Someone I plan on meeting after I die…

Mark Gruenwald

Some of you may be asking “Who’s That?” Well let me tell you…

Mark Gruenwald was a writer for Marvel Comics, but not just any writer.

He’s the writer responsible for getting me hooked on comics.

It started back when I came across a different kind of comic on the spinner when I was 11 years old:

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #4 (April, 1983).

Maybe it was because I was learning how to research information for school reports. Or it could have just been that after looking up such things as electricity, former American Presidents and Eastern European countries, I was fascinated by reading about cosmic rays, former Avengers and the Savage Land written in a similar style. And that’s what made this series, and the Deluxe Edition that Mark was partially responsible for creating in ’86, so cool. The information was presented in prose and described past and (then) current events as if they took place in our world as if each character experienced everything mentioned in one continuous stream of existence.

Not only did I want to collect every issue of the series – which took me 25 years to complete – but I wanted to read the actual issues this information came from.

I was hooked. But so were a lot of other people.

Don’t believe me? Check out DC’s Who’s Who for starters. That didn’t come out until March, 1985 in conjunction with Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In fact, both Marvel and DC adapted the OHOTMU format to describing their characters on their respective websites. Valiant too. Privately-created websites have also copied the format for characters such as Transformers, G. I. Joe, Thundercats, TMNT and others.

All because of Mark Gruenwald.

Among his other accomplishments in comics, he’s responsible for the 12 issue Squadron Supreme miniseries.

What’s the big deal? Well, it’s about a group of super-human heroes eerily similar to well-known characters of Marvel’s Distinguished Competition who take over the world in order to build a utopian society. The plan falls apart and heroes betray and kill other heroes. It is one of the most mature stories Marvel ever published while retaining the Comics Code seal on the cover. Plus, it came out in 1985…two years before Frank Miller wrote Batman: Year One, and a year before Alan Moore’s Watchmen.

It was such a success that Gruenwald put in his will that his ashes be mixed with the printers ink when the Squadron Supreme Trade went to press.

 

And they were, when he died in 1996.

So when I pass on, I intend to have both OHOTMU volumes incinerated with me…so I can have them and get Mark to sign each and every issue! No matter who’s in line behind me.