By the late 1980s, Mark Gruenwald had made a name for himself at Marvel Comics. His love and passion for comic books was monumental, his attention to detail was herculean. The man was a fountainhead of knowledge when it came to continuity. Some of his memorably works were spearheading for the first volumes of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, a lengthy run on Captain America, as well as the maxi-series Squadron Supreme, which Gruenwald got the opportunity to tell the Justice League of America story he always wanted to tell — only with Marvel’s pastiche homage to the Distinguished Competition.

Then we come to Quasar, a series that Gruenwald took to life and ran with. He transformed a seldom used legacy character into someone who was important to the Marvel Universe on a cosmic scale. For 50 issues, Quasar was out there solving the mysteries of the Marvel Universe. Uncovering new complexities. With the exception of a few issues near the end of the run, all these stories were written by Gruenwald himself. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit.

The character of Quasar first appeared back in Captain America #217. He was created by writers Don Glut, Roy Thomas and artist Sal Buscema. It was basically another attempt by Marvel to revive, retool, or reinvent an older character from their Timely/Atlas days. In this case, the character was Marvel Boy, who appeared in a handful of comics, including two issues of his own series before being dumped into one of Atlas Comics’ anthology sci-fi/horror anthology titles.

At any rate, the new Marvel Boy (Wendel Vaughn) appeared in the pages of Captain America for a bit, later changing his name to Marvel Man. He was a member of SHIELD’s fledgling Super Agents, but that group was quickly dissolved when it was infiltrated by the criminal organization known as the Corporation.

Gruenwald wouldn’t start using the character until he became a writer on Marvel Two-In-One starting with issue #52. Now called Quasar, Gruenwald had the character become head of security at Project PEGASUS, an organization created in the comics to new energy sources to push the United States away from fossil fuels. This was a commentary of sorts of the energy crisis going on in the United States at the time, but that sort of commentary went on the wayside as PEGASUS basically became a prison for super-villains with energy based powers as a means of driving the conflict of a story.

However, after Gruenwald moved off the book, Quasar’s appearances diminished again. He would appear from time-to-time in random stories here and there. Notably, when Gruenwald returned to the character again in Marvel Team-Up Annual #5, wherein Quasar quit Project PEGASUS after the Serpent Crown almost took over the facility under his watch.

The character would languish until the end of the 1980s when Gruenwald did a short stint on the Avengers and moved forward with adding Quasar to the new team roster. The in-story move was so that the Avengers would have a space faring character to help them in the event they had to face a galactic level threat. However, Quasar would end up being under utilized in the Avengers as writing duties went to others.

This became a moot point of sorts since Gruenwald was ultimately able to give Quasar his own series starting in October, 1989. By this time, Gruenwald was pretty high on the editorial chain, so getting a series entirely for himself to do whatever he wanted was probably an easy give.

The first six issues of the series went back to revamp Quasar’s origins. It had already been established that he inherited the (later named) Quantum Bands after the original Marvel Boy seemingly died fighting the Fantastic Four back in Fantastic Four #164-165, however Gruenwald went into more detail about how and why Wendel Vaughn got them in the first place. He also went deep into Marvel lore to find a suitable role and purpose for the character, since he never really got one. In issue #2, Quasar is given the title of Guardian of the Universe, a title that was previously given to the original Captain Marvel and he was charged with protecting the cosmic entity known as Eon, who warned of a great galactic threat that Wendel would have to stop. However, something was off about Eon, something that wouldn’t be explored until much later into the series.

The series was originally drawn by artist Paul Ryan, who shortly left the book to pencil much bigger titles, notably Tom DeFalco’s run on Fantastic Four.

The first few issues also set out to establish a life and supporting characters for Vaughn, particularly his emotionally distant father, Gilbert who was more interested in the science behind the Quantum Bands and Eon’s knowledge of the universe than he was about his son’s achievements. It also set up Vaughn — apropos to nothing — starting up a security consultation business that was run out of the Four Freedoms Plaza, also headquarters to the Fantastic Four. While this introduced other supporting cast members such as love interest Kayla Ballentine, and right-hand-man Ken Tanaka, there wasn’t really much done here. More often than not, Wendell would be called away from his day job to follow through on his duties as Guardian of the Universe. The story tried to do the typical “juggling a secret identity” plot thread that is common in super-hero books, but I feel that not a lot of effort was put into working on Vaughn’s civilian life.

This is because Mark Gruenwald really wanted to use Quasar to delve into some of the mysteries of the Marvel Universe as well as correct janky continuity. Before he started working at Marvel, Gruenwald was huge into the fanzine circuit, often writing sprawling essays about the nature of fictional worlds, ancient mythology, and how time travel would work in a given piece of fiction. He would take a lot of his world building theories with him when he was put in charge of things at Marvel. For the most part, these sorts of details were usually stuffed into the growing Official Handbook, but Quasar gave Gruenwald the opportunity to dive into some of these subjects in the actual stories he was writing. Sure, it’s something that every writer did from time to time, but Gruenwald did it all the time.

The first arc of Quasar had the titular hero scouring the Earth and cataloging all the aliens that lived there and determining if they were the threat Eon had warned him about. Some of the stories were action orientated, but there was a lightheartedness. Quasar wasn’t necessarily going to be all-action all the time, like most books, but rather more of an exploratory title.

From expanding on Quasar’s origins in the first two issues, he then went on to delving more into the histories of Aquarian — a Steve Gerber creation that Mark also worked with during his Marvel Two-In-One days — and Quantum, an abandoned super-villain created during Steve Englehart’s run on West Coast Avengers. It went deeper into the Dakkemite lore, and expanded upon it further so Aquarian wasn’t just a Superman pastiche, as Steve Gerber originally created him to be. After the obligatory Acts of Vengeance storyline, issue #7 undoes some of the things done with the character Terminus. Originally a cosmic level threat when he first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four, the character was killed off in the Avengers after he destroyed the Savage Land. By the time Gruenwald penned his Terminus story, these ideas were apparently poorly received and the Savage Land was restored in the earlier Evolutionary War storyline and issue #7 of Quasar reveals that the entity killed by the Avengers wasn’t the real Terminus, but a Deviant posing as him on behalf of the alien menace.

Penciling duties were turned over to Mike Manley from issue #7 through 17. They’re decent most of the time, but it often looks really rough and there is not a lot of consistency from one panel to another.

Gruenwald later revisited the Squadron Supreme, by having them guest appear in Quasar for a handful of issues starting in Quasar #13. This wasn’t really a further exploration of the characters or their previously established plot threads. The only thing that really changes is the revelation that Hyperion is an Eternal and the restoration of his vision after being forced to wear special goggles following the events of Squadron Supreme. They’re just kind of there.

Issues #14-16 is a story that further explores the origins of the Stranger and his conflict with the Overmind. It is kind of a rematch between Overmind and the Squadron, since his actions in Defenders led to Squadron Supreme, but the Squad is just basically around and doesn’t really add much to the story. What is really on display here is just the depths of which Gruenwald’s knowledge of Marvel continuity comes into play because this story features countless re-appearances of characters who had appeared in a handful of stories and were never heard from again. the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3, the Monitors from Marvel Two-In-One Annual #3, nearly every villain that appeared in Nova volume 1, the Creature of Kosmos from waaay back in Tales to Astonish #44. There is a lot of a lot going on. While it was interesting seeing these characters being revisited and finding out what happened to them, there is not a whole lot going on with them either. They’re just easter eggs for long time readers since many of these characters are also not seen again.

An odd addition to this story was a brief cameo by DC Comics’ Starman in this story. I don’t really know that much about the Starman character, especially the version that makes the cameo, so I couldn’t tell you why it was significant and Google can’t point me to any answers, so let's just chalk this up to one of those odd curiosities. However, put a pin in the concept, as this sort of thing will come up again.

Another interesting story — in concept if not execution — comes from issue #17. Gruenwald’s love of the JLA was well known in the comics industry but he never got the opportunity to work for DC Comics and write those characters. Not sure why, but it may have something to do with the fact that Gruenwald was insanely loyal and perhaps didn’t want to crossover to the competition because he had it so good at Marvel.

Like Squadron Supreme before it, Quasar was an attempt to do the kinds of DC Comics stories Gruenwald wanted to tell, but in the Marvel Universe. He basically shaped Quasar into being basically Marvel’s answer to Green Lantern. Issue #17 of his series also featured another borrowed trope: A race to see who is the fastest. This was frequently done in DC Comics, between the Flash and other speedsters. Usually, it was the Flash and Superman trying to determine who is the fastest with a decisive winner usually being inconclusive. Mark wanted to do his own story like that and pitted all of Marvel’s speedsters against one another.

In the middle of the race a mysterious entity with no memory of his past joins the race and blows everyone out of the water. He doesn’t remember who he is but thinks his name might be something similar to “Buried Alien”. If that and his tattered red outfit and yellow boots weren’t a huge give away, what Gruenwald did was bring Barry Allen — the Silver Age Flash — to the Marvel Universe and had him kick everyone’s ass in a race. At the time, over in DC Comics, Barry was dead following the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, after a noble sacrifice to save the DC multiverse. Barry’s death was, for a time, permanent until recent years when they brought him back. Crisis writer Marv Wolfman always said that he wrote in a way for Barry to be brought back whenever a writer wanted to, and I wonder if Gruenwald’s unofficial inclusion of Barry here was a nod to that idea.

The character would return again when a second race was called in Quasar #58. He appeared in a new costume and started calling himself Fastforward. After this appearance, “Buried Alien” ran off into the sunset and was never seen from again. I guess nobody else wanted to keep playing chicken with DC’s lawyers.

There was another change in artists shortly thereafter, starting in issue #18. Then fledgling artist Greg Capullo came onto the book. He would continue on as artist until issue #38. It is here that Capullo refined his signature style before being shuffled onto his popular run on X-Force and later jumping ship to Image Comics to work a lengthy run on Todd McFarlane’s Spawn.

Capullo’s run also coincided with the nearly endless barrage of massive crossover events, starting with a seven part Cosmic Collision event in Quasar which featured nearly every character Gruenwald ever previously wrote about and delved into many of the cosmic mysteries of the universe. Another was an one issue tie-in with the Infinity Gauntlet event, and a few months after that Operation: Galactic Storm a massive 20 part story that took place in every Avengers title. Lastly, he did most of the cross-over issues with the follow up Infinity War event. Capullo’s work showed that he had a knack for penciling large ensemble casts of characters. While his later work in X-Force and Spawn was much more refined, I think this handful of Quasar issues really showed the industry that Greg was ready for the big leagues. I mean, Todd McFarlane personally tapped Greg to take over as regular artist on Spawn, which was at the height of its popularity at the time.

Cosmic Collision was a story where Quasar had to save the universe from the threat of Maelstrom. The seeds of this plot were planted over the course of the previous 18 issues. Some of the creative choices however must have been confusing when this series was originally being published. Waiting for shit to get explained over the course of nearly 2 years must have been maddening for readers at the time. I know if I was trying to read this when it first came out (when I was like 9 years old) I would have been totally lost. I really appreciate that this entire story arc has since been collected in a trade so I could read them all in one go and really appreciate the nuances that Mark Gruenwald had planted along the way.

Unfortunately, following the conclusion of Cosmic Collision, the title gets mired in crossover after crossover. It was the mid-90s and the comic book boom was in full swing and Marvel was trying to capitalize on the speculation market by cramming in as many crossovers as possible. This would ultimately come back and bite them in the ass by the end of the decade and I feel that a lot of these creative choices really hurt the autonomy Mark had with his book. 

In fact, issues #26 and 27, is a crossover for the now famous Infinity War event. It didn’t have any major impact on the main story being told by Jim Starlin, George Perez and Ron Lim, so its impact on the overall story was fleeting and served only to plant seeds for what Gruenwald was doing next with Quasar. 

An odd choice during this entire run was having Moondragon show up disguised as a woman named H.D. Steckley. Her purpose in this arc was trying to get close enough to Quasar to try and convince him to become her consort. Something he eventually reject because of the tepid chemistry between the title character and Kayla Ballentine. 

The next two issues focused on the return of Her, the female version of Adam Warlock who hadn’t really been doing much prior to this. She returns to Earth to mate with Warlock. However, since other writers had other plans for the Warlock character, Gruenwald had her running around Quasar trying to find a suitable replacement. This led to a bizarre creative choice for the cover of issue #29. It featured a pregnant Quasar on the cover, parodying the then controversial Vanity Fare issue which featured a pregnant Demi Moore. This was something everybody was making jokes about at the time. Marvel even aped the cover twice (the second time in an issue of Sensational She-Hulk). However, the story does not feature a visibly pregnant Quasar inside. The story ultimately ends Her deciding to figure out her own destiny instead of getting preggers because other people created her for that purpose. On the one hand, one could say this story did a good job about shattering gender roles by giving a woman her own agency. On the other hand, Her only reaches this conclusion after a dude mansplanes the idea to her, so not exactly a pass on the Bechdel test.

This story also seems kind of redundant since in the past 10 odd issues we had Moondragon lurking around trying to get Quasar to be DTF with her. So why Gruenwald jumped into another story about another female character looking to get knocked up is beyond me.

Speaking of redundancies, during this two parter another woman named Holley Steckley shows up. This is another bait and switch character, but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Issues #30-31 was an interesting concept, but didn’t really have a good execution. In that story, the Watcher sends Quasar into the multiverse to stop the Living Laser from running amok in different realities. The first issue promised to revisit different alternate realities that were previously featured in the pages of What If? Unfortunately, a lot of it was a few panel cameos that didn’t really do much. Issue #31 dumps Quasar into the New Universe and now I realize I probably have to explain what that is now… Where to begin??

Okay, in 1986, Marvel editor Jim Shooter decided to create a new imprint within Marvel dubbed the New Universe. This line of books would take place in a brand new universe (hence the name) feature stories “ripped from the headlines” and happen in “real time”. It was supposed to provide new and original stories not bogged down by the continuity of the Marvel Universe. Incidentally, Gruenwald worked on one of those books, D.P.7. While there was initial interest in the idea, readership plummeted and many of the titles were canceled within a year. Still, the storyline plugged along but the imprint was pretty much what the Ultimate Comics did a few decades later: Go batshit crazy with stories where characters were being killed off left and right and that universe was plunged into utter chaos. There were a few one-shots and one last mini-series that wrapped things up until Mark revisited that universe in the pages of Quasar.

In issue #31, Quasar finds himself trapped in the New Universe and has to use the power of the Star Brand to return home. This one incident will chart the course of the rest of Quasar until the end of its run and by that point, you’re about sick of hearing about the Star Brand.

See, back in those days, the New Universe was not considered part of the Marvel multiverse, but part of its own multiverse that made up the greater omniverse of Marvel fiction. Basically every universe that had no apparent connections to the Marvel Universe and its derivative multiversal counterparts existed here such as the Shadowline universe, Cliver Barker’s Razorline, Strikeforce: Morituri, the Ultraverse and so on.

At any rate, the New Universe was always kind of a failure, despite its cult status. After an unsuccessful attempt to revive and then reboot that universe, Marvel decided that rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, they would just take concepts from the New Universe that worked (so basically the Star Brand and Nightmask) and insert those concepts into the Prime Marvel Universe, starting in 2015. 

Before all that, at least in Gruenwald’s Quasar series, Star Brand was considered a foreign power from beyond the known multiverse that was a contaminant that needed to be contained. Later introductions into the Marvel Universe proper would create some narrative problems (that I touch on in the index of this series) but not anything that I think couldn’t be explained away, but I digress….

Gruenwald’s narrative would be interrupted by another crossover from issues #32 through 35. This time, it was Operation: Galactus Storm, a 17 part space epic that crossed over into every Avengers title being published at the time. It featured Earth’s Mightiest Heroes getting caught in the middle of a galactic war between the Shi’ar and the Kree. It was the first of 10+ part story epics that would crossover through an entire family of books. It’s success would branch off and be done in with the X-Men (notably the X-Cutioner Song storyline) and later beat to death in the Spider-Man books with Maximum Carnage and then again to an egregious degree from the Clone Saga and well into the late 90s. I’ll get into it in more detail in later primers, but O:GS is actually an interesting story arc but Quasar’s involvement is rather minimal.

Right after Operation: Galactic Storm, the book is then plunged into the Infinity War event which had its own limited series and was also being crossed over in a shit ton of the regular monthlies. While this worked with a cosmic character like Quasar, some of the choices for this one were mind boggling, but I’ll get into that some other time.

Gruenwald took this crossover to try and explain how abstract concepts like Death, Eternity, and the Living Tribunal could appear in physical forms. It involves fractals creating temporary bodies or some such thing. It’s not really clearly explained because the narrative keeps on jumping between Quasar being forced to participate in the Infinity War and a subplot about Kayla Ballentine being abducted by aliens. It ends with Quasar killing himself (AGAIN!) by activating the Ultimate Nullifier.

This arc also marks the end of Greg Capullo’s run on Quasar and from here I feel that the replacement artists on this book are a case of diminishing returns. I figure that Mark had to accept whatever artists were available in order to keep the book a float. I’m not a big expert on artists from this era and I could probably do a little better research, but it I don’t really care because it feels like these were all new artists who were trying to cut their teeth and given a low stakes book and it shows. 

I think that after the Infinity War crossover, Quasar as a title was really losing its steam. Gruenwald’s story choices were getting less cohesive and lacking in characterization. Plots dragged on much longer than they needed to. Particularly the whole Kayla-gets-abducted plotline where we find out that she was accidentally given the Star Brand. For 30 issues we sit through her getting captured by one alien race only to escape and get pursued by some other alien race. So many characters are getting crammed into the book as Mark jumps from one idea to another and never really fleshes them out. It just seems like a desperate attempt to cram as much stuff as possible. I’m wondering if this was due to pressure to keep the series viable as the comic bubble burst or if Mark’s failing health later in life had anything to do with it. Maybe both? Neither? Who can say. Records of what was going on in the creative circle of things are either sparse or buried in hard-to-find books and magazines and I don’t care to go digging around for speculation on something that happened 30 years ago.

To give you an idea of how far things had gone, Quasar #50 is the epitome of everything that was going wrong with comics at the time. First of all, it was an issue with one of those gaudy holofoil covers that were so common at that time that they had overstayed their welcome. Inside, things get a lot fucking weird. The story itself is about a Deviant named Eriskingal stealing the Star Brand from Kayla and attempting to use it to take over the multiverse. Oh yeah, Eriskingal was the second H.D. Steckley and the big reveal was such a meh moment, you wonder why such a redundant plot point was done for a second time in a row. At least when it was Moondragon there were some kind of hint as to who it was over the course of that arc. This time, there are not hints or clues, just some obscure Deviant that appeared in an issue or two beforehand. This isn’t even the weird part.

The weird part is when Eriskingal attempts to take over the multiverse. To do this, she goes into the Nexus of All Realities in the Man-Thing’s swamp and summons the Congress of the Multiverse. These guys are a group of “Nexus Beings” from across multiple realities. Here, Eriskingal makes an impassioned speech to the other Nexus beings that they need to go independent and break away from the status quo, free themselves from their oppressive overlords, and do their own thing. The Living Tribunal then shows up and tells them no, they have to maintain the cosmic order otherwise the entire multiverse could be at the brink of destruction.

If this doesn’t make any sense to you, you have to understand what was going on in the comic book industry at the time. A few years before this story was when popular artists like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld jumped ship to start Image Comics. The reason was because they felt that the weren’t getting the proper pay and recognition when their artwork had exploded in popularity. Not an unreasonable complaint since Marvel was notorious for underpaying artists and retaining all intellectual property rights to boot. So they started their own company and as you can see, 30 years later, Image Comics is still going and those artists are still juggernauts in the industry. 

After his jump to Image, McFarlane started his wildly popular series Spawn and in issue #10 of that comic he did a story that was a commentary on creator rights and how the big comic book companies kept their characters shackled and stifled creativity, yadda, yadda, yadda. It featured a really-on-the-nose two page spread of Spawn standing in front of a jail cell where the hands of various characters owned by Marvel and DC were reaching out begging to be let free. It was pretty iconic.

What does this have to do with issue #50 of Quasar? Well, when Eriskingal summons beings from the multiverse one panel shows a hand that looks a lot like that of Spawn reaching out in a similar fashion as McFarlane did in his iconic scene from Spawn #10.

It almost seems like Gruenwald was trying to write his own commentary about independent comics versus the big two publishers. However, things kind of go off the rails. The Living Tribunal and Eriskingal agree to have Quasar and the Silver Surfer fight it out to determine which side will win this battle of ideals. Your standard “cosmic entity chooses avatars to fight in their place”. However in this case, the Tribunal decides not to tell the two combatants which side they are fighting for so neither one of them will throw the fight. However, Quasar eventually deduces that he is fighting for Eriskingal and throws the fight and gets the shit beat out of him as a result. The Living Tribunal wins and takes the Star Brand away and everything seems to be fine, but more on that in a second.

I am not really sure what Gruenwald is trying to say here. Was he for independent comics or was he a company man? From what I read about Mark was that he was incredibly loyal, at least to the books that he was writing. So perhaps this story is telling how Mark’s hands were kind of tied at the time. He was a company man for Marvel for 30 years at that point. I think he liked the idea of going independent but his loyalty to the company prevented him from doing so. That Quasar quickly realizes that he’s fighting against the status quo and allows himself to get beaten is maybe Gruenwald’s commentary on his own situation. Because of his loyalty to the company he would throw a fight to make sure it won, even if it left him battered and bloody afterwards. Which is kind of depressing when you look at it that way. Perhaps I’m interpreting it wrong. I’d really like to know what his thought process was when writing that story, but unfortunately not a lot of people have done a whole hell of a lot of research into Quasar comics.

From here, there is not much else that can be said about Quasar as a series. It starts fizzling out as stories drag on longer than they should. Gruenwald also tries his hand at his own crossover epic, Starblast which took place in its own limited series as well as the pages of Quasar, Fantastic Four, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and Secret Defenders. These are all wildly different choices and despite their inclusion in the event the Fantastic Four and Namor issues don’t really play much of a role in the greater story.

In Starblast, a villain named Skeletron, who is a robot skeleton, is seeking out the Star Brand and kidnaps Kayla yet again. Quasar then assembles a team that includes pretty much every unused character at the time from Avengers, to Eternals, and the Inhumans and tries to cram them into a space epic that doesn’t really go very far. There are just so many characters that not a lot of character development is going on and the art by this point is so bland I could care less what’s happening.

With the book facing cancellation, Gruenwald was at least given a few issues to tie up loose ends. Quasar as a series ends with issue #60 and our titular hero heads off into space to be a better protector of the universe, something he kept saying he should do for 60 issues and never really accomplished.

Quasar was an interesting series because it was clearly a vanity project for Mark Gruenwald. Given his position at Marvel and the climate at the time, he was able to talk himself into doing a book where he was pretty much able to do whatever he wanted, revisit characters he previously worked on, and pretty much do his own thing. However, also because of the same climate at the time, he frequently had to waylay what he wanted to do for gimmicky crossovers resulting in stories suffering from diminishing returns.

Quasar started off strong and presented some interesting ideas, but it begins to run out of ideas 30 issues in and begins repeating itself over and over. I think it really suffers from the fact that Gruenwald doesn’t take much time to flesh out a supporting cast. Characters are undeveloped and while some things go at a breakneck speed, other moments seem to drag on forever. 

The later 30 issues of Quasar feel almost like the work of Jack Kirby of the 1970s. The burned out, embittered, and under appreciated Jack Kirby who was offered carte blanche only to get railroaded by editorial mandates until he couldn’t give a fuck. 

Not sure if this is what happened with Mark Gruenwald, but those later Quasar stories certainly have that feel to them.

The series strong suit was continuity, which was Gruenwald’s wheelhouse but it fell flat in that human interest that an ongoing title really needs to keep afloat. Quasar’s life outside of being “defender of the universe” was woefully underdeveloped to the point where it seemed like an afterthought. Even Quasar’s main job also seemed to be a sideline to whatever it was Gruenwald wanted to do. I think if the series could have stuck to exploring and explaining the nuances of the Marvel Universe it probably would have been a much more interesting series.

It was an interesting concept, at least to start, but it came out during a period where the editorial mandates were more focused on a speculative market and that really hurt the book overall.

For me, reading and writing about it over the course of a month I can say that Quasar started off strong and exciting but by the end of things it was a punishing slog. I wouldn’t recommend reading past issue #31 unless you are really invested in seeing how it plays out.