Retro Review: Squadron Supreme #1-12 & Death Of A Universe OGN By Gruenwald, Hall, Ryan & Others For Marvel Comics

Squadron Supreme #1-12, Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe OGN (September 1985 – October 1989)

Written by Mark Gruenwald

Penciled by Bob Hall (#1-5, 8), Paul Ryan (#6, 9-12, SS:DU GN), John Buscema (#7)

Inked by John Beatty (#1-3), Sam De La Rosa (#4-6, 8-12), Keith Williams (#6, SS:DU GN), Jackson Guice (#7)

Coloured by Christie Scheele (#1-3, 6, 8-12), Mark Philips (#4), Bob Sharen (#5), Michael Higgins (#7), Paul Becton (SS:DU GN)

Spoilers (from thirty-three to thirty-seven years ago)

I’ve written before about how much I admire Mark Gruenwald’s writing, when I reread his legendary Captain America run and his Hawkeye miniseries.  The book he’s best known for though, is Squadron Supreme, and it’s finally time to remind myself of why that is.

I remember picking this book up without knowing anything about these characters, who are basically an alternate universe version of the Justice League that somehow Marvel never got sued for.  The comparisons are immediately obvious, and I think it’s cool that Gruenwald was able to use them to tell the type of story that would never have been allowed in the mainstream Marvel or DC universes.

Basically, Hyperion and the others decide that they are actually going to save the world, but from itself.  I remember thinking that this was such a cool idea, and that it made sense to me that they would use their powers to outlaw weapons and warfare, but also remember a creeping sense of dread when they start brainwashing people and removing civil liberties, until the whole thing blows up in their faces.

I don’t know that this series gets the credit it deserves, as it influenced stories for a couple of decades after it was completed.

I’m curious to see how well it’s stood up, and whether or not it speaks to our current problems with authoritarianism.  

Let’s track who turned up in the title:

Squadron Supreme

• Hyperion (Mark Milton; #1-12, GN)
• Amphibian (Kingsley; #1-6)
• Doctor Spectrum (Joe Ledger; #1-12, GN)
• Whizzer (Stanley Stewart; #1-12, GN)
• Power Princess (Zarda; #1-12, GN)
• Nuke (Albert Gaines; #1-3)
• Arcanna (Arcanna Jones; #1-12, GN)
• Blue Eagle (fka Hawk, James Dore; #1-12)
• Tom Thumb (Thomas Thompson; #1-9)
• Golden Archer (Wyatt McDonald; #1-6)
• Lady Lark (Linda Lewis; #1-6, GN)
• Ape X (Xina; #6-12)
• Quagmire (#6-10)
• Lamprey (#6-12)
• Shape (#6-12 GN)
• Foxfire (Olivia Underwood; #6-12)
• Dr. Decibel (Anton Decibel; #6-10)
• Redstone (#11-12, GN)
• Moonglow (#11-12, GN)
• Inertia (#11-12, GN)
• Haywire (#11-12, GN)
• Thermite (#11-12)

America’s Redeemers

• Nighthawk (Kyle Richmond; #1, 6-7, 9-12)
• Mink (#7, 9-12)
• Remnant (#7, 9-12)
• Pinball (#7, 9-12)
• Redstone (#9-12)
• Black Archer (Wyatt McDonald; #10-12)
• Moonglow (#10-12)
• Haywire (#10-12)
• Inertia (#10-12)
• Thermite (#10-12)

Villains

• Freedom Force (#2)
• Scarlet Centurion (#2, 9, GN)
• Dr. Decibel (Institute of Evil; #5)
• Ape X (Institute of Evil; #5)
• Quagmire (Institute of Evil; #5)
• Lamprey (Institute of Evil; #5)
• Foxfire (Institute of Evil; #5)
• Shape (Institute of Evil; #5)
• Master Menace (Dr. Emil Burbank; #6-8, 10-12, GN)
• Cerebrax (Master Menace’s robot; #6, GN)
• Mink (#6)
• Remnant (#6)
• Pinball (#6)
• Other Hyperion (#7-8)
• The Rustler (#8)
• Bollix (#8)
• Overmind (GN)
• Tom Lightner (GN)

Guest Stars

• Linda Lewis (fka Lady Lark; #12)
• Professor Imam (GN)

Supporting Characters

• Lonni (Hyperion’s girlfriend; #1)
• Madeline Stewart (Whizzer’s wife; #1, 5-7, 9, 12)
• Tina Stewart (Whizzer’s daughter; #1, 4-6, 9, 12)
• Adrienne Dore (Blue Eagle’s mother; #1, 5)
• Howard Shelton (Zarda’s husband; #1, 5, 7)
• Gilbert Gaines (Nuke’s father; #1-2)
• Florence Gaines (Nuke’s mother; #1-2)
• Phil Jones (Arcanna’s husband; #1, 5-7, 9, 12, GN)
• Drusilla Jones (Arcanna’s daughter; #1, 5-6, 9, 12, GN)
• Katrina Jones (Arcanna’s daughter; #1, 5-6, 9, 12, GN)
• Andrew Jones (Arcanna’s son; #1, 5-6, 9, 12, GN)
• Aida (Tom Thumb’s AI; #1-3, 5, 9-11)
• President Gardner (President of the United States; #3, 12, GN)
• Scotty Gaines (Nuke’s brother; #3)
• Benjamin Thomas Jones (Arcanna’s son; #12, GN)

Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:

• The series opens in space, with Hyperion trying to control the atmospheric entry of a gigantic satellite.  He struggles, but manages to guide it to its splashdown target, where he’s met by Amphibian, Doctor Spectrum, and Whizzer.  Together, they pull the sinking satellite to shore, and we learn that it used to be their headquarters.  We learn from their conversation that things have been very bad for the team lately, and that they are going to meet with the rest of their teammates.  Power Princess and Nuke are in the Niagara region, preparing to meet up with Hawk and Arcanna.  They have been traveling around, surveying the state of things in America, and they’ve found that things are not going well for the country.  They spy a group of people looting a truck.  When they move in to stop them, they learn that people are starving, and that people from the cities have been coming to take their food.  The heroes decide to leave without stopping anyone, but some soldiers arrive on the scene and open fire on the civilians. The heroes stop them, and then head out.  In the mid-west, Tom Thumb, Nighthawk, Golden Archer, and Lady Lark fly in an open vehicle kind of like a Fantasticar, talking about how bad things are everywhere.  They notice a huge fire, and Tom Thumb figures out that it’s been caused by a natural gas leak.  He notices that the fire is moving towards some gas storage tanks.  Tom separates his personal vehicle to go shut off the lines to the tanks, and Nighthawk jumps out to help, while the other two look for ways to help out.  They pierce a water tower with arrows, but have to admit that the flames are still approaching.  Lark lets out a scream, and Nighthawk leaves Tom to finish up.  There’s an explosion, but we see that Tom survived.  The group heads to a mountain in the Moreland region (on this alternate Earth, most of the states and cities have fictional names) where the Squadron has a rough facility.  The whole team is there, and Hyperion starts their meeting.  They recap what has happened to them.  Kyle had hung up his Nightwing costume and become President of the country when Overmind, an alien, came and took control of him and the team, except for Hyperion.  He took over the US government, and then had the military take over the rest of the world, running it like a police state.  They also built nuclear weapons on the moon to attack other planets with.  Arcanna mentions the help that Hyperion brought from another world (the Defenders, actually), and how they defeated Overmind and freed the world, but it’s now a huge mess.  Whizzer reports that Europe is in worse shape than America.  The team isn’t sure how they can fix their reputation and fix the world.  Zarda talks about how her mission on Earth was to spread the beliefs of her people, who left Utopia Isle to explore the cosmos.  She wonders if people will be open to her teaching now.  Hyperion talks about being an alien, but raised on Earth to hide his potential.  He believes that the Squadron should do everything it can to fix the planet, and Doctor Spectrum agrees.  Hyperion suggests they spend a year working to solve every issue on the planet, including that of death.  Kyle is the only one who disagrees, thinking that excluding people from solving their own problems will lead to more trouble, and that things could lean towards more authoritarianism.  There’s a brief discussion, but then everyone except Kyle and Amphibian vote to go ahead with the plan.  Amphibian agrees to follow it, but Kyle decides to quit the team.  Spectrum suggests that they all reveal their faces to the public, and they arrange a press conference for the next day before heading out to check on their personal lives, and to warn their loved ones that they might be exposed in the media.  Hyperion goes to see his girlfriend Lonni, revealing that he is also Mark Milton to her before breaking things off.  Whizzer goes home to check on his wife and child, who have been hanging out in a panic room for two weeks.  Doctor Spectrum returns to his trailer park home and starts phoning up old girlfriends.  Hawk heads to his parents house, where he learns that his father, who used to be the American Eagle, has passed away, and has left him a letter to try to reconcile their differences, as well as a new costume.  Zarda goes to see her husband Zarda, who has been with her for forty years, although she hasn’t aged in that time.  Amphibian goes to hang out with some dolphins.  Golden Arrow and Lady Lark go to the building where they have separate apartments that have been looted.  Linda finds that her old records are ruined, and thinks about her career as a singer while Wyatt finds a dead man in his apartment.  Nuke goes to see his parents, who are both undergoing cancer treatment in the hospital.  Arcanna’s home is hidden by a camouflage spell.  Her husband and children are happy to see her.  Tom Thumb returns to the ruined satellite, and goes about trying to fix Aida, the AI that ran the station, and whom he is perhaps in a relationship with.  Nighthawk returns to his home through a secret tunnel, and sees that people are protesting outside.  He calls the White House, and learns that things are worse than he expected.  He orders his chief of staff to get the cabinet, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and everyone else together for a meeting the next day.  He changes out of the costume Overmind gave him into one of his own just as Hyperion arrives to talk to him.  The conversation doesn’t go well, as Hyperion tells Kyle he respects him, but also tells him that he’s going to use his press conference the next day to address the nation.  Hyperion leaves, and Kyle heads to a secret basement room where he has a supply of argonite, the only thing that Hyperion is vulnerable to.  He starts carving a bullet out of it.  The next night, Kyle addresses the nation, telling them that he is resigning as President, and all of his key people are also resigning.  Hyperion takes the mic next, and while he talks, Kyle holds the gun with the argonite bullet to his back, preparing to shoot.  Hyperion talks about how the Squadron is going to solve all of their problems within a year, or give up all authority.  As Kyle realizes he can’t shoot his friend, Hyperion and the rest of the Squadron remove their masks.

• It’s been a month since the first issue (I think that’s a motif that continues through the series), and the Squadron is hard at work fixing things.  Doctor Spectrum, Golden Archer, and Tom Thumb are out delivering crates of food supplies to various towns using Spectrum’s prism to haul the crates.  They land in a mall parking lot in Sigmund, and as volunteers sort out the crates for their town, the heroes meet with the city’s mayor.  He asks the heroes to speak to the crowd through his megaphone, but while Spectrum and the Archer get to share platitudes, Tom Thumb is ignored.  Some men climb onto the flatbed they are using as a stage and grab the mayor, holding him hostage.  Other men from the group calling itself Freedom Force surround the heroes, demanding they drop their weapons and announcing that they declare the heroes guilty of crimes against the US, and calling for their executions.  They discuss the concentration camps that Overmind ran in America, which they blame the Squadron for.  While they talk, Spectrum’s prism lights up in the leader’s hand, destroying his gun.  Spectrum and the Archer take out everyone, while Thumb watches.  As they leave, Tom feels useless.  In Winnebago, Whizzer and Nuke are heading back to base, but Nuke says he has some personal matters to deal with first.  He flies off to visit his parents, who tell him that they are dying from radiation poisoning.  The Squadron has their meeting, which allows us to learn how they’ve improved food processing and supply, got the Mint working again, and closed up all the camps.  Lady Lark is in the middle of suggesting they do a recruitment drive when they are interrupted by the holographic appearance of the Scarlet Centurion, their old enemy (taking a Kang-like role in this world).  He boasts that he’s prepared to attack again, but Hyperion threatens to kill him if he does, and clearly rattles him.  The meeting breaks up with the acknowledgement that no one has spoken to Kyle Richmond recently, and then Spectrum organizes a poker game.  Tom heads to his lab and Aida, his AI friend.  His work gets interrupted by Nuke, who comes to see if his powers have increased.  Tom is able to confirm that he’s about 52% more powerful than when he joined the team.  He raises the question of whether or not he would make people sick.  Tom believes that he can, and Albert shares that he believes it is because of him that his parents are dying of cancer.  He asks Tom to work on a cure for cancer, and Tom, elated at being confided in for once, agrees to try.  Tom works all night, and the next day asks Hyperion to be taken off fieldwork so he can focus on his projects.  Nuke, Lady Lark, and Blue Eagle (Hawk’s new identity) are searching the area around the George Orwell Bridge (it links New Wesley and New Troy) for gangs that have been stopping food deliveries.  Linda and Jim talk about Jim’s new look, and how he’s trying to honor his father’s memory.  Nuke points out that a mob is surrounding trucks delivering food.  Linda uses her powers to call them off, but everyone ignores her, so Albert uses his powers to create a terrifying light show, causing the crowd to panic.  Linda uses her powers to knock some sense into him, and Jim catches him.  Later, Nuke is thankful that the others didn’t tell Hyperion about his mistake.  Tom calls him aside, and shows him a containment suit he built for him.  Albert is a little salty that Tom hasn’t cured cancer yet (it’s been a day), but accepts his rationale that prevention is the first step.  Tom locks himself in his lab and takes some tissue samples from himself as a baseline.  He spends eight days working nonstop on the cancer cure, but makes no progress. Albert comes to let him know that his parents are getting worse, and Tom starts thinking about time, which gives him an idea.  He digs through the items salvaged from the satellite, and finds his transtemporal somaprojector.  He uses it to travel to the Scarlet Centurion’s era.  He asks to speak to the villain alone, and tells him that he wants the cure for cancer that his era has.  He offers to do anything in return.  The Centurion wants him to take a small capsule of ground argonite to sprinkle on Hyperion’s food, to weaken the man, allowing the Centurion to come and defeat him.  Tom realizes he can’t pay a price that high, and returns home, feeling like a failure.  Albert comes to see him, and when he tells him that he can’t cure cancer, Al gets angry and tells him that when his parents die, it will be his fault.  After he leaves, Tom talks to himself, revealing that he also has cancer.
• Power Princess is filming a PSA that involves her fighting off some soldiers who fire real bullets at her.  The point of the ad is to explain to the public that the Squadron is replacing the United States’s military and police stores of weapons with non-lethal options, and is moving forward with registering all guns with the goal of cutting down on gun crime.  Doctor Spectrum is with her, and after the filming is completed, he uses his prism to cut her top off, causing her to be exposed to some of the soldiers.  She is angry with Spectrum, while also denying Western ideals of modesty.  She takes his cape, and goes to meet with the new President of the US, Gardner, who happens to have come for the filming.  They discuss his concerns around disarmament, and he gives some of the usual talking points about the right to bear arms.  Zarda assures him that this is only the first part of the Squadron’s crime prevention program, and then she flies off to see her husband for a bit before that evening’s team meeting.  When she arrives, Joe is telling the Archer and Whizzer what he did.  At the meeting, we see how the Squadron’s mission is progressing, and then Hyperion brings up the fact that Nuke has now missed twenty-eight meetings in a row.  Tom Thumb doesn’t feel he can betray Nuke’s confidence by sharing what he knows.  Hyperion suggests that someone go looking for him, and Zarda speaks up, suggesting that Joe deal with it, since he and Al had gone out for drinks together a few times.  Joe sees this as Zarda’s revenge.  After the meeting, Tom suggests to Joe that he check the hospitals in Al’s home hometown, since his parents are sick.   As he explores the region, looking for familiar places from his trip there with Al, he spots a smoldering radioactive crater on the outskirts of the suburbs.  He finds the bar they went to.  Whizzer is in the Squadron’s dorm, which is shared by the whole team, trying to restore his body after a day of running.  He thinks about how he can’t tell his wife that Arcanna is sleeping in the bed opposite his.  An alarm goes off, calling for Whizzer, Arcanna, and Amphibian to respond to a riot at a gun factory in Alamo Town that Hyperion closed.  Joe enters a Motor City hospital, where he’s learned that Al’s parents, Gilbert and Florence, are admitted. He learns from the nurse that both died a couple of weeks back, and Joe goes looking for Al at home.  Whizzer and the others fly across the country in a vehicle, where they find hundreds of people attempting to get weapons.  They open fire on our heroes, but Stan is able to reposition the bullets, and then disarm many of them.  Arcanna disarms the rest using her control of the wind.  One of the rioters tells her that they feel the need to stockpile weapons since they know the Squadron will confiscate their legal guns soon.  Joe talks with the people who have taken in Scotty, Al’s brother, and then takes the kid for a walk.  He learns that Scotty hasn’t seen Al since their father’s funeral, and then Joe reveals that Al is really Nuke.  Joe takes Scotty flying so they can look for Nuke, and they find him at the cemetery where their parents are buried.  Al is angry, and blames the Squadron, especially Tom Thumb, for letting his parents die.  Nuke lashes out, and then leaves, saying he’s going to go kill Tom before Joe can warn them.  Joe runs Scotty home, and then goes after Al.  When he catches up to him, he puts a power-bubble around him.  Al lashes out, and it becomes clear to Joe that Al is more powerful than ever.  He encases him in a thicker bubble, and has to keep adding to it, until he notices that Al has stopped fighting back.  He drops his bubble, and Al appears to be unconscious or perhaps dead.  Joe tries to resuscitate him, but realizes that his friend is dead.  He considers lying about what happens, but instead returns the body to headquarters, and admits to Hyperion, Zarda, and Tom what happened.  He ends up crying in Zarda’s arms.  Two days later, having been cleared by the Squadron of wrongdoing, Joe goes to visit Scotty to tell him what happened, and the kid who just lost his parents accepts his brother’s death pretty easily.

• Blue Eagle leads an attack on a group of rebellious soldiers in a base somewhere.  Lady Lark backs him up, giving him cover as he places something called an ultravox modulator on the floor.  She uses her powers to activate it, and it puts all the soldiers to sleep.  Outside, Whizzer runs around knocking out more soldiers, while Power Princess and Amphibian work together to take out a tank.  Golden Archer and Arcanna are in one of the Squadron’s aircars, but it gets taken down by a bazooka.  Arcanna is only able to slow Wyatt’s fall, so he lands a little roughly.  He’s wearing one of the new force-field belts that Tom Thumb developed, but it’s starting to short out.  A soldier gets the drop on him, and shoots, but luckily Whizzer is running by and takes both the bullets and the gun.  Power Princess insists that the soldiers’ commander order them to surrender, but he says they won’t.  That’s when Hyperion arrives and starts taking apart the entire base.  Later, as the Squadron gathers up all the weapons on the base, Whizzer asks if he can go visit Dr. Spectrum.  Wyatt decides to go with him, and invites Linda, but she doesn’t want to, preferring to hang out with Blue Eagle.  As they fly their aircar, Wyatt and Stan talk.  They arrive at the smelter where Joe has been working lately, melting down weapons.  He doesn’t feel up to working in the field after what happened with Nuke.  He asks his friends to go to Nuke’s grave with him, but Stan goes to see his wife instead.  At the grave, Joe recaps his origin (it’s basically Hal Jordan’s origin, but he was given his prism by a Skrull who hung out on Earth for a while).  Wyatt tries to help Joe feel better, and lets him in on some news – he’s going to ask Linda to marry him.  They head back to base together.  At that evening’s meeting, we learn that the entire US Armed Forces have been disarmed now, although the team worries that taking weapons from state and local police will be harder.  Tom Thumb brings out his new invention – a behaviour modification device that will take away criminal tendencies.  Amphibian worries about the ethics of this device, and only Arcanna agrees with him.  The team puts it to a vote and decides to start using the device.  Amphibian walks off, worrying that he can’t stay with the team for long like this.  As Tom gives a demonstration of the device, Wyatt asks Linda to go for a walk with him.  He surprises her by suggesting they get married, and gives her time to think about it.  Linda can’t find anyone to talk to so she goes to wake up Arcanna, admitting that she’s been thinking about breaking up with Wyatt.  Arcanna tells her to follow her heart, and wants to share something in return, but doesn’t.  (She’s pregnant).  Linda finds Wyatt outside, and in a long speech explains how badly she wants to return to her life as a singer, but she can see that Wyatt will never want to change from the life he has now.  She says that she knows that she can’t commit to him like this, and says she wants to break up.  Wyatt loses his temper, accusing her of cheating on him with Blue Eagle, and he smashes his bow.  Storming into the base, he wants to confront Jim, but Joe talks him out of it, and they go for a long walk.  Two hours later, Wyatt is calm, and makes an excuse for not heading to the dormitory.  He goes to see Tom, and shows interest in learning how to use the behaviour modifier.  Tom feels good that someone paid attention to him.  Later, after everyone is finally asleep, Wyatt goes to Linda, gasses her, and takes her to Tom’s lab.  He puts her in the behaviour modifier, and speaking into the microphone, tells her that she will love him completely (I guess Aida, the AI that lives in Tom’s computers, goes to sleep too).  The next morning, Linda runs up to Wyatt and apologizes for her behaviour the night before.  She tells him that she would love to marry him, and as they kiss, Joe, Arcanna, and Jim all have different reactions.  
• Issue five opens with Golden Archer strung up and surrounded by villainous silhouettes, who start to torture him to reveal his and the Squadron’s secrets.  He starts by recapping the last issue, explaining how he used the behaviour modifier on Lady Lark, and then talks about how it did its job too well, and now Linda won’t leave him alone.  Taking a walk to avoid her, Wyatt was grabbed by The Shape.  We see that he is the prisoner of the Institute of Evil – Dr. Decibel (he’s dressed as a surgeon with weird headgear), Ape X (a female ape in a tank-treaded wheelchair), Quagmire (a standard villain-punk), Lamprey (vaguely vampirish), Foxfire (also a punk, and maybe the first person of colour in this comic?), and Shape (a pudgy rubbery type).  Hyperion and Arcanna are at a prison in Vesperia, modifying the prisoners.  We see them do their work on a man who killed two people, and afterwards, he happily gets to leave the prison while the warden talks to Hyperion about getting new jobs for him and his staff.  Stan leaves his home after getting a day’s leave to spend with his wife and daughter.  He runs to base just in time for the daily meeting. The team talks about Wyatt going missing, and how Linda and Joe haven’t been able to find him.  We learn that Tom is making more b-mod machines, and that the Squadron is starting to feel stretched very thin.  Hyperion’s suggestion of canceling personal leaves doesn’t go over well.  The Institute of Evil are hanging out in their base after having gotten all the information they wanted from Wyatt.  Ape X gives out assignments, sending the team to go abduct the families of Arcanna, Power Princess, Whizzer, and Blue Eagle.  The next morning, Tom Thumb is working in his lab on the new devices, and we see that his cancer is progressing.  He tells Aida that he doesn’t want the others to know.  The intruder alarm goes off, but Aida’s sensors show only black screens.  Tom hears a ruckus, so he grabs his force field belt and a weapon.  He finds the Institute of Evil (minus Ape X) trashing the team’s meeting room.  He tries to stop them but is soon caught.  Aida sends an alert to the rest of the team, who stop what they are working on to return to base.  Dr. Decibel reports to Ape X, who tells them to find the behaviour modifier.  They put Tom in the device and order him to be loyal to them.  Blue Eagle, Spectrum, Arcanna, and Lady Lark arrive together and attack the Institute.  There’s a brief fight until Tom shows them on a viewscreen that Wyatt and the Squadron’s family members are being held captive somewhere.  They quickly give up.  Off panel, a similar scene plays out when Zarda and Amphibian arrive.  When Whizzer and Hyperion, who were furthest away, finally return to their base, they find the entire Squadron sitting with the Institute.  Lamprey, an energy vampire, grabs Hyperion and starts draining him.  Whizzer quickly takes off.  The Institute tells Tom to get the b-mod device so they can start modifying the Squadron.  As Whizzer rushes home, he realizes it would be quicker to call first.  He speaks to a neighbour and learns that his house has been broken into.  He rushes to a police station and retrieves a submachine gun before rushing back to the headquarters, which he enters through Amphibian’s watery entrance.  He surprises the Institute and the Squadron, and starts shooting at the villains.  He’s surprised to see his teammates leap into action to protect them, and Linda and Dr. Decibel knock him out.  Soon, both teams move to the Institute’s base, where they join Ape X and their family members.  At a signal from Hyperion, the Squadron leaps into action and takes out the Institute.  As some of the heroes free their families, Hyperion talks to Tom.  we learn that he put a failsafe into his b-mod device so it couldn’t be used against the Squadron (but doesn’t mention that he was suspicious of Wyatt when he made that modification).  We also learn that Tom subtly signaled the team, which is why they all played along with the Institute.  Stan apologies for almost messing things up, and worries that he’s lost the team’s trust.

• The Squadron have created a small village base in the desert, and as issue six opens, Arcanna uses her magic to camouflage it to the outside world.  We see that the base has housing for the Squadron, and various labs and other facilities.  Arcanna flies her family home, where she runs into Madeline Stewart, who asks to speak to her about her concern for Stanley, who has not gotten over abandoning the team last issue/month.  Hyperion flies Tom Thumb to his lab, where we see that Ape X has been working on making the force field belts cheaper and easier to manufacture.  Tom is resentful of the praise Hyperion gives Ape X until she gives him credit.  Next, Hyperion goes to check on Power Princess and Quagmire, who are helping a road crew of ex-convicts build the base.  After that, he checks on Lamprey and Doctor Spectrum, who are doing some construction.  Joe makes it clear that he’s not ready for combat yet.  Amphibian and Shape are working on filling the artificial lake the Squadron has constructed.  Amphibian takes a moment to talk to Shape to see how he feels about having his behaviour modified, along with the rest of the Institute of Evil, to work alongside the Squadron.  Shape is happy.  When Hyperion comes to check on them, Amphibian makes it clear that he doesn’t like the location of their base, and that he’s going to be relegated to swimming in this fake lake.  It’s clear Amphibian is not happy with the direction the Squadron has been taking.  Finally, Hyperion checks on Foxfire, who is maybe flirting with him.  He learns that Lady Lark ditched her post to go spend more time with Golden Archer.  Wyatt is still in the hospital, recovering from his injuries, and it’s clear he’s a little worn out by the attention Linda’s been paying him.  He has to be mean to her to get her to leave.  He talks to his doctor, Dr. Decibel, about keeping Linda away for a while, but Decibel acknowledges that Linda hates him (he was the reason she got her powers).  Wyatt regrets having modified Linda’s mind.  Blue Eagle tries to talk to Linda about the ways she’s changed, and she uses her powers on him.  In his hidden base, the villain Master Menace reviews the changes that have happened in America while he was off taking control of the Middle East.  He’s interested in learning about the behaviour modification devices, but is interrupted by his guests, the villains Mink, Remnant, and Pinball.  They tell him they don’t want to stay on this Earth anymore, because they don’t want their minds altered.  Master Menace sends them away, and resolves to be the last criminal mind on the planet.  The Squadron’s new assembly chamber is finally operational, and the team gathers there.  Whizzer discusses how he and Blue Eagle were turned away from a prison where the warden refused to let them modify the brains of the inmates.  Amphibian sees this as a chance to discuss the problems inherent in their program, but Hyperion shuts him down.  Zarda suggests that it’s time to make the members of the Institute of Evil officially part of the Squadron.  There’s some debate on this, with Whizzer and Blue Eagle worrying about their appearance, Amphibian thinking it’s immoral to have taken away their free will, and Linda hating on Decibel.  Most of the others are fine with welcoming them to the team.  Arcanna uses this as a chance to tell everyone she’s pregnant.  Since the vote lands in a tie, Hyperion decides to bring the new members into the team, but to do it slowly with regards to field missions.  Blue Eagle brings up his concerns that Lady Lark has changed drastically, and accuses Wyatt (who is not there) of having modified her brain.  He explains that he believes Tom knew about this, and this is why he made it so the device wouldn’t work on them.  Hyperion sends Joe to get Wyatt.  After he comes to the meeting in his wheelchair, he admits what he did, shocking everyone.  He’s sent out of the room so the team can decide what to do.  Tom explains that a second go with the b-mod device would likely cause brain damage to Linda, who runs out of the room to be with Wyatt.  The team starts talking, with Jim making a strong case for Wyatt’s expulsion.  Joe defends him, Zarda wonders if he should be modified.  Hyperion won’t allow Amphibian to use this as an example of what’s wrong with their program.  The vote ends up being tied again, so Hyperion decides to kick Wyatt off the team.  Joe is angry about this and yells at Jim.  Hyperion goes to tell Wyatt that he’s out, and Linda decides to quit as well.  Later that night Amphibian slips into Tom’s lab facility and smashes the behaviour modification devices.  He runs into Ape X, and asks her to erase the plans for the machines from the computer.  She questions this, but because of her modifications, has to follow his orders.  Next, he takes an aircar and flies to the ocean, where he abandons it, swearing to never leave the water again.  Elsewhere, we see Nighthawk perched on a tree, looking at a temple of some sort.  From the narration, we learn he’s decided it’s time to act as he too believes the Squadron has gone too far.  A text box says that his story continues in an issue of Captain America.
• In Captain America #314, Nighthawk gets Professor Imam to send him to the 616 Earth to recruit some help in stopping the Squadron.  He is sent to Captain America, who convenes a meeting with the Avengers and Fantastic Four, but the consensus is for them to avoid going to another dimension to take on its Earth’s leadership.  Cap gets a call on his hotline and goes to investigate.  Nighthawk goes with him, and soon finds three of his own villains – Mink, Remnant, and Pinball.  Nighthawk gets into a fight with them, but Cap stops the whole thing and suggests that the villains help Kyle and deal with their own world’s problems instead of running to his.  They agree just as Imam’s magic returns them to their own world.
• Nighthawk has had his new allies take him to the secret base of Master Menace.  When he enters, he’s encased in a force bubble, and brought to the villain.  Kyle brings Menace up to date on what happened on the 616 Earth, and tries to recruit him to help the fight against the Squadron.  Master Menace refuses to work with him, claiming he’ll take out the Squadron on his own, and Nighthawk leaves.  Master Menace has been working on his own campaign, but has been having problems locating the being he needs to put his plan into action.  He fishes around in some inter-dimensional spaces, and finally finds the man he’s been looking for – the other-dimensional evil Hyperion who fought against Thor and appeared in issues of Avengers and Marvel Two-In-One.  This Hyperion knows Menace, and recounts his story – how he fought our Hyperion after some kind of incident involving the Avengers, and then met Thundra, who was from another dimension.  He fell in love with her, and tried to go with her back to her dimension, but got trapped in between, wandering in a limbo until Menace got him.  Menace offers a deal – if Hyperion helps him defeat the Squadron, he’ll find Thundra and reunite them.  A while later, our Hyperion and Foxfire visit the prison where the warden previously refused to let the Squadron modify anyone.  Foxfire, who is definitely flirting with Hyperion, makes an effort to change the warden’s mind by sharing her own story, but before they can make any decisions, Hyperion notices a meteorite crossing the sky.  He rushes up to stop it, but somehow gets teleported away.  We see that the meteor is actually Master Menace’s disguised ship.  He’s shunted Hyperion into another dimension, and now sends Evil Hyperion to follow their plan.  The meteor appears to explode, allowing the ship inside it to escape, and Evil Hyperion gets caught in the blast.  After a while, Foxfire worries something’s gone wrong, and gets the warden to fire up his helicopter (something all prisons are equipped with).  They find Evil Hyperion playing possum.  Foxfire rushes him back to Squadron City, where Dr. Decibel wonders what was in the meteorite that it would have this effect on him.  Evil Hyperion “wakes” up and acts as if he has no memories.  The Squadron holds a meeting (I notice that Decibel doesn’t go to these – I wonder if he’s officially on the team).  Zarda brings the team up to date on what’s happened, and takes over as team leader.  She says she’ll personally look after Hyperion as well.  She goes to see him, and has him test his strength by crushing an artificial diamond.  They head out to fly around for a while, and as he carries her, Evil Hyperion starts comparing Zarda to Thundra.  Evil Hyperion drops Zarda off at her home, and moves as if he’s going to kiss her, but she backs away and goes inside.  Evil Hyperion peeks through a window, and sees Zarda saying goodnight to Howard.  This bothers Evil Hyperion.  When he returns to the hospital, he asks Decibel questions about Zarda, and realizes that she is married to the old man he saw, which disgusts him.  The next morning, Zarda rushes Howard to the hospital, but Decibel is not able to save him.  Later, The Jones and Stewart couples hang out together, and talk about Howard’s death, and how Zarda is spending more time with Hyperion.  Zarda and Evil Hyperion have been out walking and talking, and after she goes home, he thinks about how he’s got to decide between Zarda and Thundra (who, we should note, he’s never so much as kissed).  He heads to Master Menace’s spot to tell him that he’s breaking their deal.  He attacks Menace, who has a personal force field.  They fight, and Hyperion claims that he has a better life with the Squadron than he’s had before.  Recognizing that further fighting is just going to destroy his lab, Menace uses his dimensional gateway to escape.  Hyperion returns to the Squadron.  The next day, there’s a funeral for Howard, and confirmation comes from Decibel that Howard died of natural causes, although we know that it was really Hyperion that killed him.  As the issue ends, one week after the funeral, Zarda and Evil Hyperion make out on the beach.

• The Whizzer is running through a city and happens to come across two of his old villains, The Rustler and Bollix, in the middle of robbing a bank.  They are able to escape the cops because they are wearing the new force-belts the Squadron has begun producing, but Whizzer just bounces them like basketballs to the police station.  The criminals feel safe in their belts, but Stan points out they’ll burn out after 96 hours of continuous use, but that the two men will be hungry before then.  Tom Thumb and Shape are inspecting a factory where the belts are being made.  Tom is happy to learn that the factory owners have prepared a lunch in his honour.  Whizzer joins them.  At another factory, where the new non-lethal pacifier pellets being issued to police are made, Ape X checks on the equipment, while Blue Eagle and Quagmire find themselves with nothing to do.  When Quagmire smiles at a woman, Jim gets angry and confronts him on his behaviour.  Quagmire points out that his actions are constrained by the behaviour modifications he’s undergone, and Jim punches him in the face before flying off.  He recognizes that he’s out of sorts because of Linda leaving, and flies around for about fifteen minutes, calming down.  When he returns to the plant, he learns there was a leak of the tranquilizing gas, and that Quagmire rescued thirty people but caught a massive dose of the gas.  In Squadron City, Arcanna reveals to Dr. Decibel that she’s much further along in her pregnancy than anyone suspects, because she’s using her illusion powers to hide it.  He thinks she should be honest, but can’t do anything about it because of her behaviour modifications.  Evil Hyperion is flying home with Lamprey and Doctor Spectrum, but decides to fly ahead of the others.  Lamprey suspects that he’s not who he says he is, but his behaviour modifications prevent him from saying anything.  Hyperion joins Power Princess in her office, and starts kissing her.  Foxfire walks in on them, and rushes out, and while Zarda feels that undermines her leadership, Evil Hyperion points out that due to Foxfire’s behaviour modifications, she won’t be able to tell anyone what she saw.  Zarda sends him away.  The real Hyperion is able to watch these events from the limbo he’s trapped in.  We learn that he can’t find any way out of this realm, but as he flies around, he comes across Master Menace.  They talk, and Menace explains that he doesn’t have enough power to get himself home.  Hyperion offers to help him, but won’t agree to his terms that the Squadron will never interfere in his plans.  Later, Hyperion seeks him out and agrees with him, provided Menace won’t interfere in the Utopia Program.  By firing his atomic vision at Menace’s induction coil, Hyperion makes it so Menace can teleport them both back to their reality.  They materialize above Menace’s laboratory (which now looks like Castle Doom, not the observatory it was before).  Hyperion lets Menace fall, and rushes towards Squadron City.  The Squadron is meeting, and discussing Quagmire’s condition, when Hyperion busts through the wall and confronts his imposter.  They both fly out to fight, and Zarda, who is freaking out a little, has the Squadron follow.  Lamprey is finally able to speak, and tells Zarda of his suspicions, based on his ability to read energy.  The two Hyperions fight for pages.  They’re evenly matched, although the Evil Hyperion has more experience letting loose.  They end up firing their atomic vision at one another.  The Squadron can see the energy they are kicking up, and fly towards them.  Where the two Hyperions’ eye beams meet, there is a growing ball of energy.  The energy gets closer to the evil Hyperion, and explodes in his face, bursting his eyes.  Hyperion starts beating on him.  Zarda wants Lamprey to use his powers to drain some of Hyperion’s energy, but his behaviour modifications won’t allow this.  Spectrum tries to hold him, but isn’t strong enough.  Finally, after hearing (he can’t see properly) Zarda’s voice, Hyperion stops.  He reveals that the Evil Hyperion killed Howard, and that he’s not a real human.  Evil Hyperion, dying, admits to Zarda what he did, and with his last breath, tries to declare his love for her.  For some reason, the narration now refers to him as being ‘pseudo-organic’ matter, and says that he liquifies as he dies.  Zarda cries.
• Dr. Decibel is using very powerful lasers to try to restore Hyperion’s eyesight, but we’ve learned that his first six attempts were failures.  Hyperion remembers what got him in this situation, and Zarda watches, reflecting on how messed up the last two months have been for her.  She recognizes that she was only interested in the imposter because she thought he was the real deal.  Foxfire is reviewing Squadron historical records, looking up the Institute of Evil and her own file.  Doctor Spectrum surprises her, and she almost attacks him until she realizes who he is and her programming kicks in.  They start flirting, and she makes it clear they are going to have sex.  Blue Eagle goes to visit Quagmire, who is still comatose (and still in his costume).  Jim feels badly for his role in Quagmire’s injury.  Whizzer and Lamprey are playing a very quick game of tennis, while Stan’s wife and the Joneses watch.  Phil goes to check on the kids, who are happily playing with Shape.  In the lab, Tom Thumb and Ape X are working together on cryogenic pods to help the fatally ill, and it looks like Ape X, whose first name is Xina, might have feelings for Tom.  When Tom starts coughing, he excuses himself and goes to his private lab.  He and Aida talk about how his cancer is progressing, but he doesn’t want anyone to know.  He takes a nap, and Aida decides that she has to let Ape X know.  Nightwing and his three allies fly a helicopter over the Apache mountains.  Kyle and Remnant fly out to go recruit a big man we only partially see.  Ape X wakes Tom up, and tells him that she knows about his cancer.  He tells her that there is no way to cure it (it’s odd that he’s not taking any kind of treatment though), and tells her that he went so far as to travel to the future for a cure.  She asks why he didn’t just take the cure from the Scarlet Centurion, but Tom insists that it would be wrong.  Xina convinces him that he should go steal it, temporarily, but also can’t go with him because of her programming.  Instead, she gets Lamprey to accompany Tom, but they tell him they are retrieving something that was stolen from them (I’m not sure about the moral gymnastics here, and how this wouldn’t conflict with Xina’s programming).  The two men put on the time travel devices and jump to the far future.  They fly around, looking for a hospital, and are spotted by some sentry devices.  When the drones shoot Lamprey, it gives him the energy to destroy them.  They see the Centurion’s citadel, and enter it.  In our time, Zarda goes to see Hyperion, who is lying in bed.  They talk, and she declares her love for him.  They start to kiss.  Tom and Lamprey interrogate some guy in the citadel, who leads them to the room where the panacea potion is kept.  They enter, but see many jars set in various reliquaries around the room.  Nightwing’s crew fly around in their helicopter, looking for the next recruit.  Remnant finishes sewing a costume for their new friend, Redstone.  Mink says that the power pyramid they got from Professor Imam is glowing, suggesting they are close to their next recruit.  Tom takes a jar off the shelf, but that’s when a number of the Centurion’s guards enter the room.  They start shooting, and Lamprey easily defeats them all.  The problem is, in the fight, every other jar of the potion has been damaged.  Tom worries that taking the one he has in his hand might cause other people to die, as the Centurion might not be able to make more.  He decides to take it anyway, and they return to their time.  We learn that the Centurion was watching this whole thing, amused.  Once Tom runs some tests on the potion, he discovers that it’s just penicillin and vitamins, and figures that the people of the 40th century are just genetically superior, so that’s enough (to cure things like cancer).  Tom realizes that he’s going to die.  A text box tells us that Tom dies one week later while working in his lab.  It’s an indignant way to kill off a character whose minor plotline has revolved around his sense of being disrespected.

• Issue ten opens with a TV special on Tom Thumb’s life and death that includes footage from his funeral.  The announcer recaps Tom’s life and achievements, with a focus on some of the things he worked on for the Utopia Program, the b-mod devices and the force shield belts.  Power Princess appears on the show to talk about how one of Tom’s last inventions, the hibernaculum, is going to help them offset death and disease by freezing people at the point of death so they can be revived and cured in the future.  She goes on to explain how the Squadron is contributing to the building of hibernacles (repositories for the frozen), life-watches (basically, iWatches that will tell hibermedics when you’re about to die), and the hibernacula themselves. We see that Nightwing is watching this with a group of costumed characters.  We recognize Pinball, Mink, Remnant, Redstone, and the Golden Archer, but don’t know the rest.  After Kyle turns off the broadcast, his team speculates on some of the Squadron’s recent changes, such as Hyperion’s high tech glasses, the disappearance of Quagmire, and why Zarda is in charge.  Kyle refocuses the discussion on overthrowing the Squadron.  The next morning, the Squadron has their morning meeting, and Zarda divides up work assignments.  Hyperion tells Ape X that his image-simulator glasses aren’t working correctly, so she works on them.  Spectrum and Foxfire help demolish buildings so the Hibernacle can be built in Capital City.  Arcanna and Zarda talk in their aircar about Hyperion and Zarda’s relationship.  Arcanna believes she’s being given easy missions (they’re on their way to talk to the Medical Association) because of her pregnancy.  Xina fixes Hyperion’s glasses, and he heads out on his assignment.  Xina talks to Aida, and we learn they’re building a robot simulacrum of Tom Thumb.  Doctor Decibel goes to check on Quagmire, and finds that his tar is pouring out of his ears.  Blue Eagle and Lamprey are flying to their task, and Lamprey calls Jim out for refusing to talk to him.  Jim is still feeling guilty about Quagmire, and agrees to do better.  They arrive at the National Decriminalization Institute, where there are plans to have the authorities handle all future behaviour modifications.  Whizzer and Shape are signing autographs at the building in Cosmopolis where applications to be hibermedics are being accepted.  Redstone and a woman identifying herself as Moonglow enter and ask to join the Squadron.  Whizzer has them demonstrate their powers (Redstone is really strong, and Moonglow appears to be able to fly and disrupt gravity, but we can learn that she actually has illusion powers).  Whizzer and Shape blindfold them and take them to Squadron City.  Kyle Richmond is joined by Golden Archer, who asks if the two double agents have made it onto the Squadron yet.  He also thanks Kyle for letting him join his team and make up for what he’s done.  Kyle gets a call from Master Menace, who tells him that now he knows where he can get a b-mod device, and doesn’t need to help Kyle anymore.  Kyle insists that Menace keep helping them, as he has people inside the Squadron now who can get the b-mod plans and help Menace create a counter-brainwashing device.  Menace gives him two weeks.  At the Squadron meeting, Whizzer nominates Redstone and Moonglow for membership.  Jim suggests that they preemptively subject them to behaviour modification, to make sure they’ll be loyal.  There’s some debate about this, but his idea is voted down.  Zarda declares them provisional members, pending a background check by Whizzer.  Decibel, who has missed the meeting, calls in asking for help at the hospital.  The Squadron rushes over and finds Quagmire’s muck pouring out of the windows.  They rush in to pull out anyone needing help, while Foxfire, Arcann, and Lamprey find their powers ineffective to help stop the spread of the stuff.  Spectrum and Hyperion are able to get the last civilians out, other than Quagmire and Decibel, who are at the centre of the flood of thick tar.  While Spectrum erects a dam to contain the stuff, Hyperion tells Zarda that the only way to stop this from continuing would be to unplug the machines keeping Quagmire alive (the stuff comes through a dimensional gate in his brain).  Zarda intends to carry out this plan, but Hyperion insists that he’s the only one strong enough to make his way through the hospital.  With some difficulty, he makes it Quagmire’s room and unplugs the machine, which instantly makes all the stuff disappear.  Quagmire’s body disappears as well.  Hyperion carries out Decibel, who drowned in the room.
• Lamprey is out in the desert guarding a flag.  It turns out that the Squadron is using a game of capture the flag to train and assess its new recruits.  Lamprey has to hold off Blue Eagle, Shape, Redstone, and Moonglow, keeping them from touching the flag.  He does really well against the team, but is surprised that his hand goes right through Moonglow.  Elsewhere, the rest of Lamprey’s team approaches their enemies’ flag.  Doctor Spectrum and Foxfire are with Inertia (whom we last saw sitting at Nightwing’s table).  This flag is being guarded by Haywire, another of the Renegades who has obviously infiltrated the Squadron.  He creates steel tangled webs which foil Foxfire and Spectrum’s approach.  Inertia’s powers over Inertia give her more success, and she uses her powers over inertia to knock Haywire over.  Jim’s team is about to win when Lamprey reveals a surprise, the last new recruit, Thermite, is hiding underground.  He has the ability to fire hot and cold blasts (one from each hand), and he stops the Eagle and Redstone from advancing.  Moonglow uses her illusion power to make Lamprey think she’s in one place, and then she grabs the flag from another, winning the game.  The other team learns of the win just as Inertia is about to touch the flag.  As the two teams head back towards the City, Moonglow mentions to Redstone that she got too caught up in the game and hopes that Lamprey didn’t realize the full extent of her powers.  Whizzer meets them all to tell them that the evening’s assembly will be broadcast.  Zarda and Hyperion are doing paperwork in the office, and Zarda worries about the losses they’ve experienced.  That night, the new members are formally inducted into the Squadron, swearing an oath to the team.  We see that each of the new recruits feels hypocritical or some kind of way about this, as they know they are there to betray the team.  It’s odd that the Squadron, which unmasked at the start of the Utopia project, has not asked the same of their new members, or Lamprey, to that effect.  Nightwing and the rest of his Renegades watch on TV, and are pleased to see their plan finally moving forward.  Kyle thinks about all that has happened, and is soon joined by Mink, who thanks him for including her and changing her life; she kisses him.  That night, Moonglow sneaks into the tech building and finds the blueprints for the behaviour modification device.  She uses her powers to hide from Ape X, and then connects the computer she’s on to a modem so she can call the number Nighwing gave her.  Master Menace receives the files, and gets to work preparing his countermeasure to the device.  Moonglow sneaks out.  Xina works on the Tom Thumb robot.  Aida lets her know that someone accessed the b-mod files, and the surveillance tape shows that it was Moonglow.  Xina realizes that she needs to let the senior Squadron members know what happened, but she is caught in the quandary caused by the fact that she can’t work against any Squadron member, including Moonglow.  She can’t make up her mind what to do, and just repeats, “Can’t… Must…” endlessly.  Aida hides the Tom Thumb robot and then summons Hyperion and Zarda.  Aida worries that telling them about what Moonglow did might damage them as well, so says nothing as they take Ape X to the hospital.  Moonglow returns to her fellow infiltrators, and lets them know what she’s done.  A few days later, at Nightwing’s mansion, the rest of the team practices.  He receives a call from Master Menace, who has successfully made a machine that reverses the b-mod system.  Nightwing wants to get the former Institute of Evil members on their own to de-modify them, and Golden Archer thinks about fixing the mistake he made with Lady Lark (where is she?).  A couple of days later, Lamprey, Whizzer, and Haywire oversee the construction of a hibernacle.  Haywire suggests that Whizzer head home first to see his family, and then asks Lamprey to go to a nearby bar with him.  When they get there, Haywire grabs Lamprey, and takes him to the back room where Master Menace, Mink, Remnant, Pinball, Nightwing, and the Archer wait for him.  They use Menace’s new machine on him, and he feels good to be back to his old self.  Kyle explains that they want him to join them and help.  A few days later, Redstone and Thermite bring Shape, having slipped away from Blue Eagle.  As they get Shape in the machine, Remnant and the Archer show up with the Eagle wrapped in one of Remnant’s carpets.  They explain that he was following the others.  Menace wants to b-mod Jim, but Kyle is against that plan.  While they de-mod Shape, he struggles with his choices, realizing that there’s no right way out of this situation, as it’s too soon to alert the Squadron to what they’re doing.  In the end, he decides he wants Jim to forget seeing them, but doesn’t want him modified.  Kyle feels terrible about the decision he’s just made.

• Issue twelve is extra-sized and packed.  It opens with Kyle and Master Menace de-programming Foxfire.  We learn that Wyatt has changed his name to Black Archer, and Kyle recaps how he’s spent the last year.  Foxfire agrees to go along with Kyle and his plans.  Lamprey returns her to the team, and Kyle takes another stab at getting Master Menace to sign up with him.  Remnant, Mink, and Pinball agree with Menace that they should just b-mod the Squadron, but Kyle holds firm in his convictions, with Wyatt’s support.  Menace teleports away, and the others reaffirm their commitment to Kyle.  Lamprey talks to Olivia about how he’s looking forward to getting back at the Squadron, but she is conflicted.  The next morning, the Stewarts have Joe over for breakfast, and Madeline gives him a hard time about not starting a family.  Shape goes to visit Ape X, who is basically catatonic.  Shape opens up to her, explaining how conflicted he is after being deprogrammed.  Moonglow is watching, and makes it seem like Xina is telling him to follow the new members of the team, especially Moonglow.  Arcanna and Phil are meeting with their midwife, and we learn that Arcanna is ready to go into labour at any time, but is still probably okay to go with the Squadron to their appearance in Capital City.  Redstone is loading the hibernaculum holding Tom Thumb into an aircar, while Blue Eagle tries to be friendly with him.  Inertia and Haywire are enjoying some private time in a hot tub in the spa.  We learn that Haywire has some conflicting feelings about their plans.  Thermite freezes the hot tub as a prank.  Zarda and Hyperion meet with the President and his cabinet, letting them know that they are returning full control of the United States to them, having met most of their goals and their one year deadline.  On the way out, Hyperion and Zarda enjoy some alone time in the sky, where they talk about their relationship, and the fact that Zarda has discovered that Hyperion is not an alien; she kind of proposes to him.  A couple of hours later, the entire Squadron appears at a press conference/rally outside the first completed hibernacle.  Zarda talks about everything the Squadron has accomplished – the economy is working, poverty is down, crime is at 5% of what it was a year before, and America is at peace (we never saw them address some of these issues at all).  She also talks about the hibernacle plan, which does have some people protesting it.  We see that Linda Lewis is in the crowd, looking for Wyatt.  Wyatt is watching from a viewscreen on Kyle’s helicopter, and he feels guilty about brainwashing and then ditching her.  Kyle is thinking about things as his team flies to Squadron City.  Later, the Squadron returns home, all lost in their own thoughts (Foxfire most of all).  When they land, they spot Kyle’s helicopter, and see him with his team.  We can notice that all of his allies on the Squadron are positioning themselves around the six remaining original Squadroners.  Kyle refers to his team as America’s Redeemers, and says that he wants to take away control of America from the Squadron (which, really, they just gave back to the President, so…).  When Zarda points out that they are outnumbered, the others reveal themselves.  We see how everyone reacts to this (Arcanna realizes that she is in no condition for a fight).  There is more posturing and discussion, but it’s Joe that breaks the stalemate, sending his prism’s energy into the ground and attempting to use it to hold everyone still.  It’s not all that effective though, and soon the fight is on.  Jim hits Lamprey before he can absorb the prism’s power, but Inertia uses Whizzer’s force against Zarda, sending her flying into Joe so he releases everyone.  While the fight continues, Hyperion tries to talk to Kyle, at least until Redstone attacks him.  Redstone throws him into an aircar, knocking off the glasses he needs to see.  Lamprey swoops in to drain Hyperion, but he hits him with a pice of metal at the right time.  Arcanna tries to slip away, but draws Mink’s attention.  Foxfire notices this, and worries about her.  Haywire trips Whizzer, but he rolls, and kicks Thermite in the back, destroying his suit’s regulator and trapping him in a column of ice.  Arcanna pushes away Mink and Foxfire, but is confronted by Moonglow, who makes her believe that she’s being crushed by extra gravity.  Arcanna says she’s in labour, but Moonglow doesn’t believe her.  Kyle watches what’s going on, and worries that this isn’t the right way to do things.  As Redstone and Hyperion fight, Inertia keeps stealing the energy from Hyperion’s punches and sends them into Zarda.  Joe, who is worried to use his prism on someone, knocks Inertia down, giving Zarda a chance.  Joe moves to help Jim, but gets distracted by Wyatt.  He tries to talk to his friend, but Wyatt is convinced the Squadron needs to stop what it’s doing.  Wyatt fires an arrow at Joe, and he finds himself frozen with indecision, thinking about what happened with Nuke.  The arrow hits his prism, and it explodes.  All colour drains away from Joe, and he collapses.  Wyatt feels guilty and catches him.  Jim thinks he’s hurting him, and hits him hard with his mace on the back of the head.  Shape comes to Moonglow and Arcanna, and tells Moonglow that Arcanna is his friend.  This gives Arcanna enough time to slip away, leaving an illusion behind.  She sneaks up behind Moonglow and punches her out.  No longer to maintain her illusion, Shape can see how pregnant she really is, and she asks him to take her to the hospital.  As they leave, they notice that Moonglow’s true form is not what she was showing the world – she’s a little overweight in reality (although somehow she was able to fool the security cameras last issue).  Lamprey draws Hyperion’s power from him, and Kyles tells Redstone to lay him out by their vehicle.  Olivia holds Joe, and declares her love for him; she learns he’s not dead.  Lamprey drains the power out of Jim’s wings, leaving him to fall.  He aims for Pinball, thinking that the round villain might be able to provide a soft landing.  Remnant sees what’s happening and tries to intervene, but Blue Eagle hits him hard.  Remnant worries that he’s not breathing.  Kyle and Redstone talk about what they’re doing, and Kyle worries that someone is going to die because of him.  He sees that Hyperion is still alive, and gives him his glasses.  He starts to explain his plans to fix society, freeing them from the changes the Squadron has imposed on them.  He says he’ll give criminals the choice to be de-programmed, and will reopen prisons and permit guns again.  Olivia explains to Joe that she didn’t want to side with Kyle, but couldn’t figure out what to do.  She wants to go fix things now, and runs off.  Kyle continues to talk to Hyperion (it’s pretty one sided), raising the question of how they can always trust the people in power.  He suggests that the mechanisms the Squadron developed could easily be used to make utopia totalitarian, which is why he wants to dismantle it.  Olivia runs up and uses her powers to give Kyle a heart attack.  Hyperion worries about his friend.  Olivia returns to Joe, but on the way, Mink stabs her in the back.  Joe lashes out, blasting Mink with a red beam that comes from his body.  He realizes he still has his powers, and turns green when he tries to fly Olivia to the hospital.  Lamprey comes to stop him, and Joe turns his full spectrum on him, overloading the energy vampire and causing him to explode.  Everyone still standing gathers around Kyle’s body, and Hyperion offers the Squadron’s surrender.  Later, everyone left stands in the morgue, and we learn that Nighthawk, Foxfire, Blue Eagle, Pinball, Black Archer, and Lamprey are all dead.  Thermite is in critical condition with little chance of survival.  Hyperion suggests to everyone that they disband the Squadron and start taking apart the systems they instituted across America.  In the last two panels, Shape and the Jones children watch as their father announces that Arcanna has had a baby boy – Benjamin Thomas Jones.

This was not a satisfying ending, and I guess that’s why four years later Gruenwald and Ryan returned with the Squadron Supreme graphic novel.  Before I look at that, though, I want to talk about this series.

This is one of the most ambitious and forward thinking series to have been published in a mainstream format in the 80s.  Sure, this is not The Watchmen, but it wrestles with some of the same themes and ideas, and came out at the same time.  Mark Gruenwald was struggling with big questions about the role that superheroes should play in society, and decided to see how one team’s efforts would play out over a whole year, with each issue happening in real time (other than the early issues of The ‘Nam, the only other book I can think of that did this is Batman: The Long Hallowe’en, much later).  

This gave him time to let his ideas play out, and to allow characters to show real change and growth, even if things like seasons never really played into the series at all.  In some ways, this format limited the book, not letting any particular scene or thread play out for long, but it also gave us something we’d not seen before.

I’d like to talk about a few things here, and it’s hard to separate all of the different threads.  I’d like to examine the Utopia Project, and how it reflects concerns of the 80s and today, and I’d like to talk about the characters in this book.

When we look at the main goals of the project, they remind us of how little things have changed in (North) America in the last almost forty years.  When the Squadron took over, America was a total mess, with food shortages and the means of production disassembled.  They quickly got food growing and distributed again, before moving on to what they saw as their next biggest problem, gun control.

It’s interesting that they decided to first go after the military’s weapons, disarming them before moving on to police forces.  It was mentioned a few times that they made disarmament of individuals optional, but with the mass distribution of force shield belts, owning guns quickly became pointless.  One thing that I kept thinking about in the issues that discussed guns was how disarming the police, and giving them non-lethal alternatives is, in a way, a form of defunding them.  

After that, the Squadron moved on to the issue of prison abolition.  I mean, it was never called this, but by reforming and releasing all of the incarcerated people, that’s where we ended up.  Their approach, to have each and every incarcerated person sit in a chair for a few minutes while a member of the Squadron gave them detailed instructions on how to live their life.  It’s not efficient, given the number of people incarcerated in the US (although not as many in the 80s as now), and it’s a little curious that this is such a keystone part of their mission.  It’s curious to me, as “criminals” are often ignored, or viewed as not worthy of reform.  This part of the project gave Gruenwald the opportunity to build Nighthawk’s key objections to the team, and a place to pin the central conflict of the series.  I guess it’s also sexier than having the team spend most issues tackling the social issues that contribute to crime in the first place (I’ll circle back to this).

Some of the other key components of their program, such as the environment, get mentioned once or twice, but are never shown as being all the central to their mission.

The last big thing that the Squadron was working on was health care, and the approach here is very strange.  Once Tom Thumb spent a couple of weeks trying to cure cancer and realized he couldn’t, he moved towards figuring out a way of freezing dead people so they can be cured and brought back somewhere down the road, and then became the first person to undergo the first part of that procedure.  Wouldn’t various health care initiatives focusing on preventative care be more productive?  The solution is that everyone gets a fitbit that will tell people when you’re dead, so you can be frozen.  One thought I had was that it might be better to freeze people before their body has completely given out on them, but I’m not a comic book scientist with expertise in robotic, physics, and medicine, so what do I know?

Looking at the methods and approaches that the Squadron took towards fixing things, I was surprised by how relevant they are today.  As I write this, we’ve been hearing about food shortages (baby formula, for example) and high food prices.  We’ve also seen huge issues with guns in America, rampant police violence, and are (hopefully) coming out of a global pandemic that has stressed the health care systems of the world in ways that have never been seen before.  Some of the Squadron’s solutions would be pretty welcome right about now.

I did think it worth noting that aside from a couple references to low-income areas of the country, the Squadron’s America doesn’t seem too concerned with issues of equity.  While there are a lot of females on the team, Foxfire is the only notable Black person in this whole series.  It’s suggested that Redstone might be Indigenous, but his character is never developed.  The ‘criminals’ that receive behaviour modification always seem to be middle aged white guys who just happened to kill some people.  I don’t think that this was representative of things in the 80s, and it makes the prison problem seem less real.

The central conflict between Hyperion and Nighthawk about how to fix the country sort of falls along modern party lines.  Kyle wants individual responsibility and liberty, but also wants everyone to have their guns back.  Hyperion is more convinced that large scale problems can be tackled through the application of policy.  It’s easy to read this today as a partisan fight.

This is probably a good place to look at some of the characters in this book.  I found it frustrating that many of their arcs didn’t really finish.  I don’t know if there was just too much plot for this series, or too many characters, but we went from having some pretty in-depth character studies early in the run to just finishing personal stories by killing a key character by the end.  I think that a thirteenth issue would have helped.

Let’s talk about some of the characters, especially from the original team:

Hyperion – This Superman stand-in remained more of a cipher than the other characters until the storyline with his evil duplicate, which led to his relationship with Zarda.  I’m not sure how it is that Hyperion never doubted his mission until the very end, when his argument with Kyle opened his eyes.  Had they just taken the time to listen to one another, things might have gone better.  

Power Princess – The Squadron’s Wonder Woman was likewise left kind of blank for most of the series.  I would have liked to know more about her relationship with her husband, how it felt to watch him age, and how it felt to be in a new relationship with Hyperion after his death.  One aspect of the monthly time jumps between issues is that we didn’t really see her grieve for long.

Doctor Spectrum – Joe seemed like a hothead early in the series, but after Nuke’s death, became much more cautious and thoughtful.  I liked how he grew out of the Hal Jordan mold the longer the series ran.

Whizzer – Like with Arcanna, I liked how we got to see Stanley as a family man.  He seemed kind of gullible though, and easily swayed.

Arcanna – What made Arcanna interesting was the way that she felt the need to hide her pregnancy from the others so that she’d be taken seriously in her job.  This is something many professional women have to go through, and I think it’s rare that we see that portrayed in comics.  I also liked how involved her family became in things.  That’s another thing that set this series apart. 

Blue Eagle – Jim was kind of boring.  He was also the most reactionary and untrusting of the whole team, and while he might have been proven right by events, he’s probably the least likeable original member of the Squadron.

Tom Thumb – Tom was cool, but also, because he struck me as the least like his DC analogue (which is kind of Ray Palmer, but also kind of the original Golden Age Atom), the most original of the first lineup.  It felt for a long time like Tom’s story was going to be about his sense of being unappreciated, but then Gruenwald decided to kill him off slowly.  (I wonder what ever happened to the robot version of him that Xina and Aida were making).

Lady Lark and Golden Archer – I liked Linda from the first issue, and thought it was interesting how her relationship with Wyatt was shown as being pretty one-sided.  It was clear to everyone other than Wyatt that they were heading towards a breakup, so his mental breakdown when she turned down his proposal felt pretty realistic.  I didn’t like the way that Linda basically got written out of the book after she quit the team.  I also didn’t like that Gruenwald resolved Wyatt’s story, which is one of the most compelling here, by killing him off in such a cruel way.

Nuke – I wasn’t sad to see the end of poor Al, as he always felt more like a plot point than a legit character. 

Amphibian – Likewise, I didn’t care much when Amphibian left the book.  He wasn’t interesting. 

With the addition of the Institute of Evil to the team, Gruenwald moved away from making this a version of the Justice League, and created some original characters.  Sure, you can argue that Shape is basically Plastic Man, and Ape X is a combination of Monsieur Mallah, the Brain, and Niles Caulder, but where would that argument get you?

Quagmire and Dr. Decibel – These two former members of the Institute of Evil weren’t interesting, but they also weren’t around all that long.

Ape X – I thought that Xina had the most story potential, and liked how her friendship with Tom Thumb was handled.  I also thought the way her modifications froze her brain was illustrative of how poorly the program was being handled.

Lamprey – Lamprey was another interesting character (it’s curious how we only got to know a few of the Institute people’s real names or characters).  He was a little ridiculous looking, with his long pigtails, but his power set was worth exploring more.

Foxfire – Olivia also had a lot of potential, and I liked that she made up her mind to help the Squadron, although I think it’s a shame she was killed off right after.

Shape – I have nothing to say about him.  He’s kind of a goofy character.

I also liked a lot of the characters on Nightwing’s team.  

Redstone, Inertia, and Haywire were all of interest to me, and it would have been good to see more of them.  I don’t remember if they get more screen time in the graphic novel, but I guess we’ll find out.

Moonglow – She reminds me a lot of Moonstone, and how she was portrayed later on in the Thunderbolts, always looking for angles and hiding her true intentions (and, in Moonglow’s case, her true appearance).  

Thermite, Remnant, Mink, and Pinball – These were all pretty generic characters.

Nighthawk – I think it’s a shame that Gruenwald wasn’t able to give Kyle more space in this series (today he’d have had a four-issue miniseries running concurrently with the main book), as his moral journey became the heart of this book, and it was interesting to watch him try to justify his actions to himself, even when he knew they weren’t justifiable anymore.  You can tell that he lost the plot, and lost control pretty early, and that really bothered him. 

While many issues had questionable endings that always felt a little too rushed (I didn’t count pages, but I feel like one reason why there wasn’t a letters page was because of an extra page of story), I admire the way that Gruenwald plotted out this series and used little moments in early issues to develop towards the big finale.  This book juggled a lot of characters (it’s like reading the Legion of Super-Heroes at times), but everyone got their moment or two.  It was cool how the upper left box on the cover would hint at which character was getting more spotlight than the others in a given issue.

Gruenwald was a master at using a conventional series to tell stories that pushed the envelope, and this was definitely his masterpiece.

Before I started to read this series, I wasn’t able to remember who the artist was, and I think that’s because it changed over the course of the book.  Bob Hall started things off, working with a couple of inkers, before the team of Paul Ryan and Sam De La Rosa settled into the back half of the book.  There was a lot of consistency in their approaches, and the book maintained a kind of house style.  I think that’s important given the number of characters on each page.  The art in this series wasn’t flashy, but it was solidly mid-80s Marvel, and it served the story very well.

A number of scenes came back to me just before I read them, as I know I revisited this series a couple of times as a kid.  It left its mark on me then, and reading it again now, I can see why.  I remember being excited when the graphic novel was published, but I also remember having a hard time remembering who all the characters were and how they were related to one another after a four year gap.  Coming right off this series and into the OGN, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, so it’s time to talk about it.

• In the far future, the Scarlet Centurion sits on his throne, watching two women engage in gladiatorial combat.  Overmind tries to make the fight more interesting with a wager, but there is a desperate ennui in the Centurion.  He gets called away by his scientists, who have finally been able to watch events in the late twentieth century, a goal the Centurion has had for a while.  The scientists show a gigantic hand emerging through a portal in space, passing through the sun, and eventually engulfing the Earth.  The Centurion wants to know more.  The story moves to the Earth, with a narrative box telling us there is twelve hours left before the Earth is destroyed (this is counted down throughout the book).  Hyperion is arriving in Squadron City with the President and much of his cabinet.  We figure out it’s only been about a week since the events of the miniseries, and once they are in a meeting room, Hyperion explains that the Squadron has disbanded.  He brings them up to speed on the various deaths and events of issue twelve, and tells them that they are going to have to work with the Squadron to dismantle many of their programs.  Hyperion receives an urgent summons from Professor Imam (I love this name) and has to leave immediately.  Redstone wants to dismantle everything in Tom Thumb’s lab, but when Power Princess confronts him, they end up trashing the place by fighting.  Hyperion comes to tell Zarda about Imam’s summons, and takes her with him.  He leaves Redstone in charge in his absence and asks him to look in on the President.  We learn that Zarda and Imam had adventures together during the Second World War.  At Arcanna’s house, she feeds her baby while Shape plays with her other kids.  The baby has a gleam in his eye that, in another book, would suggest he’s a Summers.  Doctor Spectrum stands in front of the hibernacula that hold the recently killed Squadroners (including Thermite), and feels guilty.  Whizzer comes to him, because he’s worried about Joe.  Inertia and Haywire frolic on the beach, and end up naked, not knowing that Moonglow, who has stayed invisible since the fight out of shame of her true appearance, is watching them.  Arriving at Imam’s Temple of Contemplation, the Professor shows them the same images that we saw in the future, but doesn’t know how to stop what’s happening.  He agrees to go into space with the Squadron, and when he leaves his temple, it collapses behind him.  We see that the cosmic hand has entered the solar system.  Zarda has Stanley gather all of the Squadron and Redeemers for her.  Once they are all together (including Moonglow), except for Joe, who has gone looking to talk to Lady Lark to tell her about the Black/Golden Archer, Hyperion, Zarda, and Imam tell them about the threat they face.  Recognizing that they don’t have a space vessel, Hyperion heads out to go get one from Master Menace.  At the same time, Menace is preparing to leave this dimension to escape the threat he’s detected.  He’s visited by a hologram of the Scarlet Centurion, who says he’s come to help save the universe.  While they argue and try to figure out what to do, Menace learns that Hyperion is approaching.  After letting his defense fire at him for a bit, he lets him through.  After some posturing, Menace has the idea of going to the future with the Centurion where he can work on his dimensional aperture generator to make it big enough to teleport the entity away, for as long as he wants.  He tells Hyperion he’ll be back in a minute, but spends more than forty minutes, time that Hyperion feels he could be using.  Just as he’s about to leave, Menace returns, and we learn he’s spent fifteen years working on this problem.  He has four generators for Hyperion.  Hyperion flies off with them, with the understanding that Menace will prepare his spacecraft for the team (why would Hyperion take the stuff with him if they’re coming back?).  Joe has brought Linda to Squadron City to pay her respects to Wyatt, and to tell her how he’s lost all colour and has absorbed his prism.  Whizzer finds them and brings them to the others.  Zarda insists that Arcanna stay behind on this mission, given that she’s just given birth and that they think that Imam’s magic will be enough.  Hyperion returns, and soon, the team takes off in three aircars to go to Meance’s place.  They notice that they can see the entity next to the sun now.  Lady Lark joins them, wearing Blue Eagle’s wings.  As they fly off, we see Moonglow thinking about how no one suspects anything.  They arrive at Menace’s castle with eight hours left before the end of the world.  They pile into his rocket and take off.  Once they leave the stratosphere, Redstone gets very weak and visibly shrinks.  Joe grabs him and flies back towards the Earth.  When he returns, he tells them that Redstone died.  As they approach the entity, which is now fully in their reality, they plan.  They need to take the four generators that Menace made, and surround the entity.  Hyperion will take one, Joe another, and Whizzer the third, using a treadmill Joe will make him.  Linda offers to fly the fourth instead of Zarda. They head out, and we see that Joe loves being in space, and Linda is thinking of sacrificing herself so she can be with Wyatt again.  Stan misses his family, and Hyperion just feels like a failure.  Menace worries that the entity will get to the sun before his devices can be activated.  Inertia suggests she can use her powers to slow it down, but when she tries, she is basically disintegrated and blows a hole in the hull that Shape and Moonglow manage to fix.  While Moonglow does this, she briefly turns into Arcanna, but only the Centurion notices.  Haywire goes a little nuts, and Zarda has to knock him out.  The entity swallows the sun, and while that freaks everyone else out, it doesn’t worry Menace that much, because he thinks that his generators will cause it to spit it back out.  With the devices in place, the four heroes start the activation sequence.  Stan worries that this will kill him, but he survives.  The devices open a portal in front of the entity, but it basically just absorbs it, and moves on.  Menace, shocked that his plans didn’t work, teleports away.  The Centurion says he has an idea, and teleports away as well.  While Imam and Moonglow enter a trance to try to communicate with the entity, Zarda calls the others to tell them it didn’t work, and that they probably can’t make it to all of them in time.  Hyperion decides to go get at least one of his friends before they are absorbed.  Lark decides to sing to the entity.  Joe uses his prism to send warnings to other worlds about what’s coming.  Whizzer decides he’d rather run right into his death, and heads towards the entity.  Imam makes contact with the entity, who is a human named Tom.  We see that he was a scientist at Project: Pegasus in the 616, and because of something that happened involving the Thing, Thundra, Marvel Boy/Quasar, and the Aquarian, he got turned into this entity, and has been moving through whole realities, eating them.  The strain of this kills Imam.  Arcanna reveals her true self, and we see she’s brought her one week old infant with her.  The ship flies ahead of the entity, trying to outrun his advance.  The Centurion returns, with Overmind, who the Squadron all hate.  Overmind is the totality of billions of people, and he reaches out with his psychic powers to communicate with Tom, and to order him away, but his head explodes.  Realizing that it’s over, Arcanna tries to get the Centurion to take her baby with him to the future, but he refuses.  The ship continues to race the entity, but as they both approach the Earth, the few remaining members of the Squadron know they aren’t going to make it home in time.  Arcanna, Zarda, and Shape hold each other, and as Arcanna apologizes to her infant, he telepathically tells her not to worry.  The page goes blank, but Arcanna hears young Benjamin tell her that he’s made a deal.  As they return to reality, they see a grown man where the infant was.  Benjamin and Tom Lightner have switched roles, and the baby, who was meant to be the new wizard supreme after Imam died, is now the cosmic entity, and Lightner is the new wizard.  Benjamin plans to move backwards and un-absorb the seven realities that Lightner ate, although he knows he can’t fix the deaths that have happened.  He says goodbye, and we see his infant shape recede into space.  Lightner is able to bring back Hyperion, Spectrum, Whizzer, and Lark, but no one else from the team.  In the far future, the Centurion sits on his throne and thinks about how he’ll never know what happened to the Earth, which he thinks is part of a different timeline (because whatever the barrier that kept him from seeing too much before is back).  

This graphic novel was a pretty big shift from the regular series, and quite an emotional rollercoaster to read.  I don’t know what the planning behind this was, and it kind of took a meat cleaver to a lot of the storylines that Gruenwald set up in the miniseries and didn’t resolve.  I thought it was kind of cruel that he spent time hinting at Redstone’s true power scale, and connection with the Earth, and then just killed him.  

I found this story kind of thrilling, even when I knew how it was going to end.  Gruenwald used the countdown to ratchet up suspense, and the constant churn of death made each page turn an act of anticipation.  

Paul Ryan’s art, with Paul Becton’s colouring, is gorgeous in this book.  The more European dimensions of the original Marvel graphic novels worked well with the larger scale of this story.  I remember being a little scandalized by the $12.50 (CAN) cover price back in the day, and it kind of still feels like a lot, but I’m glad my younger self picked this up.

After this, I know that this version of the Squadron showed up again in issues of Quasar (I need to dig that series out and read it again), and then in the classic Busiek/Pérez Avengers run before getting rebooted by J. Michael Straczynski in Supreme Power, which was really good but fizzled out and never got finished.  

Gruenwald’s Squadron paved the way for books like The Authority, where heroes took a more active role in the quality of life in the world, and did more to use their powers for good.  You can argue that Marvel never needed their own version of the Justice League, but Gruenwald ran with that original concept and made it all his own.  This series doesn’t get talked about enough outside of the diehard fans, and that’s a shame.  When it does get discussed, it’s more for the fact that Gruenwald’s ashes got mixed into the printing of a collected edition, which is both a beautiful tribute and, I’m sorry to say, hella weird.

Looking back over this column, I’m not sure I’ve ever had this much to say about such a relatively short run, but Gruenwald and his collaborators packed a lot into this series and graphic novel, and it got me thinking.

Next time around, I’m going very obscure, with a “mature” take on a character that probably should have never existed, mostly because I want to look at the art again.

If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.