Everything (not really)

Written by Mark Gruenwald – Penciled by Bob Hall – Inked by John Beatty – Lettered by Janice Chiang – Colored by Christie Scheele

The Story So Far

Although Squadron Supreme debuted as a twelve-issue limited series in 1985, the team had already existed in the Marvel Universe for nearly fifteen years.

They first appeared in 1969 as the Squadron Sinister, created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema as Justice League analogues. Two years later, Marvel reimagined them as heroes from the alternate reality of Earth-712, where Hyperion, Nighthawk, Doctor Spectrum, Power Princess, and the rest of the Squadron served as their world’s premier superhero team.

Over the years, the roster expanded and the Squadron made occasional appearances alongside the Avengers and Defenders. Their last major storyline before this series saw the alien Overmind seize control of the entire team, conquer Earth-712, and plunge the world into chaos before finally being defeated.

That’s where this story begins.

Not with the victory.

With the aftermath.

An Impossible Beginning

The very first page may be the most important in the entire issue.

Hyperion, the Superman analogue and supposedly the strongest man in the known universe, attempts to stop the Squadron’s satellite headquarters from crashing back to Earth.

He can’t.

Gruenwald immediately establishes that this isn’t going to be a story about superheroes effortlessly solving impossible problems. Hyperion can redirect the satellite. But he can’t stop its inevitable destruction.

The strongest man in the universe still has limits.

That image feels like the thesis for everything that follows.

A World Falling Apart

As the Squadron spreads out across America, every location tells the same story.

The economy has collapsed. Infrastructure is failing. Food is scarce. Communities are beginning to break down. Ordinary people are resorting to looting simply to survive.

The heroes themselves are overwhelmed.

One sequence in particular stood out to me. Golden Archer and Lady Lark arrive at a massive fire threatening a natural gas main, only to admit they aren’t firefighters. Despite all their abilities, they’re simply not equipped for the job.

Again and again, Gruenwald places superpowered people in situations where their abilities simply aren’t enough.

This world doesn’t need another bank robber punched through a wall.

It needs functioning governments, food distribution, hospitals, firefighters, and an economy.

Those aren’t problems superheroes can normally solve.

Responsibility or Authority?

Eventually the Squadron gathers to ask themselves: if the world is this broken, why don’t they take it over and simply fix it?

Hyperion argues they’ve spent their entire careers holding back. If they possess the ability to build a better society, perhaps they also have the responsibility to do it.

Nighthawk disagrees.

To him, Earth-712 has just escaped one dictatorship under the Overmind. Replacing it with another—even one led by heroes with the noblest intentions—doesn’t sound like salvation.

It sounds like history repeating itself.

It’s a fascinating debate because Gruenwald refuses to paint either side as obviously right.

Hyperion isn’t motivated by power. He’s motivated by compassion.

Nighthawk isn’t resisting change. He’s defending the idea that people deserve the freedom to shape their own future, even if they make mistakes along the way.

The vote passes.

Ten to two.

And suddenly the series isn’t asking whether superheroes can save the world.

It’s asking whether they should be allowed to rule it.

Good People, Dangerous Ideas

One of my favorite aspects of the issue is how much time Gruenwald spends humanizing the cast before changing the course of their lives.

Hyperion ends his relationship with the woman he loves, revealing his alien origins as he prepares to abandon both his secret identity and any hope of living an ordinary human life. It’s a surprisingly melancholy scene. In trying to save humanity, he willingly severs one of the strongest connections he has to it.

Power Princess quietly reunites with the man she loves, now an old man while she has barely aged. It’s a bittersweet reminder that time moves differently for her and that choosing to remain on Earth has come with sacrifices no amount of power could ever undo.

Blue Eagle continues wrestling with the legacy of his father, whose heart medication became unavailable as society collapsed. His grief isn’t simply about loss. It’s tied to duty, expectation, and the realization that even a superhero couldn’t save the person who shaped him.

Arcanna retreats to the hidden dimension where her family has been living, desperately trying to preserve some sense of normalcy while the world outside continues to unravel.

Golden Archer and Lady Lark return home to find their lives ransacked and abandoned. For perhaps the first time, the collapse of society isn’t something they’re witnessing from above. It’s something that has reached their own front door.

Nuke visits his parents, both undergoing chemotherapy. Gruenwald never explicitly connects their illnesses to Nuke’s radiation-based powers in this sequence, but the coincidence feels deliberate enough that it’s hard not to wonder whether his abilities have come at a terrible personal cost.

Tom Thumb’s only apparent companion is his AI, hinting at a loneliness that’s more unsettling than comforting.

The Whizzer returns to his family, who have been sheltering in a safe room. It’s a small scene, but the fear on their faces says everything about how fragile this world has become.

These aren’t simply superheroes preparing to save the world.

They’re people carrying grief, guilt, loneliness, fear, and impossible choices into the biggest decision of their lives.

What struck me while reading this issue was how quietly mature all of this feels.

Nothing about Squadron Supreme announces itself as something different. It isn’t oversized. It isn’t marketed as a prestige project. It isn’t wrapped in a “mature readers” label. Sitting on a spinner rack in 1985, it would have looked like any other Marvel superhero comic.

Inside, however, Gruenwald is writing about collapsing governments, famine, chemotherapy, broken relationships, political philosophy, and the emotional scars left behind by trauma.

The costumes belong to superheroes.

The problems belong to people.

Two Visions of Responsibility

What makes the issue especially compelling is that Gruenwald never turns Hyperion or Nighthawk into villains.

Instead, he presents two fundamentally different responses to the same catastrophe.

Hyperion concludes that the old system has failed. If the Squadron truly possesses the power to create a better world, then perhaps they have a responsibility to take control and build it.

Nighthawk reaches the opposite conclusion.

Still serving as President, he resigns his office and encourages the rest of his cabinet to do the same—particularly those who, despite not being under the Overmind’s control, allowed his dictatorship to continue. Rather than claiming greater authority, Nighthawk accepts responsibility for the world’s collapse and offers himself up to whatever judgment follows.

Hyperion, meanwhile, moves in the opposite direction.

He ends his human life. He abandons his secret identity, gives up the woman he loves, and publicly embraces Hyperion as his only identity. In many ways, he’s cutting his final ties to the ordinary humanity that once kept his immense power in check.

That contrast makes their final confrontation especially fascinating.

Hyperion makes one last attempt to bring Nighthawk into the Utopia Program, not because he wants to silence dissent, but because he genuinely believes they can save the world together.

Nighthawk isn’t convinced.

Believing he may be the last person capable of stopping the Squadron, he forges a bullet from Argonite—the only substance capable of killing Hyperion.

Yet when the moment comes…he can’t pull the trigger.

If he kills Hyperion before any crime has been committed, he becomes exactly what he fears Hyperion might become: one man deciding another person’s fate for the supposed good of everyone else.

There isn’t an easy answer to this conflict.

Just two men who look at the same broken world and arrive at very different conclusions about what responsibility demands.

Final Thoughts

By the end of the issue, it becomes clear that the satellite isn’t simply an exciting opening action scene.

It’s the central metaphor.

Hyperion can’t stop the crash.

The most interesting thing to me about that opening scene is that it never stops echoing. The satellite falls, and everything that follows becomes another version of the same problem. The Squadron’s greatest victories are measured not by the disasters they prevent, but by the damage they’re able to limit.

It’s little surprise, then, that Hyperion begins looking beyond individual emergencies. If every success merely limits the damage, perhaps the real solution isn’t responding to disaster after disaster, but building a world where those disasters never happen in the first place.

That naturally leads to the central question Gruenwald poses—and one that will hang over the rest of the series:

If people truly had the power to create a perfect world, would they also have the right to decide what that world should look like?

Squadron Supreme Entry #2