The Long of It
Once upon a time there was a writer here at the Comics Nexus who used to write some of the greatest comics reviews known to man. Some called him the New Messiah of Comics Reviews. Or they might have – details are a bit hazy on that. Then he ran out of time, money and motivation, and now just fills in on events where all the staffers can contribute, like Roundtables (wrestling ones, of course – the comics ones went the way of the dodo and the left-handed spoon) and Year-Ends; that sort of stuff. His reviews are still around somewhere on the site, but, given the number of changes to the site since then, they’ve all eroded somewhat and the formatting’s fallen to pieces. He’s basically these days just a barely-welcomed guest, and a reminder of the days of Nexus yore. He’s a lingering odour of damp, musty comic books stored in cardboard boxes in a garage. But how did he develop such keenly-honed comic sensibilities in the first place? What drove him into the land of the funny books and made him stay? This; for those who care in the slightest anymore, and assuming he can still remember at all how to post articles; is his story. Oh, and “he” is me. In case you were in any doubt. Be prepared for an uncharacteristic (and frankly unhealthy) lack of cynicism in this article.
My first real introduction to comics (other than some cheapish weekly British kids’ comics like Beano, Dandy, Whizzer & Chips, and Eagle) came as a result of a kid on my street called Simon Licourinos. It was 1986 -we were both twelve years old, and we were messing about in his room when he showed me the original Marvel Superheroes Role-Playing Game by TSR. He said he’d run a game for me and a couple of the other kids if I was interested, and seeing as it was one of those fantastic, long summer breaks from school you have when you’re a kid, and the summer just seems to last forever, I said that it sounded like a cool idea. We played a couple of times and had a really great time, and I just sort of soaked it all up. He then showed me some issues that he had of the Deluxe Edition of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. There were so many obscure, cool-sounding characters like “Ego, The Living Planet” and “The Shaper of Worlds” that I was completely hooked. Then, when the Advanced version of the game came out, we both bought a copy and had even more fun reading about all the extra characters and what they could do. He got me into drawing the characters, and inking that art (something I really wish I’d kept up with – I still have a drawing board in the garage which we just don’t have room for in the flat), and I remember him showing me a Hulk issue, where both coasts’ teams of the Avengers had sent their strongest members (Iron Man, Wonder Man, Hercules and Namor) to stop the Hulk but just basically got their arses handed to them. I picked up a copy of a Marvel Age special (it was the 25th Anniversary of Marvel), which showed all the cool things that were going to be happening to my new favourite characters in the coming months. And I wanted more.
So I started buying my own comics. There was only one place in the town I grew up in where you could pick them up; a newsagents called M.S.Cheney (remember when you could get comics on stands in places like that?), and I started making a regular pilgrimage there to pick up copies of West Coast Avengers, Uncanny X-Men, Iron Man and very quickly X-Factor, Avengers, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Strange Tales… the list goes on. And so much stuff was happening back then. The Avengers were “Under Siege”, Iron Man was starting “Armor Wars”, Spider-Man was the prey of “Kraven’s Last Hunt” and the X-Men & X-Factor were going from the “Mutant Massacre” into “Fall of the Mutants”. I was very, very quickly turned into a real Marvel Zombie. I would read endlessly. There just never seemed to be enough for me to read. I was ravenous, and so I would read all the letters pages as well. It was there, in the letters pages of Avengers, West Coast Avengers and Iron Man, that I encountered a little column called “Mark’s Remarks”.
Mark Gruenwald, who was editing those three books at the time, used to write this column as an alternative to all the usual drab editorial blurb in the back of the books. And reading “Mark’s Remarks”, I always felt like I knew him. Mark (or “Gru” as he was affectionately known) always came across as the ultimate fan-boy, who had grown up knowing these characters and was now living the dream of working in the place where these stories were told. He was the proverbial “kid in a sweet-shop”. And he knew what fan-boys wanted to know about. He cared about the readers, about the characters and about the business. His columns would include tips on how to apply to work at Marvel, how to create new characters and all kinds of fun anecdotes about the business. He re-started the famous No-Prize, offering it to anyone who wrote in with a fault in one of Marvel’s books as long as they came up with a viable explanation as to how it was in fact NOT a fault. He encouraged the readers to write in, and allowed real interaction between the readers and editorial staff. I would still encourage anyone to check out the old “Mark’s Remarks” on-line, and please pay particular attention to the outcry when the idea of re-naming West Coast Avengers as “New Avengers” was mooted. It seems all the more hilarious now. I just loved reading Mark’s editorials. And then I discovered he was a writer as well.
But Mark had always been interested in telling more complex, character-based stories. He had written the now legendary Squadron Supreme series, which explored the dangers of a group of incredibly powerful figures trying to solve all the problems in their world by taking control. A classic example of absolute power corrupting absolutely. He was also at the forefront of other experiments Marvel carried out, including the recently revived New Universe. He wrote issues #1-32 and the Annual of D.P.7 in the New Universe, which was always one of the more intriguing books from that line, along with New Universe crossover books The Pitt and The Draft. He also wrote Quasar for five years, using his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Marvel Universe to fill the book with stories of obscure Marvel characters and ideas, including the New Universe’s own Star Brand. That same encyclopaedic knowledge had also made him the perfect person to write and edit the same Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe that had got me hooked in the first place. In those days Marvel used to hold an annual event where fans would challenge Gru with obscure questions about Marvel events and history to try and catch him out. Nobody ever did, and eventually Marvel stopped the event. It became that pointless.
Mark became Executive Editor of Marvel’s complete line when Tom DeFalco became Editor-in-Chief, and often appeared along with DeFalco in the Bull’s Eye cartoons that ran in the Bullpen Bulletins during that time. It is widely acknowledged that Mark should have eventually become Editor-in-Chief himself.
On August 12th, 1996, Mark Gruenwald died of a heart attack aged just 43 years old. In accordance with his wishes, after his cremation his ashes were mixed with the ink used for the first trade-paperback compilation of Squadron Supreme. When I read about his death, in a simple tribute page printed in Marvel’s comics the following month, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe for a few moments. I had never known the man, and had never been likely to do so, but I felt as if I did. This was the man that had held all my later childhood; and my personal, secret world of Marvel superheroes; in his hands, and nurtured it, smiling. I was at that time 23 years old, and had left University the previous year. I was making my way in the World as an adult, and all of a sudden it was as if someone had ripped my childhood away from me.
I felt hollow, and was actually very close to tears. This is something that happens very rarely to me. It seems odd to think about it now, and there have been very few occasions since when someone whom I’ve never met has passed away and it has left me dumbstruck and genuinely upset. In the comics arena, the others were John Buscema and, more recently, Mike Wieringo. However, none of them caused the same guttural, almost feral reaction that I had to the news of Mark Gruenwald’s death.
Tributes to Gru from his colleagues in the business over the years have been many and varied. One of my own personal favourites was when Walt Simonson made all of the workers in his creation, the Time Variance Authority, into clones of Gruenwald. This was simply because nobody else could possibly keep track of everything in continuity.
The Short of It
In 2006, Mark Gruenwald was officially named the “Patron Saint of Marveldom”, and I can think of no title that would have pleased him more. His talent and heart are still missed to this day; by Marvel, the comics industry as a whole, and by me.
