Mark Gruenwald took comics seriously. While this may seem obvious considering the medium was his chosen career path, Gruenwald “loved them with an almost transcendent passion, an unbounded enthusiasm, that spilled over into everything he did” (DeMatteis). During his career he contributed to the medium in nearly every way imaginable, acting as a writer, editor, penciller, mentor, historian, scholar, continuity director, and more. Due to his unrivaled dedication he was posthumously declared as the “Patron Saint of Marveldom” (Marvel Chronicle: A Year by Year History 235).
Mark Gruenwald was born on June 18th, 1953 (Family Search). His father was a teacher with a love of comics, who taught Gruenwald from a young age to approach comics from a literary mindset. Beyond reading and studying, Gruenwald also created his own comics, storyboards, and musicals (Near Mint Condition). Later, when Gruenwald was attempting to start his career in comics, he and his father wrote “A Treatise on Reality in Comic Literature”, which analyzed the worlds portrayed in comic books. Gruenwald would continue this level of analysis by self-publishing two issues of “Omniverse: The Journal of Fictional Reality”, an anthology in which each article discusses aspects of a fictional universe.
Mark Gruenwald was hired as an assistant editor at Marvel in 1978, and would become the editor on six titles in 1982 (Gruenwald, “Avengers”). One of these titles was Captain America, and Gruenwald would be involved with the title for the rest of his life. After working as the editor on the title for 3 years, he took over as writer on the title. His run would be legendary not only in length, lasting 137 issues over 10 years (Gruenwald, “Captain America” 23), but also in content. With storylines such as The Captain, Streets of Poison, and Fighting Chance, Gruenwald created stories that didn’t just focus on action and intrigue, but also delved into the deeper philosophies of Captain America as a character.
When starting his run as writer, one of Gruenwald’s main goals was to improve Captain America’s list of antagonists (Gruenwald, “Captain America” 23). Specifically, Gruenwald focused on creating villains that would counter the ideals of Captain America while also representing aspects of American culture. Such villains included Flag-Smasher, an anti-nationalist who believed there should be no separate countries and governments. Or the Serpent Society, a trade union for supervillains, complete with benefits and profit sharing. With the series being focused on a patriotic hero, Gruenwald realized that people could interpret that to mean patriotism is always good (comic-art.com). To combat this he created an antagonistic hero named John Walker, aka the Super Patriot, who was more concerned with wealth and fame than helping people.
In the 80s there was a shift in the market towards more violent heroes. Readers wrote to the Marvel offices and asked for them to make Captain America “more like Rambo” (Field). Gruenwald felt that this level of violence was contrary to the character of Steve Rogers, and instead wrote a storyline in which Rogers was ousted from the role of Captain America and replaced by the aforementioned John Walker. While the story would eventually revert back to the status quo of Rogers as Captain America, the change was in effect for 18 issues and showed “the humanity lost in the character of Captain America when Walker takes over” (Olsen 10).
While Gruenwald’s contributions to the title of Captain America were significant, the impact he had on Marvel as a whole was just as impressive. His knowledge of comic and character history was legendary. For a time there was a game called “Stump the Gru” in which participants would try to ask questions about comic characters that Gruenwald couldn’t answer. The game was discontinued after a time because he never got the questions wrong (COSMODA). This encyclopedic knowledge also made him the perfect person to edit “The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe” a series dedicated to cataloguing all the major and minor characters in Marvel publications (Marvel 21).
Not only did Gruenwald care about the comics, he cared deeply about the people he worked with. He would keep framed photographs of many of his co-workers (COSMODA) and suffered when he was forced to lay off many of them during Marvel’s financial troubles in the 90s (Howe 384).
Mark Gruenwald passed away on August 12th, 1996, due to a heart attack. His love of comics and impact on the medium has been shown in a myriad of ways, even past his death. Fictional characters were named after him (Isabella and Ingersoll 50), comic issues were dedicated to him (Liefeld and Loeb 3), and some of the memorabilia he owned is part of television sets (MacDonald).
Perhaps most fitting of all is that his ashes were mixed into the trade paperback version of one of his most famous comic stories (Ripley Entertainment Inc.), ensuring that even in death he will always be connected to the stories and medium that he loved so much.
Works Cited
Comic-art.com. “Interview with Mark Gruenwald.” Comic Art and Graffix Gallery, https://www.comic-art.com/interviews/gruenwal.htm.
COSMODA. “Mark Gruenwald A Hall of Fame Career.” YouTube, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0_ODgESxtk.
DeMatteis, J.M. “Red, White, Blue, and Dumb.” J.M. DeMatteis’s Creation Point, 17 April 2024, http://www.jmdematteis.com/2024/04/red-white-blue-and-dumb.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1IxFSVZWga2Jo0C3Oprcyuv3s7lz1xZThKp4goEhU5MA8whCK9ZklWWd4_aem_AQJtsWEMXmeyEc-MknqHSGOqurPSlta6MiAYzEd4WlaHSRVlxO0OfvyURmAhvMX0lFFasQTQkml2fJhpUWjau1Gg&m=1.
Family Search. “M E Gruenwald.” Family Search, 2021, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J16Z-M4W. Accessed 30 December 2024.
Field, Joe. “Mark Gruenwald Interviewed by Joe Field 1988.” YouTube, 1988, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saD2pP-PvX0.
Gruenwald, Mark. “Avengers #222.” A Memo From… Mark!, 1982. Marvel Unlimited, Marvel, https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/7089/avengers_1963_222.
Gruenwald, Mark. “A Memo from Mark.” Captain America, vol. 1, no. 443, 1995.
Howe, Sean. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. HarperCollins, 2012.
Isabella, Tony, and Bob Ingersoll. Captain America: Liberty’s Torch. Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, 1998.
Liefeld, Rob, and Jeff Loeb. “Secrets.” Captain America, vol. 2, no. 2, 1996, p. 3.
MacDonald, Heidi. “Captain America’s Shield and Joe Quesada show up on the Stephen Colbert farewell.” comicsbeat, 19 December 2014, https://www.comicsbeat.com/captain-americas-shield-and-joe-quesada-show-up-on-the-stephen-colbert-farewell/.
Marvel. “Bullpen Bulletins.” Captain America, vol. 1, no. 291, 1984, p. 21.
Marvel Chronicle: A Year by Year History. DK, 2008.
Near Mint Condition. “Mark Gruenwald Remembered | A Conversation with Catherine Schuller Gruenwald.” YouTube, 31 July 2023, https://www.youtube.com/live/Jwg8-9DSDSo.
Olsen, Jason. Mark Gruenwald and the Star Spangled Symbolism of Captain America, 1985-1995. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, 2021.
Ripley Entertainment Inc. “The Comic Book Made From the Writer’s Ashes.” Ripley’s, 2019, https://www.ripleys.com/stories/ash-comic-book-mark-gruenwald.