This Floyd Still Wants To Live

Looking over the current Suicide Squad series, I'm starting to feel the new Deadshot has more in common with Rick Flag than with the pre-relaunch Deadshot.

His air of indifference seems more forced. Like the bit with Harley, making certain to point out that he just wanted to get his rocks off. Not that pre-relaunch Floyd was a romantic, but he seemed more prone to let his actions speak for themselves. He'd sleep with a woman, but he might shoot her later if he felt like it. Ask Jeanette. He didn't feel the need to state it, because his actions spoke louder.

Relaunched Floyd has more of a preexisting relationship with Waller than the rest of the Squad. Which won't necessarily save him, but it does allow him to argue with her in a way the rest of the team isn't afforded. Current Floyd clearly doesn't have the old Floyd's death wish (at least not yet), given how insistent he is about getting the bomb out of his head, and being cured of the techno-virus he's been infected with. He does have some of the old Floyd's indifference to his teammates, and he doesn't have Rick Flag's deep sense of duty, but at the same time, it feels like he's having to try a bit to not care about the rest of the Squad. It was easy for Old Floyd, to the point you couldn't be sure he might not kill you himself, and it was surprising if he saved someone.

Admittedly, one of my biggest complaints about the current Suicide Squad has been the characters don't seem right. Meaning they aren't behaving how I think they ought to based on old appearances in a continuity that no longer seems to exist. But it could be interesting, a Deadshot not looking for his own end, but who might get that way from how cavalierly Waller toys with his and the other Squad members' lives. Or he could let the facade drop and reveal he actually does care about his teammates, if only a little, and feels some responsibility to them.

I lean towards the latter, if for no other reason than Waller. She's made it pretty clear she doesn't care about any of them beyond whether they complete the job, and that's not an attitude designed to create a sense of team (except a collective loathing of her). It seems more like to engineer an "every crook for themselves" attitude, with each person trying to stay alive first, complete the mission second, and maybe worry about a teammate third. Which is the sort of attitude that's going to impair the success of a mission at some point. It helps to have someone to watch your back, but I'm not sure anyone on the team would do that for anyone else right now.