Written by Mark Gruenwald – Pencils by Paul Ryan – Inks by Sam De La Rosa – Lettered by Janice Chiang – Colored by Max Scheele

Propaganda

The issue opens with Tom Thumb’s funeral presented as a segment of a news broadcast from WSQS-TV. The eulogy they present feels like whitewashing.

Afterward, they run a glowing report about the Squadron and everything they’ve accomplished. The station uses the Squadron’s own imagery, and Power Princess gets uninterrupted airtime to talk about their successes and introduce the Hibernaculum.

It’s hard not to read this as state-run media.

The report doesn’t question the Squadron, and it doesn’t seem interested in telling the public what actually happened. It doesn’t ask why Hyperion is no longer the public face of the Squadron. It doesn’t investigate what happened to Quagmire. There’s no real discussion of the destruction to President’s Mountain caused by Hyperion’s battle with his double.

Instead, the Squadron gets to tell the story through the news as their proxy.

The Squadron isn’t just trying to control what happens in their world anymore. They’re controlling the story about what happens.

Memento Mori

The Hibernaculum is introduced as another Squadron solution to a problem they can’t actually solve.

There are people suffering from incurable diseases, so the Squadron has developed a way to put them into suspended animation until medicine catches up with their illness.

It’s an understandable idea. If you can’t save someone today, maybe you can save them tomorrow.

Ape-X is doing something similar with Tom.

Tom is dead, but Ape-X is working on an artificial intelligence version of him. It’s not Tom, exactly, but it’s an attempt to preserve something of him rather than simply accept that he’s gone.

The Hibernaculum says, “We won’t let you die.”

Ape-X’s creation says, “We won’t let you stay dead.”

They’re part of a growing pattern in the Squadron’s world: when something painful happens, find a way to stop it from happening.
Even death becomes a problem to work around.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Nighthawk is trying to infiltrate the Squadron and steal the plans for the Behavior Modification Machine so Master Menace can figure out how to reverse it. Master Menace isn’t as patient as he is and threatens to take action that could jeopardize the entire resistance.

Meanwhile, Redstone and Moonglow are chosen to pose as new heroes who want to join the Squadron, but they’re inexperienced. Nighthawk also has Golden Archer on his team, who used Behavior Modification on Lady Lark, and while he is looking for redemption, he isn’t exactly taking responsibility.

Nighthawk has to trust, bargain with, and convince others to carry out their assignments. He has to rely on criminals, former adversaries, and disgraced heroes.

The Squadron Supreme has a different dynamic.

They’re building a new world with a combination of members whose choices are restricted and a handful of remaining original members of the team. But there is a veil of secrecy over this team. Ape-X works on her AI version of Tom alone. Hyperion is carrying guilt over his fight with his doppelganger. Arcanna is hiding her pregnancy. Power Princess has doubts about her relationship with Hyperion.

Nighthawk knows that some of the people he is working with can have their own agenda. The Squadron is supposed to work as one.

When Redstone and Moonglow show up wanting to join the team, members discuss how to deal with people who haven’t been properly vetted but who could be useful.

Blue Eagle has a solution.

Use the Behavior Modification Machine.

The people who have already been Behavior Modified believe that more people should be Behavior Modified.

The unmodified members of the Squadron push back, pointing out that the machine was originally intended to address criminal behavior.

It’s an interesting reversal.

A Dirty Way To Die

Quagmire is in a coma, and his powers are running out of control. Extra-dimensional material is appearing throughout the hospital while the Squadron tries to figure out what to do with him.

Eventually, Power Princess decides they have to turn off the life support, and Hyperion carries out the order. Quagmire’s body disappears, apparently pulled into another dimension.

Quagmire’s life and death make a fitting metaphor for the entire issue.

The Squadron has spent this series trying to eliminate crime, violence and other problems in society. Now they’re turning their attention to disease and death. The plan to build Hibernaculum facilities in every major city to keep people alive, like keeping a brain-dead Quagmire on life support, shows how far they’re willing to go to prevent death from being the end.

The Squadron keeps trying to prevent bad things from happening. They keep looking for ways to preserve things, control things and stop things from reaching their natural conclusion.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Quagmire’s condition can’t be controlled forever. Keeping him alive doesn’t solve the problem. Eventually the Squadron has to accept that there is nothing more they can do.

They have to let go.

Final Thoughts

There’s a progression happening in the Squadron’s approach to Utopia.

At first, they wanted to eliminate crime and violence. Then they wanted to eliminate guns. Then dissent. Now they’re trying to eliminate some of the other things that make life painful and unpredictable.

Disease. Death. Loss. Bad choices. Grief.

The Hibernaculum doesn’t cure disease. It postpones death. Ape-X’s artificial Tom won’t bring Tom back. Behavior Modification doesn’t change people. It restricts what they’re allowed to do.

And Quagmire shows what happens when the Squadron tries to keep something going simply because they can’t accept the alternative.

None of this means disease, violence, death or suffering are good things. Of course they’re not. The problem is the idea that every painful part of life is something that can or should be eliminated.

The Squadron is trying to create a world without imperfection.

But imperfection is part of life.

Life is messy. People make bad choices. People get sick. People die. People lose each other. Sometimes things can’t be fixed.

And when you start trying to eliminate all of that, you don’t just create a safer or happier world.

You start taking away the things that make people human.

And that’s the biggest problem with the Squadron’s perfect world.

It isn’t perfect.

It’s just less human.

Squadron Supreme Entry #12