Captain America thinks Quasar is one of the best Avengers he's known? Really? He's just being nice, right?

Quasar is one of my all-time favorite series, and I'm sad I didn't discover it until after Gruenwald's untimely passing.

"Cosmos In Collision" from #19-25 is my personal high-water mark for cosmic writing.

I would rank "Journey Into Mystery" from 13-16 right up there as well.

Quasar's highpoint creatively mostly coincides with Greg Capullo's artistic run from 1990-1992 (basically Cosmos in Collision to Galactic Storm) when the seeds he had planted early on had been allowed to develop and he concentrated more on cosmic matters. Before that, it was mostly pedestrian despite good work by Paul Ryan on pencils (I love Paul, but his work is generally too mundane to work well with cosmic stuff), and afterwards the title got lost with increasingly bad artwork, Gruenwald running out of ideas, and Quasar's participation in cosmic crossovers where he is just one guy among other heroes greatly reduced his own status.

Gruenwald made several critical errors on the title which I've written on other posts.

1) Quasar should not have a secret identity. No reason for it other than it is generic superhero stuff.
2) Quasar should not have had a day job. Protector of the Universe seems a full time gig. Seeing him at work just made him same pedestrian.
3) Wrong supporting cast. Quasar needed "ordinary people" (no super powers), but he needed them to be appropriate to his cosmic status. His supporting cast should have been NASA scientists, aerospace engineers, UFO fanatics, alien abductees, and other people associated with the phenomenon he should be associated with.
4) Quasar badly needed a good rogue's gallery, and he just didn't. Maelstrom was a good pick for an archvillain, but he only showed up two years into his run and really wasn't seen again. His other foes were either one shots or forgettable.
5) Quasar stayed on Earth way too much. There are certainly things for him to do here, but most of his adventures should be in space. Get him into the cosmos.
6) Gruenwald wanted a mature, humble and respectful hero, but he went overboard and portrayed Quasar far too much as a loser with self esteem issues. He didn't seem confidant or in command and whining because he was "learning the ropes". Save that stuff for street level heroes. This is not the stuff of a cosmic hero.

Quasar was really Gru's pet project so I'm not surprised anyone was not brought in to save the title.

Chris - I'm only going to comment on a couple of your points.

Point 2 - I don't know how else most super heroes can survive financially if they don't at least try to have a source of income. Obviously the richer super heroes don't need to worry about that.

Point 5 - IMO Quasar was very similar to Dc's Green Lantern. He was also tasked with protecting a large amount of space. He also stayed on earth a lot. In fact, going back to the other point, Green Lantern had a secret identity and a job as well.

I liked Quasar in most of his appearances. He was just the right kind of straight arrow to pick my interest, at least when written by Gru.

Still, this book had a lot working against it. Characterization was often badly lacking, and significant plots just kept dragging on without any resolution. IIRC Kayla spent well over a year without even meeting Quasar face to face.

There were a lot of exciting plots running around, but they suffered badly from the excessive interference from crossovers.

Infinity Gauntlet was a significant distraction from Cosmos in Collision, despite well handled efforts to reconcile with it that unfortunately ended up being two competing reboots of the Universe that even most Marvel heroes do not even remember; Infinity War should have spotlighted Quasar but paid only lip service to it; Infinity Crusade ignored him completely and apparently Gru attempted to deal with that by simply keeping Quasar occupied with far away events of not much significance at all; and the final nail in the coffin was Starbrand, which suffered from subpar plotting, marketing and editorial supervision as well as terrible art.

It probably did not help that the series came to be at just about the worst of all conceivable times, facing the rise in popularity of a largely incompatible fad of "extreme" characters, a terribly cannibalistic "glut the market" policy, and the first signs of the burst of the speculator market bubble. It would fare far better back in 1979

To comment specifically on this issue, I do like John Heebink's art here. He has a Mike Manley kind of feel and I don't remember ever seeing his work before fnord uploaded these scans.

Ultimately, in all likelihood Gruenwald should have at least tried to work with Starlin to make Quasar an important part of the Infinity crossovers; Starlin's "ownership" of Thanos and favoritism towards certain characters may have scared him off, but Starlin's use of Gruenwald's Infinity in Infinity Crusade (and Nebula in Infinity Gauntlet) suggests he may have been more open to working with Gruenwald than that. All this is assuming Gruenwald didn't actually reach out to Starlin and fail, of course, or if he was more scared about Starlin interfering in his own plans than the other way around.

I've heard rumors that Starlin and Gruenwald had a minor feud going on; apparently they had mutually incompatible plans for the cosmic scene. But these are just second or third hand rumors, so take them with a grain of salt.

In Response to Chris criticisms A.K.A. "I Don't Like Quasar But Here Are Very Specific Ways I Would Do It Better Than Them"

1&2) So he should just leave his life and family behind the minute he becomes a superhero? He should severe all ties to his humanity and become nothing more than a hero?
3) Project Pegasus, Eon/Epoch, Moondragon, Kismet, Makkari, Squadron Supreme...
4) Maelstrom, Deathurge, Presence, Ereshkigal, even Quagmire... then he also had Stranger, Thanos, Nebula, Magus, Blastaar, Stranger...
5) Because the threat, initial set-up and Avengers were all on Earth. From the offset the status quo was him investigating all extraterrestrials on Earth to eliminate them as potential threats. After that wrapped up and the two crossovers at the end of it, he left Earth to do exactly what you proposed.
6) And again Cosmic characters aren't allowed any facet of humanity in your blinkered view of it. Nova, Mar-Vell, even Silver Surfer all have the same or similar foibles.

I like the downbeat ending. One thing we get a few times in this series is Quasar willing to take a fall for the sake of a higher cause, such as the beating he takes in issue 50 to defeat Erishkigal and his self-sacrificial use of the ultimate nullifier. Gru has also presented Quaze as a guy who comes through in the end but suffers a lot along the way, as we saw in Cosmos in Collision. He doesn't get a lot of clean, easy victories.

Although supporting characters like Kayla aren't exactly enduring literary achievements, I also like the small ensemble, family feeling that the book maintained. I think that was the point of revisiting the Galactic Marathon right before the end--yes, it was Gary indulging in Silver Age DC silliness, but it was also a callback to the book's early setup with Makkari and a farewell to, in effect, Quaze's best friend; almost his only friend. We get more goodbyes here, and of course, Kayla is tragically lost (but gets a happy ending that Wendell doesn't know about). There's a nice, bittersweet completeness to it all.

I think the "feud" between Starlin/Gruenwald actually stemmed from Starlin feeling Quasar wasn't a worthy successor to "his" character Mar-Vell (Thanos and Warlock consistently even voice this). I don't quite understand it, I see it more as a man a bit hurt that he wasn't asked to revive/create an heir to Mar-Vell than subjectively looking at someone else's idea. This is also highlighted by when Starlin's friend and frequent co-writer Ron Marz creates an ACTUAL heir to Mar-Vell in Genis, down the road Starlin subsequently treats him with a LOT of respect. On top of that, I'd imagine that folk like Byrne, Englehart and Stern (and mostly Gruenwald as editor) having come along and heavily fleshed out, structured and co-ordinated exactly HOW the Marvel Universe and it's Great Powers operate also bugged Starlin.

And I lol'd at the person suggesting he was willing to "play" with Nebula. His "playing" with Nebula involved Thanos showing up, dismissing her claims of heritage and then burning her alive. Later, using her flayed corpse for 5 parts of Infinity Gauntlet before deciding that Thanos is too awesome to LOSE in the crossover where he's the villain so dumping Nebula with the burden of being the villain lets him show how easily she can be defeated by Thanos and Warlock. Then he never touched her again.

Starlin's another one of THOSE writers who doesn't like playing in a sandbox with others. Just look at how he eventually retcons nearly every appearance of Thanos not by him.

What are some examples of Thanos or Warlock saying Quasar didn't live up to Captain Mar-Vell? The closest thing that comes to mind is Infinity Gauntlet 4, but Quaze wasn't singled-out as the only hero to get taunted and crushed there.

@Mortificator: It seems to me that there was some effort to specifically avoid confrontations between Quaze and Thanos and/or Warlock, despite an environment that made those all but unavoidable.

Still, besides Infinity Gauntlet 4, there were such direct confrontations of some sort or another in Infinity War #4 as well as Quasar #38, #39, #53 and #59. #39's scene is duplicated in Infinity War #4, and in Quasar's book it has some additional disapproving thoughts from Thanos.

#59 (not yet reviewed in this site) is a fill-in by Ron Marz that is very light on plot and consists of Thanos tricking Starfox and Quasar. Thanos' posturing there is, frankly, rather empty and contradictory - now that is a scene worth retconning into not being the true Thanos - but it still makes clear that Thanos does not have a lot of respect for Quasar in the same way he would respect Mar-Vell or Warlock. Then again, I am not exactly a fan of Ron Marz's authorial voice and that may be factoring into my perception. One should also note that #59 is the next-to-last issue of the series and out of sequence to boot.

On a meta level, Warlock was featured in Starblast #1 and its direct follow-up, Quasar #54, where he basically decided that Thor was more deserving of his attention than Quasar and had Moondragon tell him not to expect a return call. Quite a reasonable decision given the circunstances, but still a situation of Quasar being called off in his own book.

Personally, I just don't see how Starlin and Gruenwald could have avoided stepping into each other's feet during this time.

Quasar's concept made him unavoidable for the kind of plots that Starlin was writing at the time, but those were clearly meant to spotlight Warlock and his own characters. Starlin is not necessarily bad at working with others, but his plots are not accomodating to the extent that, say, Peter David's are.

As it turned out, much of Gru's Quasar concept was that he was supposed to be a reluctant top dog, and for that to be fulfilled he would need a lot of cooperation from other books. Marvel at the time just would not offer that kind of cooperation, and that became increasingly evident since Infinity Gauntlet, gradually emptying the character's credibility.

As of late 1993-early 1994, the whole cosmic niche at Marvel was in clear decay and losing relevance, what with:

Thanos featured in directly contradictory and utterly forgettable ways in Secret Defenders, Quasar's own book, Silver Surfer, Thor and the two Warlock books;

Silver Surfer becoming a boring combination of crossover fodder, Warlock's naive sometimes sidekick and irrelevant witness to the shouting matches among Galactus' "extreme" heralds.

Warlock's books were somewhat better, but still not at their best, with all the heavy-handed mysteries and the full swing of Starlin's "preacher of hopelessness" mode.

@Chris, just wanted to say i always find your thoughts on what a series could have done differently/better to be insightful.

From the approach of the series on here, it does seem obvious that the best stuff was all pre-Infinity Gauntlet, as if Starlin's return and his overreach with the cosmic characters more or less derailed a lot of what Gru wanted to do with the book. I think there is enough room for a mundane character in a cosmic part of the Marvelverse...but I think that that probably more emerged when Starlord got his revamp than poor Quasar.

I don't know that I would call Gru's interpretation of Quasar "mundane". As of the resolution of Cosmos in Collision (Quasar #25) he is made "Avatar of Infinity" and named "(her) most wondrous son of all" by Gaia.

Of course, then he meets Thanos in #26-27 and has a goofy fight with him only so that Epoch can make it explicit that Quasar is not to be much of Thanos' nemesis. Slightly less obvious at the time was that there would not be enough room in the coming years for spotlights on Quasar, Warlock/Thanos _and_ the Silver Surfer (who is also briefly featured in those two issues).

In essence, those two issues announced that Gru would attempt to work with instead of against the plans of Starlin.

On another note, it seems that for all his love of continuity Gruenwald just wasn't good at keeping Vanguard's first name straight. It is "Nikolai", but here as in Starblast Darkstar insists that it is really "Mikhail" (which is Ursa Major's name).

Hindsight is always 20:20. The comments here have hit on a combination of reasons why Quasar never lived up to its potential, and instead often fell flat.

It's very true that Mark Gruenwald's extremely traditional approach to superheroics prevented both the character and series from ever truly stretching their boundaries. As fnord and others have observed, despite the fact that this was supposed to be about an "everyman discovering the wonders of the universe" set-up, it rarely seemed to ever actually spark much of a sense wonder. A major reason for this was Gruenwald's obsessive need to quantify every single character. It's difficult to really make any characters or phenomena mysterious or awe-inspiring when you are always providing an encyclopedic description of said character or phenomenon that examines in minute detail their origins and motivations and how they relate to all the other cosmic entities.

It's also very true that Jim Starlin's Infinity trilogy also played a detrimental role. Starlin really has difficulty playing well with others in a shared universe setting when it comes to Thanos and Adam Warlock. As I have commented before, throughout the early 1990s he was basically writing any character who was not Thanos or Adam Warlock as an incompetent moron. Quasar is supposed to be the Protector of the Universe, but it's impossible for him to fulfill that role in any of Starlin's three Infinity minseries because, again, in Starlin's view the only two people who actually are clever and capable enough to save the entirety of existence from complete destruction are Thanos and Adam Warlock. So for three years in a row this series crosses over, for several months each time, with all of the Infinity miniseries, and every single time Starlin's plots require Quasar to either be sidelined or act like an imbecile, which completely undermines his credibility as the so-called Protector of the Universe.

Agreed with comments that the first two years of Quasar were the strongest. After that the book had to repeatedly cross over with the Infinity trilogy, as well as Operation Galactic Storm, and in general Gruenwald's writing began to seriously decline. So, for a variety of reasons, even though Quasar managed to run for three more years, it just never managed to regain the stature of the early stories.

@Luis - I should have specified "from Starlin." The assertion I was replying to was that Starlin was using Thanos and Warlock to voice his disapproval of Gruenwald's Quasar, which doesn't apply when Gruenwald is writing them himself. Thanks for pointing out the examples you did, though, and explaining what the situation was with Quasar 59.

The partiality toward Thanos / Warlock in Starlin's works is clear, but I don't see an interest in tearing-down Quasar specifically. Thanos has called Mar-Vell a "dog" and a "fool" (when Starlin was writing Mar-Vell's book) and totally played Silver Surfer (when Starlin was writing the Surfer's book).

@Wanyas - Whether you agree or not, it is difficult to deny that at this point in time Captain America would think of Quasar as one of the finest Avengers, particularly having some recently dealt with Operation Galactic Storm's sorrow and schism. It is an even more recent development from Quasar's perspective, because his stories in the last few years have been so decompressed. He has not really advanced his own plots very much since #31 or so, even before Galactic Storm. It may well be that Gru had felt an unreceptive editorial climate and reacted by "slowing down" happenings in both books in order to weather it with the minimum possible damage. A fairly good tactic, except that the wave outlasted him by far.

Issues #401 and #422 of Cap's book are almost metatextual in that sense, as reflected by the explicit disappointment of Captain America with his own rapport with the Avengers.

Your point doesn't really work because at the end of Operation Galactic Storm, when Quasar leaves the team (after siding with Cap), Cap points out that Quasar is one of the few Avengers who he believes in and that he doesn't need a lecture on ethics. Gruenwald hamming it up massively but it's sweet.

In later books, Cap will continue to refer to Quasar in a similar light (the first and last arcs of Busiek's Avengers and Annihilators Earthfall spring straight to mind). I think Cap/other people's respect for Quasar probably hung around as a meta-respect for Gruenwald after his death.

But when it comes down to it objectively Quasar is one of the few who has had a long term tenure with the team and never had a particular conflict of interest with the them and has being wholly committed to the team and it's ideals. Come to think of it, I think the only time Quasar actually got "told off" was when Hercules orchestrated that fight between him and Thunderstrike and when Quasar was among the Avengers chewed out at the start of OGS (which he probably softened by saying he didn't agree with them). And then you have that Quasar has been willing to sacrifice himself and fought against the odds several times (Thanos, Magus, Maelstrom).

There's not that many that have fit the mold of pretty much perfect tenures. Wasp, Monica, Hawkeye, Starfox maybe, She-Hulk, Crystal eventually... huh, mostly ones from Stern's run. I'm sure there's more anyway.

Uh? Despite your claim that my point does not really work, I don't see any disagreement with me in what you wrote. Except that I think that Quasar is respectable for his own merits, regardless of how people might think about Gruenwald.

I meant in regards to Cap being disappointed with the Avengers team - Quasar was one of the few who he wasn't/hasn't ever really been disappointed with. I don't think his feelings towards the Avengers or the strife between the team affected his view on Quasar as Quasar was on his side - or rather the side of what's morally right - through-out.

I think Quasar (like Monica before him) was an Avenger whose actions, decisions and principles continued to ingratiate himself with Cap.

Sorry if I missed a mention of this, but... wow, four issues after we last saw them and Gruenwald still has Dawnstar referring to Vanguard as "Mikhail." His name is Nikolai. Mikhail is Ursa Major.

I loved this series. It was one of my favorite and I collected every Marvel comic at the time. I guess the fact that Quasar was all business and didn’t have much personality was ok with me. I always felt like super heroes should be better than us, not one of us. I’ll always remember being at my brothers college graduation in Ny and visiting Aqualonia comics in Troy to buy Quasar #1.