From: TheyC <[aa khan] at [students.uiuc.edu]>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe,rec.arts.comics.misc,rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe
Subject: Mark Gruenwald & Me
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 20:29:57 -0500

    First I'm going to say a few things about me, then I'm going to say a
few things about Mark Gruenwald. 
    See, I don't think there's another person like me on this planet. Why? 
Because NOBODY else was literally raised by the media. LITERALLY. If you
talk to me, you suddenly realize that I phrase everything the way it would
be in a movie, or on a show, or on a a rap album. If you listen to my
dreams, they sound like the plots for movies. And if you look back at my
life story, it reads like one. 
    My mother was a doctor. My father was an engineer. Both were from
India.  Both worked most of the time. When I was really young, babysitters
were what I had primarily, and while I was with them, I watched
television. Soon, I made it clear to my parents that I didn't need a
babysitter, and so I and my sister were home alone with our television.
That was our babysitter. 
    I also moved around a lot as my parents skipped from job to job. And
in each new town, I had to make new friends. Now how do you make friends
in a place you've never been in your life? You locate a common ground. And
what was my common ground? The media. Although they were American, and I
was Indian, and although they had grown up there, and I was knew, we all
watched the same shows, saw the same films, read the same books, and thus,
used the same "cultural capital," as my Sociology professor used to call
it. To this day, I tape shows on Tv I love, no matter WHEN they come on,
schedule life events around television shows I want to see, and memorize
them all without trying. I am the ultimate media geek. The media is me. 
    So what does this have to do with Mark Gruenwald? Well, when you're
like this, everything you see/read can have dramatic effects on who you
are as a person - recently, upon ealizing all I've just told you, for
example, I've disovered that my taste in women actually goes back to Daisy
Duke - my ideal of beauty is, essentially, her. As I tell everybody who'll
listen, the essay I have published in DEAR AUTHOR: BOOKS CHANGE LIVES,
which won me my trip to Washington DC, is nothing more than an explanation
on how profoundly THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X quite literally chaanged
me as a person. Just last night, the movie CLUELESS made clear to me what
it is about the way I was raised I want to emulate in my own children, and
why. What's just entertainment to anybody else can have massive and
far-reaching effects on who I am, how I think, and where I end up, and
it's for this reason that I can honestly say, I AM Mark Gruenwald. He has
made me who I am, comics-wise. 
    Literally. 
    Mark Gruenwald represents, to me, the absolute perfect comics creator,
and this is why I still don't believe he's dead. In fact, if he is, if
anything, I feel like Maya Angelou did at the close of a television
special from a few years ago called "Malcolm X: The Real Story," in which
she didn't grieve at Malcolm's death, but was angry. Angry at him for
having left her when she needed him, for not completing what he was meant
to for her. That's how I feel. Pissed off that Gruenwald isn't around, and
won't be when/if I ever get into comics. That I'll never get to see what
he loox like in real life, or know what his voice sounds like. Never get
to explain to him how profound I thought "Squadron Supreme" is. Never get
to see his reaon as I use just about every idea he ever had in some story
of mine. I'll never get to experience that, and it angers me. But it
doesn't change who I am, or who he made me. 
    A long time ago, a friend of mine showed me an issue of JLA (the old
one), with a letter in the lettercolumn from Mark Gruenwald, explaining
the technical specifications of the League's base. I remember thinking how
cool it was that a crazy kid fan like that would get into the industry he
so clearly loved. When I got my first letter published, I remember
thinking it was a sign that I could someday be like Mark. The more I get
published, the more I think that. And after a while, that was my goal, to
BE Mark Gruenwald: writer turned editor. But more than that, continuity
cop. 
    My sister still thinks I'm crazy as I made her go through Michael
Fleischer's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMIC BOOK HEROES, taking notes on EVERY
SINGLE CHARACTER with the intention of somehow finding a way to use them
ALL in my fan fiction. Most people think I'm nuts when I mention some one
issue wonder from an obscure issue of Superman and how well I think he'd
work in the current DCU. And my aforementioned friend couldn't believe how
I used every single character in an issue of "Who's Who" in our countless
RPG's, all of them in ways that were serious and acceptable within
continuity. 
    Indeed, I liked Mark WAID because I thought he might be cut from the
same cloth. I'm as obsessive about continuity than Gruenwald. Nothing
gives me greater pleasure than seeing an old character or situation or
place used in some capacity after years. I love the number of in-jokes
comics can create. I love the idea of a shared universe as real as real
can be. And essentially, that's what continuity is, folx - an attempt to
make comics real. Like in real life, if somebody is important today,
they'll be important tomorrow or die trying. And I think it's fitting that
"media boy" here's favorite kind of entertainment is that which blurs the
line between reality and fantasy as much as comics. That's the reason why
I'm not big on fantasy/sci-fi but am HUGE on superheroes: they live in the
real world, except better. I don't think anybody can grasp, and or
appreciate this in the whole world. 
    Except Mark Gruenwald. 
    See, I think what Mark understood that I related to, big-time, was
that continuity was part of a larger goal, of combining those two realms:
the fantasy and the reality. And "Squadron Supreme" was his testament to
that. I always describe SS to others as, "what if the JLA were REAL?"
UNLIKE the ni perfect heroes of the real JLA, the SS were petty. Jealous.
They had sex drives. They didn't always do the right thing. And they made
lots of mistakes.  And yet, with absolute power, the stage was set for the
ultimate tragedy. I love Shakespeare, too, and SS came pretty damn close.
Everything I always thought, Mark did. Why didn't Superman try to get with
Wonder Woman?  Shoot, I would have! Do Green Arrow and Hawkman really hate
each other, and if so, what would they do about it? If there was really a
way to rid the world of crime, would the League take it, regardless of the
cost? Would it work?  Everything I wondered Gruenwald did, and this has
nothing to do with continuity, because, you'll remember, SS was outside of
Marvel continuity (for the most part). It has everything to do, however,
with making the unreal real. 
    And a lot of times, this meant breaking the rules. 
    I'm sick and tired of hearing how Mark Gruenwald was some great
bastion of why and how comics should be fun by the "homogenize everything
into the universe of Captain Marvel" faction, becuz he didn't. Gruenwald
tried to make his stories as real as possible, as unpleasant as that may
get. I was always a vocal critic of Mark's drug stories, because they
weren't very realistic.  Why?  Because Mark Gruenwald was not a drug user
or familiar with that culture, as I was. I now realize how much I missed
the point. The fact that Gruenwald ATTEMPTED so difficult a subject in the
first place was the point: he didn't want the Marvel universe to be the
Happyland the anti-Image forces are looking for. He wanted it to be real,
but better. I remember an issue of Cap where there was all kinds of
hanky-panky going on with the Serpent Society. And why the Hell not? All
the girls were foine! All the guys had muscle for your ass!  This is what
would happen in REAL life. And Gruenwald knew it. 
    The positivity percieved in Mark's stories existed because he wrote
(and liked) positive characters. Cap, being a prime example. But while
I've always been against patriotism, I always loved Mark's Cap, because he
was what I wish real Americans were like. He wasn't a flag waver. He
wasn't a radical right winger. He simply WAS what every American claims to
be. If everybody in America was like Mark's Cap, I'd be a patriot too.
That's characterization, not some naive "comics should be for kids!"
mentality. And that's what Mark was also great at, again, the greatest
weapon in the war to merge reality with comics: his characters were really
true to life, not necessarily in their actions, but the consistency of
their actions. And the fact that their actions could be traced easily to
other actions or comics. Mark most definitely had a definite idea in mind
as to who each character was, and wrote based on that, not some abstract,
third person idea. 
    When I started seriously collecting in '87, his Cap had just resigned,
so I started collecting it right there. And continued to do so for years
and years.  Indeed, the reason I quit is so silly, I'll only relate it if
somebody asx. I collected Quasar too, but not because of Gruenwald (that I
knew of) - because I picked up an issue as part of a crossover, read it,
and it was good.  And this is another thing Mark Gruenwald taught me: if
the writer is any good, read an issue, and you should love it. He did that
with consistency. That first Captain America (#327, I think) was like that
for me. In fact, if Peter David's reading, you hooked me with an issue of
Hulk (#337?) that was just the first of a two part X-Factor guest
appearance. It was THAT good. But getting back to Mark, he never needed a
foil cover or a major hype campaign to impress me. A striking cover. A
quick read. And I'm in there. Guess what my first issue of Squadron
Supreme was? #7. Got it in a three in one bag. Was so struck by it, went
back and bought the whole series. 
    If you read all of my fan fiction, you will think Mark Gruenwald wrote
it.  I use characters so obscure, I'm tempted to say Mark wouldnt
recognize them (but I won't). A running gag around my house is "Klor! Of
Belvos!" This was an alien from World's Finest Comics #153, I think, who I
just gave a whole personality (and a voice, Cobra Commander's) based on an
offhand comment made to my sister. I've sworn to use him in a DC comic if
I ever write one. :) Like Mark, I find mistakes in DC Continuity and spend
issues fixing them, getting a great story in the process. And where Mark
couldn't, I use my real knowledge of drugs and drug culture to write
stories dealing with that. I always said I'd let him read some someday, to
see what he'd think. 
    So basically, that's it. Everything I believe about comics, everything
I tell others, everything a comic should be, comes to me from Mark
Gruenwald.  Like me, Mark didn't seem to believe that there were bad
ideas, only bad executions, which is probably why he stayed with Marvel
for as long as it did.  But more importantly, I think, Mark understood
that which I constantly preach at others (Cloffo): it's not the business.
It's not the company. It's not the new companies. It's not the 
distributers. It's not the economy. It's the comics. Fix the comics, and the 
business will fix itself. Keep trying to make the universe into the real 
world (and vice versa), and the rest takes care of itself. Too bad he only had
 forty years to do it. 
    For me to say rest in peace to Gruenwald would seem like too much of
an understatement. So I'll refrain from that here and pick it up again
when I do my nightly prayer. 
    Peace.