Comic Books

‘Captain America Epic Collection: Arena of Death’ shows Mark Gruenwald play with his toys, but doesn’t go anywhere

It does, however, allow the reader to experience, full-force, the childlike joy of an unserious Marvel Universe.

March 16, 2022

Mark Gruenwald had a reputation of being a sort of walking, talking Marvel Encyclopedia. His work was jam-packed with the minuscule details of the Universe that even the most seasoned fans might have glossed over, not to mention a running roster of characters in his head.

His run on Captain America ran for one-hundred and thirty-six issues, a full decade between 1985 and 1995. It’s likely that his run on the character did a multitude of things, from influencing the modern understanding of Steve Rogers to carrying some of the Bronze Age of comics into the Modern Age (which, in the mid-’90s, was deeply frowned upon). He established friendships and relationships and developed them. Demolition Man, Diamondback, U.S. Agent. Creating villains like the Armadillo, Flag-Smasher, the (*tugs collar*) Femizons, and Crossbones, Gruenwald continued to bring interesting new foils, not just to Cap but to the Universe he so carefully loved and cataloged.

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But, reading parts of his run like the books collected in Captain America Epic Collection: Arena of Death, you get the sense that, mostly, Mark wanted to play with all those toys.

In the span of the eleven issues of Cap that make up the center of this collection, the number of characters is staggering. Discounting the utterly baffling inclusion of Annual #11 (we’ll discuss that later), the Gruenwald portion of the book begins with issue #411, in which Cap, Diamondback, and Falcon go undercover to an arms convention on AIM island. The island is, of course, swarming with every single supervillain Gruenwald could think of—or that artist Rik Levins could care to draw (or even, likely, wish he didn’t have to). For two issues, villain after B- and C-list villain is thrown at Cap, whether it makes sense or not.

It’s delightful.

The rest of the issues don’t let up, either, with Shang-Chi, Black Panther, Ka-Zar, Savage Land mutates, Silver Sable, and, yes, goddamn Terminus (I can’t get rid of him) casually tossed into the mix. The effect, sadly, is one of meaningless motion, moving from one gimmick or guest star to another without resolving any of the loose ends. At one point, they just leave T’Challa, shirtless, in the Savage Land. . . and then Diamondback, comatose, in Wakanda. These things are not addressed again within the collection.

This feeling of aimless flow and lack of conclusion is only compounded by the inclusion of the other three portions of the book. That annual crossover, Citizen Kang, sets up a time-traveling story that continues through Thor, Fantastic Four, and Avengers, but none of those portions of the story are present. Doing some research, I’m just utterly frustrated by the Epic Collection approach to this story. Its individual parts can be found in each of those titles era-similar volumes (The Thor War, This Flame This Fury), meaning those two volumes have even less context for the story, but only appears in its entirety (within the Epic Collection) in the Avengers volume Don’t Fear the Reaper. I realize this is, perhaps, not incredibly compelling stuff, but I hate it so much.

This meandering drift of the book only sits at its center, however, as the book begins and ends with resolute, complete stories. First, the long one-shot Captain America / Ghost Rider: FEAR, a Howard Mackie-penned follow up to Ghost Rider #7, a book I highlighted in October. Gloomy, tragic, the story is compelling and emotionally (though not atmospherically) brightened from its predecessor by Cap’s inclusion. Given how I feel about that issue of Ghost Rider, the inclusion of FEAR makes the book worth the price of admission for me.

The conclusion to the volume is Gruenwald’s USAgent miniseries from 1993, not quite in time to be useful synergistic marketing for The Falcon and Winter Soldier, but, honestly, the only place in the Epic Collection where the mini could be shoe-horned in.

There are so many things to say about the US Agent miniseries alone. Whether it be the Agent thinking he should use a code phrase so people can identify him. . . despite being in full costume, or whether it’s the fact that, when Hawkeye left a sex doll on his bed as a prank, the Agent decided the only thing to do was deflate the thing and carry it around in case of emergency.

That story focuses on the Scourge of the Underworld, and features—in classic Gruenwald style—an oft-forgotten Captain America side character he had abandoned some four years earlier. The story doesn’t do much in terms of deepening our ever-unlikable protagonist, but it does provide interesting information about the underground system putting more and more murdering Scourges into the world.

Meandering but playful, Captain America Epic Collection presents a deeply knowledgeable creator enjoying himself at the expense of narrative cohesion, but it’s the sort of book that allows the reader to experience, full-force, the childlike joy of an unserious Marvel Universe. It allows for a celebration of the types of comics being extinguished at the time by the gritty, self-serious 1990s.