Issue(s): Squadron Supreme #1, Squadron Supreme #2, Squadron Supreme #3, Squadron Supreme #4, Squadron Supreme #5, Squadron Supreme #6, Captain America #314, Squadron Supreme #7, Squadron Supreme #8, Squadron Supreme #9, Squadron Supreme #10, Squadron Supreme #11, Squadron Supreme #12
Cover Date: Sep 85 - Aug 86
Title: "The Utopia principle" / "A small sacrifice" / "Showdown" / "Change of heart" / "Turnabout" / "Inner circle" / "Asylum"/ "Love and death" / "The clash" / "Borrowed time!" / "The dark from within" / "Betrayal" / "The dregs of victory"
Credits:
Mark Gruenwald - Writer
Bob Hall / Paul Ryan / John Buscema / Paul Neary - Penciler
John Beatty / Sam DeLaRosa / Sam DeLaRosa & Keith Williams / Butch Guice / Dennis Janke - Inker
Michael Higgins - Assistant Editor (Captain America issue)
Ralph Macchio / Mike Carlin - Editor

Review/plot:
Bob Hall draws the first 5 issues and #8. John Buscema draws #7, with Butch Guice on inks. Paul Ryan draws the remaining Squadron Supreme issues. John Beatty inks the first three. Sam De La Rosa the majority of the rest, except #7, and #6 is co-inked by Keith Williams. Paul Neary and Dennis Janke are the art team for the Captain America issue and Michael Higgins and Mike Carlin are the editorial team (i don't know who was assistant editor on the Squadron issues).

I just recently added Heroes For Hope to this project, where i made the unoriginal observation that super-heroes can't fix real world problems. It's worth noting that even the concurrently published Punisher mini-series danced around the inability of comic characters to affect real world change. In that story, the Punisher thought he would kick off a gang war by killing off their leader, but in the end he was forced into the position of being the defender of the status quo, working to reunite the various splinter mob groups so that they would stop killing civilians, and then shutting down the group that was (for better or worse) trying to engage in extra-legal activity to kill criminals the government couldn't get. Which is exactly what the Punisher does, in theory, but having him team up with a powerful organization and actually accomplish his goal on a large scale would have turned the book into speculative fiction and altered the Marvel universe significantly.

This storyline is the first to show us super-heroes that really do attempt to address real-world problems (with some caveats; see below), and show us the results of that.

As my trade paperback reprint makes sure to tell us, this story predates Watchmen and Kingdom Come, two books which will have a similar theme but also have more critical acclaim. This twelve issue miniseries by Mark Gruenwald is almost certainly his best work. This is at least in part thanks to the ability to plot in more mature territory, but also because this seems to have been a real work of passion for him. More cynically, i'll also say that since the plot has so many moving pieces and is moving on such a grand scale, there's less time for downtime character interactions. That's not to say there aren't some nice character moments here, including Nuke / Firestorm learning that his powers gave his parents cancer, and Tom Thumb's battle with his own cancer.

But there are enough characters that Gruenwald can move from moment to moment without dwelling long enough for his weakness with scripting, as seen in the concurrently published Captain America book, can manifest. Even without that cynical explanation, it definitely seems like Gruenwald was extra inspired for this series, and the writing overall is better than normal for him.

The fact that this is a mature plotline is somewhat ironic, since the characters here are Marvel's DC analogues, the Squadron Supreme. Gruenwald was notably more of a DC fan despite being a Marvel writer and editor his entire comics career. So this series was the closest Gruenwald got to writing the DC characters he truly loved, but the irony is that he was able to take them in directions that he never could have at DC. Even at Marvel this could only have been done as a What If or, as was the case here, with characters that were part of an alternate universe.

So that's one of the caveats, albeit a minor one: this is an alternate universe story with relatively obscure characters and it doesn't have the same impact as, say, Captain America deciding he's going to take over the United States. The other more significant caveat is that this story starts in the aftermath of the last Squadron Supreme story. That story, told in some issues of the Defenders, showed that the US had already been taken over by super-villains (the Overmind and Null the Living Darkness). So the world is in post-apocalyptic ruin at the start of this story.

And so we don't have the fantasy of seeing super-powered people overruling politicians or re-writing laws to fix real world problems. Or, to go back to Heroes For Hope and some of the comments on that entry, we don't have the equivalent of the X-Men overthrowing the Mengistu regime to end the Ethiopian Famine (or even using their powers to create fertile farmland). The US government is already broken by the time the book starts, so when the Squadron Supreme take over, it's not quite the same as if they took over from a sitting president. They aren't really altering the status quo; it was already altered for them before the series starts. We don't get to see much of the rest of the world; the biggest additional insight is that Master Menace, the Lex Luthor analogue, has taken over the Middle East, but we never get to see what he's doing with it.

Overall, these caveats are barely noteworthy, but it is worth looking at in the context of the history of what i'll call root-cause proactive super-heroing (because i really know how to turn a phrase).

And to be clear, the Squadron Supreme's actions really do fall into that category. The Squadron have already eliminated all nuclear weapons by the start of this story, but once they take over the government they implement a policy forbidding conventional weapons. And the other major change is the introduction of a behavioral modification device that prevents people from having criminal impulses.

The people who resist the gun ban aren't given a large voice in this story (although they do get an early claim on the name Freedom Force)...

...but Gruenwald fully explores the implications of the behavioral modifications. It's also clear from the start of this series (and even before that, an editorial by Gruenwald in an issue of Marvel Age, which was reprinted in the trade) that the Squadron are going down the morally wrong path. Nighthawk breaks from the group in issue #1 and it's pretty clear that he's in the right.

So there's no ambiguity where maybe for the first few issues we're cheering the team along as they solve the country's problems. Right from the beginning we're prepared for things to go wrong. The story doesn't really even try to balance things out by showing the positive effects of the Squadron's efforts, like for example showing people walking the streets without fear of crime. In fact, every time the Squadron goes out in the world, they run into some criminal acts, despite their claim that the crime rate is down to 5% of what it was when they started. But more importantly, since everything is shown from the perspective of the super-powered characters, we just never get to see the pluses and minuses of living in a world where super-heroes are attempting to create a utopia from the perspective of ordinary citizens. So Gruenwald has stacked the deck against his protagonists.

That said, this book isn't all about Nighthawk's heroic struggle against the fascist Squadron Supreme, either. After issue #1 he's not seen again until issue #6, and he's mostly relegated to subplots until the final confrontation.

In fact, my only major complaint about this series is that it's structured in such a way that while, to Gruenwald's credit, he gets to explore a lot of the implications of this status-quo changing plotline, he also devotes time to unrelated stories, most notably some hijix from the Squadron Sinister Hyperion, and that takes away time from properly developing the ending, which feels a little rushed and doesn't show us the implications of the Squadron Supreme's "surrender".

Gruenwald definitely also devolves into esoterica on occasion, like taking the time to explain the Hawkman analogue's name changes from American Eagle to Captain Hawk to Blue Eagle, although that is wrapped into a nice character moment.

If you're familiar with my opinion of the Squadron (and Sinister) Supreme from my reviews of their previous appearances, you'd think another major complaint i'd have about this series is that the characters are used at all, especially since Gruenwald vastly expands the number of DC analogues. But aside from the mostly tangential Captain America crossover, this has so little bearing on the mainstream Marvel universe that the use of the characters doesn't bother me. It's really an unofficial DC What If (ok, fine, "Elseworlds") story that just happens to qualify for this project. (As an aside, Mark Gruenwald's wife Catherine writes in the intro to the trade paperback that this series was "the first extensive parallel earth story ever done by Marvel").

Gruenwald does play with subverting some DC hero ideas. He introduces a Steve Trevor analogue for Wonder Man / Power Princess who is old enough to have been alive for Wonder Woman's Golden Age stories, and is therefore now wheelchair bound and in his final days, but he and and the immortal Power Princess are still a couple (at least until he's secretly killed by the Sinister Hyperion).

There are several nods to Larry Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", starting when Superman / Hyperion breaks up with his Lois Lane...

...and again when the Sinister Hyperion is introduced. In fact, his previous infatuation with Thundra is revealed to be due to the fact that she can handle his "lovin'"...

...and he drops her in favor of Power Princess when he realizes she's equally durable and also available (once "Steve Trevor" is taken care of).

In light of those scenes (and more benign ones, like revealing that Flash / Whizzer has to engage in deep meditation and eat excessively to make up for his super fast metabolism, or the fact that his voice is a high pitched squeak while he's running), i also kind of suspect that this scene was originally meant to be Green Arrow / Golden Archer (ugh, what a name) discovering his sidekick, Speedy, having overdosed. Otherwise this is a scene of the Archer finding a random dead person in his apartment at the same time all the other characters are saying goodbye to their Steve Trevors and Lois Lanes.

Or i could just have a sick mind.

One thing that i think a lot of deconstructionist critiques of super-heroes often fail to acknowledge is that superheroes spend a lot of their time fighting super-villains, so they don't really have time to deal with fighting poverty or delving into the root causes of crime. This series doesn't neglect the villains, though. Early in the series, Hyperion effectively dissuades this dimension's Scarlet Centurion from ever showing his face again...

...and the rest of the villains are either subjected to the behavioral modification device and brought into the Squadron, or join Nighthawk's resistance force.

Unlike many of the secondary characters appearing here that don't really appear again outside of a follow-up Graphic Novel, one of the villains, Haywire, is not based on any DC characters (i confirmed that on Wikipedia since based on my knowledge he certainly could have been someone that i don't know about). He will have a number of additional appearances, starting in Gruenwald's Quasar.

Despite some flaws, this is definitely a high caliber story and, as i said, most likely was Mark Gruenwald's best. I hedge only because i most likely will never read his D.P. 7 New Universe title. According to accounts from others (quoted in the trade reprint) Gruenwald certainly considered this to be his best work.

Mark Gruenwald had made it known that when he died, he wanted his ashes to be used in a comic, and it was the first printing of the trade paperback of this series for which that was done (i have a second printing). It doesn't seem like he had explicitly designated that this was the series he wanted, but he died unexpectedly at age 42 and his wife chose this series, and that seems appropriate.

As far as the art goes, both Bob Hall and Paul Ryan doe a really nice job handling the extremely large cast, keeping the action clear, keeping all the characters recognizable, handling the pacing, etc..

Neither artist is glitzy, and don't over use splash panels, so you really get your money's worth for these twelve issues. Worth acknowledging how many character designs they had to create or update, too.

One downside of the art is the depiction of women. Nothing excessive by the standards of the time (which are unfortunately getting worse at we move towards the 90s), but definitely some questionable choices in terms of panel POV.

Even though they're living in a dormitory, Arcanna / Zatanna apparently sleeps naked.

She's also pregnant, but hides it with an illusion so that her team doesn't sideline her.

That may be meant as commentary on how society treats pregnant women, but it also ensures that we get to continue to see her sexy fishnets.

It's too bad about that aspect of the art because the story is generally pretty good regarding its depiction of women, offering a wide variety of females characters, including Power Princess, whose utopian background (her version of Themyscira was apparently created by the Kree) makes her a natural leader of the Squadron's takeover efforts.

Power is shown to be one of the Squadron's top fighters as well as an effective leader. But the cast includes a diverse group of women, including the Gorilla Grodd equivalent Ape-X.

I guess i should mention though that there are two secret rape plots in the series: Lady Lark / Black Canary is subjected to the behavioral modification device so that she won't break up with Golden Archer...

...and Power Princess is tricked by Sinister Hyperion into thinking that he's her world's version.

The Lady Lark storyline is an integral part of the plot, showing how even these heroes can't be trusted with the behavioral modification technology, and there's nothing inherently wrong with the Hyperion story, either. But when there's two stories of women getting tricked into having sex with men in one series, it's worth pointing out. Generally speaking, while there definitely are a diverse group of women in this book, you could argue that they are defined by their relationships with their love interests to a larger degree than the men (even Ape-X finds herself in love with Tom Thumb, and so does Tom's AI companion Aida. Tom isn't aware of either one's romantic interest.).

The only non-white characters in the book, excluding robots and intelligent apes, are Foxfire, a hyper-sexual villain whose friskiness isn't subdued by the behavioral modification that she's subjected to...

...and Redstone, who i guess is the Apache Chief analogue? Or apparently Geo-Force, who i don't know.

To Gruenwald's credit, both of these characters were added by him, helping to balance the fact that the original cast was entirely white (due to having been mainly introduced in the 60s)(before non-white people were invented?).

Some notable moments: It seems that in the Squadron Supreme's universe, Benjamin Franklin was one of the the presidents...

...and here is one Hyperion beating the, er, snot, out of the other one using Benjamin Franklin's nose.

The opening splash for issue #10, showing Tom Thumb's funeral, is a nod to the cover of Hawkeye #4 and the cover of some printings of the Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel.

Here's the Squadron's progress chart. I'd love to know how they measured some of those topics. They've solved 90% of the economy? What does that mean?

Here's Master Menace telling Nighthawk that he's found a way to reverse the behavioral modification device:

"All three are out committing felonies right now!"
"That's fantastic!"

And the undisputed best panel of the series:

As for the Captain America issue, as i said, it's mostly a tangent. Some minor villains that were hanging out with Master Menace decide that they just want to get out of the crazy world that the Squadron is taking over, so Menace sends them through a portal to what turns out to be the main Marvel universe. Later, in his quest for help against the Squadron, Nighthawk visits the Wizard Supreme Professor Imam (not the best named character in the story), who sends him to Marvel Earth where he is supposed to find allies. He initially finds Captain America, who isn't sure about getting involved in another dimension's problems, so he brings it to the Avengers and the FF for a vote.

And since the vote is Nay, Nighthawk instead goes home with the villains as allies. After a fight, of course.

There's kind of a funny scene where Cap isn't sure if he should personally help Nighthawk, and so, since he's currently working as an artist for Marvel comics, he has a talk with the Captain America writer (which of course was Gruenwald) to decide what he would do.

And just to keep up with the Cap series, here's a panel of Bernie silently brooding over the fact that Cap is a superhero.

Expect more of this. Funny how we get this kind of writing on Cap while he's also doing such great work on the Squadron title.

Quality Rating: B+

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - Major shake-up for the Squadron Supreme universe, including several deaths. First Haywire. Early mainstream deconstructionist story.

Chronological Placement Considerations: This story spans a long period of time, but placement for me is dictated by the Captain America issue, which takes place between Squadron Supreme #6-7. For Cap, the Avengers, and the FF, this takes place between Avengers #263-264 and after Fantastic Four #286. When Nighthawk is visiting Earth, Cap says that the Defenders have disbanded, placing this after Defenders #152.

References:

• The story of the Squadron Supreme's world being taken over by the Overmind and Null the Living Darkness was part of a confusing arc in Defenders #112-114 (even Nighthawk, recapping the story, says that they took over the world "for reasons I never fully understood").
  
• When asking Professor Imam to send him to the main Marvel universe, he notes that people from that world have helped the Squadron Supreme on three past occasions. One is noted above. But there are actually three additional occasions: Avengers #85-86, Avengers #141-149, and Thor #280. Nighthawk may not have been aware of the Thor incident.
  
• When Captain America meets Squadron Supreme Nighthawk, he is at first confused because his world's Nighthawk died in a story that began in Defenders #105.
  
• Nighthawk's description of the Squadron Supreme's takeover reminds the Avengers of the Vision's similar attempt in a story that ran from Avengers #238 to Avenger #254.
  
• While debating whether or not to help, the Black Knight raises the fact that the Avengers decided to get involved in the Skrull business from Avengers #259 to Avengers #261.
  
• Mr. Fantastic similarly notes that the FF got involved in a battle against a dictator in another dimension in Fantastic Four #272-273.
  
• The Squadron Sinister version of Hyperion first appeared in Avengers #69-70. (I should also note somewhere that this Hyperion learns he's actually a pseudo-organic duplicate created by the Grandmaster, which is confusing considering we're already dealing with duplicate Hyperions. We'll meet a new Sinister Hyperion in Thunderbolts years later.)
  
• He left Earth with Thundra in Marvel Two-In-One #67, but they got separated in interdimensional subspace.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Squadron Supreme TPB

In discussing non-white characters, you referred to Mink, but the character seems to be Foxfire.

Thanks, Erik. Fixed it.

Another Squadron member, the Skrull(the Martian Manhunter analogue, also seen in the updated MU Handbook) appears in a few flashback panels.

Most of Nighthawk's crew didn't have DC analogues.

When #1 was previewed in Marvel Age, some dialogue was different(for example, Nuke yells "It's Hiroshima time!").

That one scene was probably supposed to be a nod to Green Arrow discovering Speedy was a junkie, but I don't think Golden Archer ever even referred to a sidekick.

Since Mark mentioned the Skrull, i'll add that Gruenwald nicely dual-purposed him, making him the Martian Manhunter analogue as Mark notes, but also the guy who gives Doctor Spectrum his power prism, a nod to the fact that the Sinister Doctor Spectrum's power prism was revealed to be a transformed Skrull named Krimonn (and so the same is probably true of the Supreme version).

Interesting that Hyperion refers to himself as an alien. Because Hyperion is blinded in this story, and how he gets his eyesight back in Quasar hinges on his true origin, which is not alien. I guess that he always THOUGHT he was an alien.

I thought that the 90% improvement in the Economy probably refers to unemployment, but then noticed another category labelled poverty/jobs. It's probably that the economy has reached 90% of GDP it had prior to the collapse which is probably a huge improvement.

Gruenwald doesn't dwell on the improvements being done by the Sqaudron, but I don't think he needs to. If we're smart enough to ask questions like this, I think we're smart enough to answer them for ourselves.

The world is basically a shattered mess with no effective government anywhere, so if the Squadron doesn't restore order, we can assume a very long, ongoing civil conflict. Presumably this happens in much of the world; it is specifically mentioned Master Menace rules most of the Middle East. So they spare North America from that.

Also, while things like behavior modification has unsettling problems, I think most people would not mind if it was used on the mentally ill, the extremely violent, and sex offenders. People might be queasy on it used on less violent offenders of "victimless crimes", but if put to a vote, a large majority would approve it used on child molesters.

Gruenwald certainly had a political bent. Some of the themes explored in this series will later show up in his Captain American comics.

I'm beginning to think I've misunderstood the parameters of this project. I brought this up with SECRET WARS but it's even more pronounced here: SQUADRON SUPREME takes place over the course of a year and you've condensed it all into one single entry. This says to me, given how you've described your own ground rules in the past, that no other stories take place during that year. I know that isn't really your take, so why combine a year's worth of events into one write-up, other than for the sake of convenience?
Please don't interpret this as confrontational or accusatory. It's genuine curiosity.

I think the reason Squadron Supreme is all condensed here is because this is the "linking point" between the events of the alternate universe and the main 616 universe. Big things are happening, but this Captain America issue is the only linking point that matters to the 616 universe. (I remember fnord telling me when I asked if Squadron Supreme would be in the project that it was because of the one Captain America issue that crosses over with it)

At the same time, while something like Secret Wars was likewise condensed like this, technically it really did take place in a super-short time in 616 and the surprises of what exactly happened were literally revealed an issue after they left, thus making it like no-time in the main universe. If a major event takes place over time that it needs time to tell it in the timeline, then fnord does do it...but typically the "events" take place in such a short period that many times they have to be condensed into one entry. I have a feeling that with this being the major factor as we move forwards with the line that we will be seeing more of this in the future with event comics.

SECRET WARS took place over three weeks in story and twelve issues in real life. Issues of ROM, for example, that were tagged as taking place "concurrently" with SECRET WARS, were placed AFTER SECRET WARS but before the characters appearing in SECRET WARS returned to their own titles. That struck me as very incongruous: The Hulk teleports off battleworld and rather than arriving home instantaneously has to wait a day for Rom or Iron Fist to have an adventure? The justification given for this was that those non-SW stories took place "at the same time" as SECRET WARS and therefore were arbitrarily placed immediately after it. But most of those stories took place over less than a few days whereas SECRET WARS explicitly happened over three weeks. I understand that SW was "one story" but using that criteria seems inconsistent with the rest of the project. And again, there were twelve issues of SECRET WARS which easily could have been interspersed with single issues of ROM or ALPHA FLIGHT or what have you.
All of which applies tenfold to a story that takes place over a FULL YEAR.
(And before this turns into Bitching Abolition Free Stuff on the Internet, let me say that I realize that this entire site is just for fun, that it's a lot of work, and that nobody -least of all myself- is paying fnord to do it. I'm not screaming "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!" nor am I demanding any changes like someone complaining about the quality of his illegally downloaded Torrent. Thee are just observations and if fnord told me to back off and make my own f*****g website he'd be within his rights. I suspect however, that he will take it in stride :))

That was a strange Autocorrect. The intended phrase was "Bitching ABOUT Free Stuff on the Internet".
The mind goggles trying to figure out what "Bitching Abolition Free Stuff" could possibly mean.

Jay, i think my response to you on the ROM entry is still applicable here. This site is a combination chronology/recommended reading order. Lots of stuff is going on in the Marvel universe, and a lot of it is happening at the same time. So i balance the chronology of individual characters against (what i think is) the best way to enjoy a story. As Ataru says, this story is very isolated from the rest of the Marvel universe so in terms of placement i've let the Captain America issue be the anchor point, but it should be understood that this series is taking place while a lot of other events in the 1985/1986 era are happening.

What this site isn't is a strict calendar where each entry or even chunk of entries represents a specific set of days. For something closer than that, you might try Paul Bourcier's Marvel Calendar project. But what you'll see is that often requires breaking things down by page or panel. And the reductio absurdum version of me doing that here would entries covering individual sequences in random Spider-Man and Hulk issues together because they happen at the same time even though they have nothing to do with each other. I know that's not what you're asking for. But individual issues can be equally arbitrary. Some take place over a few hours, some can take place over the course several days or more. So i feel that allows me some discretion to place things in a way that keeps the stories coherent, and something like this or Secret Wars, to me, works best when read as a whole, understanding that other things are happening at the same time.

We've been through this once already so i don't expect this to convince you. And i don't consider you to be bitching abolition free stuff. But what's you're talking about is different than when, say, someone tells me that Iron Man can't appear between issues X and Y because his armor was destroyed. And that's the sort of chronology that i'm more focused on. So you gotta give me a little room for personal preference here. ;-)

This is becoming more about SECRET WARS than SQUADRON SUPREME, for which I apologize, but if it's more about recommended reading order, I'm surprised that you don't find it preferable to have the "return" issues of the SW- related titles immediately follow SW without Rom and the like disrupting the flow (and for that matter in the same order that those title characters left SECRET WARS). Your personal preference is good enough, but I'm still... In polite disagreement. Personally I would rather see the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Avengers teleport off Battleworld and then (preerablythe same order) see Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Avengers appear on Earth, not wait three issues so I can see what Moon Knight is up to.
Yeah, I know some of those individual "return issues" contain events both before and after the returns and don't line up perfectly, but what does? They line up better with SW than they do with... ROM.
And to bring it back to SQADRON SUPREME, I absolutely agree that the series is best enjoyed in one hunk. I also mostly agree with your assessment of the series, and as a kid/teenager embraced the notion that, like DC's Earth-2, SS provided a writer with a chance to answer the kinds of questions that should never be asked in this type of fiction. "Why doesn't Superman just end world hunger?" Well, here's why. It is possibly Mark Gruenwald's signature work (though I think the Marvel Handbooks are a better example of something that no one else but Gruenwald could have done) and it addresses WACHMEN-style themes while still managing to actually be a superhero comic, something WATCHMEN couldn't do.

Amazing Heroes #70(5/85) ran an interesting preview on this. The series starts 1 week after Defenders #115. John Byrne designed all the new costumes, and the Skrull is called "Skrullian Skymaster". The prism is definitely not sentient. Foxfire and Remnant were originally called "Insidio" and Wildcard".

Per Gruenwald in Amazing Heroes#97: DC actually did sue Marvel over this series, but since most of the characters were created in the 1970s, the court ruled that the statute of limitations applied.

I, of course, love this series. It is probably (scratch that), it is DEFINITELY my favorite maxi-series that Marvel ever produced. My blog, my e-mail address, my movie awards, are all named Nighthawk after Kyle Richmond as he is portrayed in these issues, that he is the one person willing to stand up and remind the Squadron that you can't just take away people's rights and do what you want, no matter how well-meaning it is.

But then again I am also a DC fan as well as Marvel and I have always, since I was a little kid, been a JLA fan, so to get this JLA analogue, complete as various What If aspects ("What if the JLA took over the world?" "What if Wonder Woman married Steve Trevor back during WWII?" "What if Firestorm gave cancer to the people around him?"). I absolutely think that part of what Grant Morrison did in JLA years later that everyone thought was so great gets inspiration from here. It was like having a What If story (complete with mass deaths at the end - it seemed like What If, especially the second volume, always ended with a lot of death) that stretched over 12 issues. The final issue is one of the few single comics I still own.

Fantastic review!

You know, I didn't catch that GA-Speedy reference until reading this. It's just as good as Watchmen, where every subsequent reading offers up a new slant on things.

True wale really did knock it out of the park with this story.

I'm gonna read this once more.

Mark Gruenwald and Julius Schwartz were a con panel a week or two after the release on Squadron Supreme,#1, and Schwartz happened to end a remark with "Nobody reads Justice League anymore."

"I do." Gruenwald impishly shot back, bringing down the house.

---

I wonder sometimes if I didn't have a small actual input on the series - I wrote Gru a letter about SS a month or two later, in which I made the point that the central inevitable eventual failure of the Utopia Project was who was going to take over someday, and how can they be trusted with the B-Mod and all the other tools so well suited to oppression? (I also pointed out that the B-Mod instructions Arcanna was shown giving the convict would tend to prevent him from being able to so much as subsist on a vegan diet, but that was never addressed). So the idea was never foreshadowed at all in the series, then Nighthawk made that exact same point to Hyperion in the last issue.

Most likely, if Gru even read the letter, he'd already thought of that (I got it from what Cyclops said to Magneto in X-Men 150) - but I do wonder...

While not on Wikipedia, I believe the members introduced into the Squadron Supreme might be analogues to the "Detroit League", which was going on at the time:

Redstone - Steel - both are patriotic American heroes
Moonglow - Gypsy - both cast illusions
Inertia - Vixen - physical, athletic characters
Haywire - Vibe - both have unique powers that look like lines coming out of their hands.

I'm a big fan of this series, and this was a even handed review. I also liked Gru's run on Quasar, so I'm always disappointed when I try out his Captain America stuff, which usually leaves me cold. Considering on just taking the plunge with one of these Epic Collections.

I also tried to figure out analogues for the new characters, and I think most of Nighthawk's Redeemers work better as analogues to the Outsiders of the era, which fits with them being Batman/Nighthawk's team after leaving the League/Squadron.

Ape X- Gorilla Grodd (visual look-anthromorphic ape)
Quagmire- Sinestro (Green Lantern villain, creates stuff)
Lamprey- Parasite (power set)
Dr. Decibel- Sonar (power set)
Shape- Plastic Man (power-set, reformed criminal)
Foxfire- Vixen (visual look)
Remnant- The Joker (batman villain,visual look, flamboyant)
Mink- Catwoman (batman villain, visual look, cat-themed)
Pinball- Penguin (batman villian, visual look, round)
Redstone- GeoForce (earth based powers, super strength)
Moonglow- Gypsy (illusion based powers)
Inertia- Halo (mental powers, visual look-costume)
Haywire-Vibe (visual look- a stretch, I know, - weird powers)
Thermite-Metamorpho (visual look-composite man)

Wow they solved 90 per cent of the economy but only 85 per cent of crime? I mean, the are super-heroes, crime should be their forte.

I don't think there's a one-to-one correlation between secondary characters in the Squadron universe and the DC universe, but I have to say, when I first saw Ape X, I was sure she was an amalgamation of the Teen Titan / Doom Patrol villains M'sieu Mallah and the Brain.

How much does the Squadron trust their behavior-modifying machine? So much so that Arcanna trusts Dr. Decibel (a *physicist*, not a physician) to be her gynecologist, erk...

I finally read this series for the first time, and it kinda bugged me how many plot threads were left dangling by the end of the series. Just to mention the most obvious ones:

* Amphibian quits the team mid-series because he's disgusted with SS's ethics. You'd expect this to lead to something, possibly him joining Nighthawk's rebels, but he isn't seen or mentioned again.

* In the beginning of the final issue, Lady Lark is shown in the crowd, still looking for Golden Archer. Again, one would expect this to be significant, and for her to join one of the teams in the final battle, but that's actually her final appearance in the series.

* Ape X is building a robot version of Tom Thumb, and she plans to put his brain patterns she had recorded into it, a la Vision. But before that happens, her brainwashing results in a nervous breakdown, and we don't learn what happens to the robot or Ape X herself.

* There's also the matter of all the villains still roaming free. What will Master Menace do, what is Scarlet Centurion's plan with the Squadron, what happens to the villains who took part in the final showdown and survived it?

Since this was always intended to be a limited series, I find it odd Gruenwald introduced all these plot elements but didn't bring them to any conclusion. Maybe he thought there would be an ongoing SS series later? I haven't read the later Squadron Supreme specials and minis, so maybe some of these things are addressed there?

Little bits of those are followed up on, yes. But I think most of it was deliberately left that way. If Gru wanted this to be "more realistic superheroes," then I think he was going for a bit more of realistic story-telling as well. In the "stories" of our lives, not every "character" comes back and we don't find out how all their "arcs" end.

But even "realistic" storytelling is still storytelling; unless we're dealing with a slice-of-life type of story, narratives don't normally work like real life does, that would be unsatisfactory to the audience. We expect stories to have arcs and conclusions, that's one of the main sources of enjoyment in fiction. Watchmen is way more "realistic" than SS, and it still has proper arcs for everyone, and even the stuff it leaves unanswered is still open-ended in an interesting way... That's not really the case here, it feels more like those plot threads were left open because Gruenwald was lazy or ran out of space, not because he had a grand vision for them.

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional, but even though Squadron Supreme are ultimately the bad guys of the story, they sure come across much better than Nighthawk and his crew. Yes, the whole brain-washing thing is quite dodgy, but it's made clear in the story no one is forced to go through it, it's voluntary. (When Golden Archer forces it on Lady Lark, he gets condemned by everyone.) And with most of the criminals we see in the story, the behaviour modification certainly seems to be way more beneficial than harmful. Some of the supervillains even like their new lives so much, they decide to side with SS even after they've been de-brainwashed!

Other than that, everything SS is shown doing in the series is totally beneficial. They get rid of guns, provide the cops effective, non-lethal mean of handling criminals, repair the economy, get rid of hunger, come up with the cryosleep chambers for those with an incurable disease... We see some people protesting against the cryo thing, but again, it's made clear the process is voluntary, and no one is forced to do it if they don't want to. At the end of the series they hand the power back to the civilian government, and it never seems anything they did caused any significant harm to anyone, except for some fringe gun nuts being offended that they can't shoot people anymore.

Compared to that, Nighthawk sides with known killers and rapists, and his action result in several people (including himself) getting killed at the end of the series. But ultimately SS seem to agree Nighthawk, and they promise to return everything back to the way it was, which includes destroying the cryochambers and bringing back guns! How the heck is that gonna benefit anyone? And what if the civilian government (which is never shown to opposes SS’s point of view) thinks those changes are actually for the good? Will SS still destroy all the technological advancements they brought to people and force gun factories to open again?

To be sure, I’m a left-wing anarchist, and I take the issue of personal liberty very seriously, but in my opinion Gruenwald fails to convince the reader that Nighthawk’s libertarianism is commendable, since most of what SS does appears to benefit the people. Gruenwald has some lofty goals for this series, but ultimately it fails as a thought experiment. He puts way to much focus on the interpersonal ethical conflicts between SS members, but we never properly see how those ethics affect ordinary people. The Squadron become a bunch of authoritarians, for sure, but the potential negative effects of their authoritarianism are never properly explored, besides some super-villains being kinda inconvenienced by their behaviour modification. That’s hardly enough.

Heh, I'm a left-wing authoritarian myself (I sympathize quite a bit with Flag-Smasher's "one world government" view) and I agree that Gru didn't show much if anything evil as part of the Utopia Project (Golden Archer is evil when he uses the B-mod on Lark, of course, but that's him "going rogue"). Other problems we see, such as Ape X's mental breakdown, are unintended consequences that could be "patched" to prevent them happening again.

I think Gru, who probably is my all-time favorite comics writer, wanted to tread a line where we had to be able to sympathize with the Squadron and want to keep reading about them, but at the same time set them up as needing to be taken down by Nighthawk. He didn't want to make them "too evil," but I agree that he didn't make them "evil enough."

Tuomas -

One thing that Nighthawk does make clear is that it isn't so much the question of whether the things they have done are good or not, but what the future consequences are. Aside from the personal liberty issue, there's the fact that it really does require people of the Squadron's power to enforce these things and once they are gone, it really leaves a big question of what will happen to their utopia. Who will maintain it?

But again, you do bring up good questions with both the subplots and the very concept and both are those are addressed in Death of a Universe.

Erik,

The whole point of Nighthawks concerns were shown in a Squadron Supreme one-shot and in a storyline in the Exiles series, which will be many moons from now. Without spoilers, while the Squadron spent a long time stranded on Earth-616, life kept on chugging back on Earth-712. When the Squad eventually gets back home, they find exactly what Nighthawk had warned them about...

Aside from the personal liberty issue, there's the fact that it really does require people of the Squadron's power to enforce these things and once they are gone, it really leaves a big question of what will happen to their utopia. Who will maintain it?

I would get that, if the story would show that the utopia requires upkeeping tasks that only superhumans can perform, but we don't really see that's the case. To me, it seems like the main two advancement SS bring about are, A) providing technological innovations such as the behaviour mod units and the cryosleep chambers, and B) getting rid of guns, nukes, and other lethal weapons. (They also appear to do some repair and maintenance work, but it's nothing non-superhumans can't do.) Now, there's no reason to assume Tom Thumb didn't leave the blueprints for his innovations behind, so there's no reason why normal humans can't continue producing them. As for B, there are several countries in the world where firearms and lethal weapons are forbidden, or strictly regulated. They manage to enforce those laws pretty fine, so it's an absurd idea that only superhumans could do it. So even though Nighthawk's point is technically valid, Gruenwald doesn't actually show us anything that would support it.

I think Moore handled this question much better in Watchmen... We learn that there are several things that Dr. Manhattan and he alone can do, such as matter conversion and efficient production of rare elements. So when he goes missing, it really is a huge blow for the US.

Btw, after my previous posts I did end up reading Death of a Universe, and though it did tie up some of the plot threads I mentioned (Lady Lark, Master Menace, the villainous SS members), we still don't what happened to Aquarian, Ape X or the Tom Thumb robot.

Sorry, that's Amphibian, not Aquarian.

"They manage to enforce those laws pretty fine, so it's an absurd idea that only superhumans could do it. So even though Nighthawk's point is technically valid, Gruenwald doesn't actually show us anything that would support it."

IMO, you may be looking at it from a "normal" point of view. However, in the Marvel Universe/multiverse, I would think that super humans are depended upon to act in the role of enforcers by the non-powered people. They expect them to do what regular people can't do.

But isn't Nighthawk's whole point that people shouldn't be depended on superhumans?

Anyway, even on the 616 Earth there are still many countries that don't seem to have any superheroes at all, and they can still uphold their laws. And it's not like 616 American superheroes are regularly shown to deal stuff like illegal firearms, they mostly deal with larger-scale threats. The 616 still has regular cops who seem to handle regular crime just fine, it's only when the criminals are superpowered that superheroes are needed. So I don't see how on the SS Earth, which is supposed to be more "realistic" than its 616 counterpart, everyone would be totally dependent on superheroes, even on non-super issues like gun control?

I think Nighthawk's point isn't that the Squadron's Utopia isn't that it requires SUPERHUMANS to enforce it but that it requires GOOD PEOPLE to enforce it. The only reason why the Squadron aren't brainwashing everyone into being their slaves is because they're basically good intentioned. The same technology would be absolutely devastating in the hands of a sociopath. It's the classic criticism of Communism- if you put too much power in one person's hands, you're screwed if that person turns out to be a Stalin or a Mao or a Pol Pot or a Kim.

I would argue that the B-mod machine can't be trusted to ANY form of government. I certainly wouldn't trust a democracy or republic not to use it on the minority view.

I'm sure you're right about the "Speedy" cameo - it would be fitting for GA's sidekick to have a drug problem just as Speedy did and to eventually overdose in light of how much worse the world around him got. Part of GA's thought balloons probably showed a sense of guilt for not being around when his partner needed him and may have been intended as part of his motivation for eventually opposing the Squadron's methods.

As to why the script was apparently changed, I'd guess that's because he would have been the sole black hero in the story (Foxfire was a redeemed villain) and it was problematic to kill off the one black hero as a result of a drug overdose (and behind the scenes at that). To be clear, he was probably an Australian Aboriginal, fitting in with GA's Australian roots just as Speedy's Native American heritage complemented Green Arrow's U.S. upbringing.

That "Tom Thumb died two weeks later" panel is almost "Poochie did on the way back to his home planet"