish by Editorial Novaro in Cuentos de Misterio #97 (November 1966), and collected in English in Suicide Squad: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1 (DC, September 2016) and the accompanying trade paperback.
- The issue also contains a non-story filler feature starring Peter Porkchops ('Peter Porkchops Gives Tips on Summer Fun!') and house-ad/back-matter content — accounting for the presence of that character, as well as Superman/Clark Kent and Wolfie, in the issue's index without appearing in the main narrative.
Cast · 7 characters
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↩ Reprints My Greatest Adventure #57 (1961)
Reprinted in All Favourites, The 100-Page Comic #16 (1959), Tales of the Unexpected #67 (1961), Cuentos de Misterio #97 (1966), Suicide Squad: The Silver Age Omnibus #1 (2016), Suicide Squad: The Silver Age #[nn] (2018)
Key issues in The Brave and the Bold
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