The Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe

Avengers (1998) (Single Issues) #5-6, Annual '98

by Mark Gruenwald, Paul Ryan (Illustrations), Kurt Busiek

What happens when a world's greatest heroes are left without a world? The late, great Mark Gruenwald's final Squadron Supreme saga sees the super heroes save their universe, only to be ejected from it in response! In the more mainstream Marvel Universe, mind control and manipulation put them both against and alongside the Avengers, but the greatest shock comes when they return to their home universe and see just how it's been saved without them! Featuring material from the critically acclaimed Kurt Busiek/ George Perez run of Avengers!

Collects Squadron Supreme: Death Of Universe, Thor #280, Avengers #5-6, Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual '98 & Squadron Supreme: New World Order.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Superheroes, Fiction, Comic Book

248 pages, Paperback

First published March 8, 2006

About the author

Gruenwald got his start in comics fandom, publishing his own fanzine, Omniverse, which explored the concept of continuity. Before being hired by Marvel, he wrote text articles for DC Comics official fanzine, The Amazing World of DC Comics. Articles by Gruenwald include "The Martian Chronicles" (a history of the Martian Manhunter) in issue #13 and several articles on the history of the Justice League in issue #14.

In 1978 he was hired by Marvel Comics, where he remained for the rest of his career. Hired initially as an assistant editor in January 1978, Gruenwald was promoted to full editorship by Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter in 1982, putting Gruenwald in charge of The Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Spider Woman, and What If. During this period, he shared an office with writer/editor Denny O'Neil, whom Gruenwald considered a mentor.


In 1982, Gruenwald, Steven Grant, and Bill Mantlo co-wrote Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions, the first limited seriespublished by Marvel Comics. As a writer, Gruenwald is best known for creating the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and his ten-year stint as the writer of Captain America during which he contributed several notable characters such as Crossbones, Diamondback and U.S. Agent. He made a deliberate effort to create villains who would be specific to Captain America, as opposed to generic foes who could as easily have been introduced in another comic.

His 60-issue run on Quasar realized Gruenwald's ambition to write his own kind of superhero. However, he considered his magnum opus to be the mid-1980s 12-issue miniseries Squadron Supreme, which told the story of an alternate universe where a group of well-intended superheroes decide that they would be best suited to run the planet

Reviews

[Chad]

Death of a Universe by Mark Gruenwald & Paul Ryan
This follows up the Squadron Supreme miniseries with its own Crisis level threat. Seems appropriate given the Squadron is based on the Justice League anyway. An entity is growing into our universe and will engulf the sun in 12 hours. There's not many character moments although there are quite a few brutal deaths with heads exploding and people exploding into red mist. Very surprising for a Marvel comic from the 80's. The art is solid and the coloring is really good, especially for the time. It looks like they may have used colored pencils.

Thor #280 by Roy Thomas & Wayne Boring
I'm not even sure why this is in here. It's a Thor comic from the 70's where Hyperion shows up and punches Thor, then asks him to be in a movie about his life. It's terrible and has no bearing on the Squadron Supreme at all.

Avengers #5-6, Annual 1998 by Kurt Busiek, George Perez & Carlos Pacheco
The Squadron Supreme show up to attack the Avengers because they've been brainwashed again. There's some fun stuff here and the Squadron eventually gets sent home after being stranded in the 616 universe for a decade.

New World Order by Len Kaminski & Anthony Williams
This is all prologue. The Squadron Supreme finally return to their Earth only to find it's become a police state. Without the Squadron around to keep the Utopian Program honest, Nighthawk's fears were realized. Anyway this feels like the first act of a larger story that I don't think ever happened.

[James Bowman]

A collection of follow-ups to Mark Gruenwald's famous Squadron Supreme series - with one exception, an earlier team-up with Thor (that happens to be the weakest in the collection - could have easily been left out). The title story (also by Gruenwald) is the highlight, with its riff on DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths; the final story (New World Order) is also interesting, but feels like a pilot for a promising ongoing we never got. Busiek's Avengers team-ups are also decent (especially the annual). (B+)

[Quentin Wallace]

This series collects some of the random Squadron Supreme stories out there including the Death of a Universe Graphic Novel as well as the New World Order graphic novels. Not bad, but doesn't quite live up to the original Gruenwald limited series. The stories didn't quite mesh well, as several different creative teams were involved, but it was still a good collection to tie up some "loose ends".

[Bil Thompson]

The first story is decent and provides an epilogue for the first Squadron Story, after that it goes downhill. Especially the final story, New World Order where the art and the writing both are in my opinion mediocre at best.

[Charles]

This story starts strange and ends with an unexpected recovery from an Earth consuming disaster. It opens with of all things a gladiatorial contest between two semi-clad attractive females in front of Lord Scarlet in the year 3979. When it is over and Lord Scarlet pronounces his boredom, he consults with his scientists concerning the complete lack of historical knowledge regarding the last half of the twentieth century on Earth. The scientists have been able to record a major event, where it appears that a giant hand simply engulfed the Earth.
This is only prologue as the storyline shifts back to a time shortly before the Earth is engulfed as the Squadron Supreme is informed of the dire circumstances forthcoming. To get to this point, we see one of the heroes breastfeeding her baby boy Benjamin, two of the heroes selectively targeting their powers to remove the swimsuit from the other and a fight between two other members of the squadron.
With a little more than ten hours to go, the Squadron Supreme must find and equip a spaceship, travel to the giant hand and find a way to stop it. Hardly a simple task, but of course these are superheroes. Good and evil come together to fight a common foe and not totally successfully. However, there is an ending that is completely unexpected that saves the overall story, which is a bit complex with many personal interactions, not all of which add to the story.
If it were not for the unexpected nature of the ending and the quality fade out of Lord Scarlet, this would have been a three-star story.

[B]

The (Infinite Crisis?) pastiche is just fine. It gets a little repetitive. People keep exploding.

The Busiek Avengers reprints were not great. It's weird how Buisek's Avengers run was so flat when he's normally so good.

Then there was a third story. Someone tore the last few pages out of this version. So maybe there's a tremendous ending I missed.

[Paul Riches]

Squadron Supreme Faces Death And Life



It all started as an injoke.

Then became something far bigger and far better and far badasser.

It's called the Squadron Supreme and it is Marvel's version of the DC's Justice League. Or something like that.

Waaaay back in the 1970's or so, Marvel Comics decided to have abit of fun with their Distinguished Competition DC Comics and, over the course of several years in several different comics, introduce an alternate Earth filled with replicates of Superman and Batman and such. Besides similar origins, they also sported motifs and themes related very heavily to the source material.

So Superman was Hyperion, Batman was Nighthawk, Wonder Woman was Power Princess, Lex Luther was Master Menace, and you get the picture. And instead of being bald, Master Menace had too much unruly hair, all the fault of Hyperion.

For years these characters bumped along from place to place and storyline to storyline until in the Defenders comic their Earth's United States was devastated by an alien invader. The villain was defeated and the Squadron headed back to their Earth. End of story.

But it wasn't. Legendary writer Mark Gruenwald saw this as an opportunity to do a pet project of his. What if superheroes tried to run the country?

This led to the twelve part Squadron Supreme maxi series where Gruenwald dealt with real world issues, complex characters, constantly changing dynamics, and several deep philosophical discussions. And a bunch of nasty battles as well along the way. Someday I plan to reread this one again and do a review of all its glories.

Some years after the series, Gruenwald returned to the Squadron with a graphic novel called Death Of A Universe. This became his final full voice on these characters as he passed away some years later.

This collection starts with that story, as the Squadron Supreme, merely a week after the series ended, face a looming deadline of an impossible to fight foe intent on destroying everything. And in typical Gruenwald fashion, we see complex issues and interesting characterizations flow smoothly from page to page. Oh, and fascinating ways to die, which seems to be a hallmark of his as well.

With a surprise ending and an even newer status quo formed around them, the Squadron Supreme is ready to keep fighting the good fight.

Unfortunately, they are exiled into Gruenwald's Quasar series, where they did not much of anything for quite awhile. This collection skips those non events entirely.

A look at the old pre-Gruenwald version of the team is showcased with an issue of Thor. It is... of its time and interesting to get a taste of what came before.

They then pick up the current flow in the Avengers comic, the run by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, where momentum finally happens again with these characters. But it does take awhile. They fall back on the old trope of the Squadron being mind controlled, which has been really really overused, and shove another Squadron Supreme versus the Avengers fight down our throats. I had heard this was a celebrated run of this series, but I cannot fathom why since it feels so repetitive in every way.

That story leads directly to the Squadron Supreme New World Order mini series, where our heroes finally return to their proper universe. But of course, during the time they were gone, what they built went to hell and became corrupted.

Writer Len Kaminski picks up the heavy mantle of Gruenwald and runs with it with very very capably. How would the country react when a power vacuum is created with the authority vanished? Other factions pop up and seize and fight for control. Kaminski is so good at channeling Greunwald, and still manage to put his own stamp on it, that I really wish Marvel had continued on this track with the Squadron. When you see some of the new directions taken with say, Amphibian, who is Aquaman, and how a surprise character is made into the Phantom Stranger.

My understanding is that this was the end of the line of this incarnation of the Squadron Supreme. The whole things was rebooted some years back and never really completed. Not to sound like a grumpy old codger that I am, and someday I might even read the shiny new version and like it, but I do wonder why Marvel took the DC radical surgery route, especially on a series that did not need it.

I always recommend Squadron Supreme to people who want comics with a meaty philosophical edge. Gruenwald took a mild giggly idea and made into a history making series that so many know nothing about.

This collection is a good step to rectifying that.

[Nathanial Cook]

I'd read the first Squadron Supreme collection before, but never this one … until now. After re-reading that first book, I felt I HAD to give this one a go to see how the Squadron's story progressed.

While the first collection told one complete story, this one was a collection of shorter works, with only the first by the Squadron's primary creative force, the late Mark Gruenwald. It's good one, I feel, with the team facing an enormous threat to all of reality. The characters here are less quirky, maybe, than some in the first book (no Ape X, no Tom Thumb), but some of the members get more "screen time" in this story. It's enjoyable, in that it gives us a chance to see the team work together, which is different from the first book, in which a plan to turn Earth into a utopia divides the ranks. Also, I'll note the art looks sharper, more polished, in this story than in the first book.

But, moving on, we get a truly silly story, mostly featuring Hyperion (well, two of them, actually) in Thor's comic. I couldn't believe the story was from the late '80s - it seemed like a throwback to a late '60s style … kind of a "filler" story. This could be, in part, because Golden Age Superman artist Wayne Boring handles the art chores. I don't think his heart was in it. The story is some silliness about real superheroes getting involved in making a movie. Of course we get a series of misunderstandings, leading to the heroes fighting.

From there, we get some Avengers/Squadron crossover stories, which are also a mixed bag. Truly, the art here, by George Perez, is the best in the book. This is how the Squadron should look … and the Avengers, for that matter. It's a decent enough story, but it yet again involves mind control and misunderstandings, leading to the two teams squaring off. Oh, I guess I should mention here that, after the earlier stories, the Squadron ended up in the mainstream Marvel universe. A lot of Squadron stories involve travel from one dimension to another.

Speaking of, the final story follows the team as they return to their own world after some lengthy but undefined period away. This story gets back to the good stuff, as our heroes return to find their utopia program - in which they use advanced technology to behavior modify criminals into model citizens, among other reforms - taken over by regular people. In a somewhat strange turn of events, the Squadron does not overthrow their Earth's corporate, fascistic leaders, but the team does reform with its core members (albeit the Nighthawk is the adopted son - the "Robin" - of the original).

It means the book ends somewhat inconclusively - does the story continue past this tale? I'm not sure. But it also brings the team full circle.

Some things remain unexplained in this collection. How did Hyperion get his full sight back? Why does Power Princess become gradually more armored? Why did Arcanna Jones adopt and keep the identity of Moonglow?

Imperfect, yes, but still a lot of fun. I'd love to read more Squadron Supreme, if I can find any!

[Shannon Appelcline]

Hyperion (Thor 280). A shockingly bad story. I mean, Hyperion comes to Earth to convince the Avengers to film a movie. And then there's a random hero fight, followed by a major coincidence, followed by twin confusion. Agh! The only cool thing here is that Sinister and Supreme Hyperion meet [3/10].

Death of a Universe. After the scope and innovation of the Squadron Supreme series, this is somewhat of a disappointment. It's just a fairly normative (albeit well-written) superhero comic. It's great to see the Squad again, and it's great to follow-up on the miniseries just a week later. The artwork is also quite nice here, primarily (I think) due to the coloring. But the character moments are few and far between and there's nothing here that couldn't have happened in the Avengers (or the JLA). Oh, and the problem really is solved by a big (little) deus ex machina [6+/10].

Avengers (5-6,A1). Though Hawkeye jokes about it, the first two issues are about the Squadron getting mind-controlled. AGAIN. After that long fight we then get a super long fight against Imus Champion. About the only good thing about these three issues is that after eight years the Squadron is finally sent home! [3/10].

New World Order. It's so nice to have the Squadron back on their proper Earth, and to see their supporting cast and enemies again. But this graphic novel is sadly uninspiring. I mean, it's the government taken over my evil, yet again. And maybe this time it's humanity doing it to itself, rather than being taken over from the outside, but that doesn't make it much less repetitive. Beyond that, the writing is flat: the villainy of the world is over-the-top, the plot is meandering, and the characters are uninteresting [4/10].

[Rick]

This collection could have been a very nice addition to the earlier Squadron Supreme collection. Unfortunately, this collection is marred by less fulfilling stories and one that is glaringly included in a completely inconsistent and confusing chronological point. Adding to it's faults is the realization that some arguably critical material is missing from the center of the book that would have narratively linked the Death of a Universe OGN with the climatic New World Order OGN. While the issues by Busiek are as poignant and well-developed as one would expect from that writer, the overall package is hopelessly disjointed by the missing segments and out of order sequencing.

[Ren]

Some of these stories are just fluff from the larger Marvel universe -- Hyperion fights Thor, the Squadron is mind-controlled again and fights against, and then with, the Avengers -- but the bookend stories are of higher quality. The first, Mark Gruenwald's last Squadron story, is a fitting sequel to his SS series, and even comes complete with a few surprise gruesome deaths. The final story in this volume, while not written by Gruenwald, still adheres well to his continuity and to the spirit of his work.

[Travis]

A take on big, universe shaking event stories and a nice little wrap up to the Squadrons story.

Shame Mark Gruenwald never got much chance to continue this story, as the SS went from a gimmick team to an interesting take on heroes in the 'real world' to stuck in literary limbo to destroyed by lesser writers.

Mark had a very long and impressive career in comics and the SS stories are his 'Watchmen'.
Just less depressing and with less sex.

[Devero]

La graphic novel che fa da finale alla saga dello Squadrone Supremo come immaginata dal compianto Mark Gruenwald. Una storia molto bella, disperata sino alla fine, una storia che riecheggia molti altri eventi "fumettistici".
Una storia che, nella ristampa post-mortem di Mark, contiene davvero l'autore: le sue ceneri, per suo espresso desiderio, sono state miscelate all'inchiostro nero di stampa.

[Jdetrick]

A nice successor to the 12 issue limited series. While I enjoy the look into what the Squadron is doing after the events of that series, I think this book makes the mistake that the series doesn't; there are deaths in here that seem very superfluous, as though there were simply characters that the creators no longer wanted to deal with. Mostly good though.

[Jamie]

I loved the original Squadron Supreme when I read it way back in the day and revisited it often. If you're like me, stay away from this collection as it only tainted my memories of a great series.

[Nicolas]

I guess I just don't get why Squadron Supreme exists.