Curiously, Waller predates Lord in the DCU by just a short bit, she appeared first in Legends #1, and that mini led to the creation of a new Justice League, and Lord first appeared in the first issue of that book roughly 6-7 months later. They were often linked/paralleled to each other (it's been a while since I read that early stuff but I think they both played roles in the J:/Suicide cross-over that happened in the second year of each title). But both ere set up as somewhat antagonistic catalysts for the launch of their respective teams. And both went on to play larger, somewhat villainous roles in major DC events (Lord in was it Infinite Crisis when WW kills him (or appears to I forget now) and Waller here, but she's been in a villainous role in a lot of DC stuff in the last decade. She's also the major villain as revealed in the final episode of the first season of My Adventures with Superman (haven't seen any of S:2 yet to see where they go with that) and in the DCEU movies featuring Suicide Squad (and I think Black Adam as well, I saw it, it didn't linger in my memory and I have no desire to rewatch it).

To me, I think both are modern successors (or at least in a similar mold) to characters like Morgan Edge who served similar antagonistic catalyst to later villainous roles in DC books in slightly earlier eras.

But I have no problem with Waller being a villain. She's always been portrayed as someone with a Machiavellian edge and willigness to let the ends justify the means and to justify whatever collateral damage is needed to get her agenda done, she really does embody the idea of power corrupting and (as the title seems to allude to) absolute power corrupting absolutely. And that is an idea that jibes with themes Waid likes to play with (and to be fair to discuss [or maybe rant about] often on his online platforms.

-M