Squadron Supreme #10
Squadron Supreme #10 is the narrative hinge of Mark Gruenwald's landmark 12-issue maxiseries — the issue where Nighthawk's covert counter-team, the Redeemers, formally launches its infiltration of the Squadron by planting double agents Redstone and Moonglow inside the team's own ranks. It also delivers two significant in-story deaths — Dr. Decibel drowns in Quagmire's uncontrolled Darkforce flood, and Quagmire himself is apparently lost to that extradimensional dimension when Hyperion is forced to disconnect his life support — raising the series' already unusually high body count and underscoring the irreversible human cost of the Utopia Program. The issue is part of a series widely credited as one of the earliest sustained deconstructions of the superhero genre, arriving in the same mid-1980s window as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Crisis on Infinite Earths, yet exploring its 'what if heroes ran the world?' thesis through twelve consecutive issues of Earth-712 continuity rather than a single elseworlds event. Its sustained engagement with questions of behavior modification, civil liberties, and the corruption of even well-intentioned authority influenced later works that revisited those same themes.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The issue was written by Mark Gruenwald with pencils by Paul Ryan, inks by Sam De La Rosa, colors by Christie Scheele, and lettering by Janice Chiang, and carries a June 1986 cover date — placing it in the penultimate stretch of the twelve-issue run that Gruenwald himself considered his magnum opus. Ralph Macchio served as the series' original editor under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. Gruenwald, a lifelong Justice League fan who could not write DC's characters because of his exclusive Marvel employment, used the pre-existing Squadron Supreme — originally created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema in Avengers #85–86 (1971) as Justice League pastiches — as his vehicle to explore the ethics of power and governance. The entire series, including this issue, was later collected in a 1997 trade paperback whose first printing famously contained Gruenwald's own cremated ashes mixed into the ink, per a request he made in his will — an act his widow confirmed in the volume's introduction.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: June 1986 (on-sale February 1986); written by Mark Gruenwald, penciled by Paul Ryan, inked by Sam De La Rosa, colored by Christie Scheele, lettered by Janice Chiang; edited by Ralph Macchio under editor-in-chief Jim Shooter.
- Story title: 'Caught in the Quagmire' (also referenced as 'The Dark From Within' on some listings); 24 pages.
- First full appearance of Nighthawk's covert resistance group the Redeemers as an assembled, named team actively plotting to overthrow the Squadron — Redstone (Michael Redstone) and Moonglow (Melissa Hanover) walk into a Squadron civil-service recruitment drive as plants, becoming the team's first successful double agents.
- Deaths of Dr. Decibel (Anton Decibel), who drowns when Quagmire's comatose mind opens uncontrolled apertures to the Darkforce Dimension flooding the hospital, and the apparent death of Quagmire himself — Hyperion disconnects his life support to stop the flood, and Quagmire's body vanishes into the Darkforce (later revealed to have been transported to Earth-616).
- The issue introduces and publicly debuts Tom Thumb's Hibernaculum — a cryo-stasis capsule designed to preserve the terminally ill until a cure is found — with Tom Thumb himself (who died in issue #9) becoming its first occupant; Power Princess announces the technology on nationwide television.
- Blue Eagle's suggestion that the two new applicants Redstone and Moonglow be pre-emptively behavior-modified before induction is voted down by the Squadron — a moment that illustrates the team's own fracturing ethical limits and sets up their eventual downfall from within.
- The full Redeemers roster as assembled in this issue comprises Nighthawk, Mink, Pinball, Remnant, Redstone, Moonglow, Inertia, Haywire, Black Archer, and Thermite — all of whom will play roles in the climactic battle of issue #12.
- The entire 12-issue run, including this issue, has been collected in multiple editions: a 2005 trade paperback (ISBN 0-7851-0576-X) collecting issues #1–12 and Captain America #314, a 2010 Omnibus (ISBN 0-7851-4971-6) that also includes Death of a Universe, and a 2016 Squadron Supreme Classic Omnibus — the 1997 first printing of the original TPB is particularly notable for containing Gruenwald's cremated ashes in the ink.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Spidey #96 (1988), Squadron Supreme #[nn] (1997), Squadron Supreme by Mark Gruenwald Omnibus #[nn] (2010), Squadron Supreme Classic Omnibus #[nn] (2016)
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