Squadron Supreme #4

Name: Squadron Supreme #4
Brand: Marvel
Availability: InStock

Dec 1985 · Marvel · 0.75 USD; 0.50 GBP; 1.00 CAD

📊 ~48,037 copies sold its debut month

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“Change of Heart”

★ 1st appearance — Quagmire

About this Issue

Squadron Supreme #4 — titled 'Change of Heart' and cover-dated December 1985 — is the pivot on which the entire series' moral argument turns: it is the issue in which Tom Thumb formally introduces the Behavior Modification Device to the team, and in which the Golden Archer (Wyatt McDonald / Stanley Stewart) immediately weaponizes that same technology against Lady Lark (Linda Lewis) to override her romantic rejection of him, committing the very crime against free will that Amphibian had just warned the team about. The devastating irony — that a superhero team's own instrument of utopian reform becomes the tool of a teammate's coercion — crystallizes Gruenwald's central thesis about power corrupting even the well-intentioned. Published just weeks before Batman: The Dark Knight Returns reached stands and months before Watchmen began, the 1985 Squadron Supreme series as a whole is widely credited as one of the earliest sustained deconstructions of the superhero genre; issue #4 is the chapter where the series' darkest theme — institutional hypocrisy — is most viscerally dramatized at the personal level.

writer Mark Gruenwald · artist Bob Hall · inker Sam de la Rosa · colorist Mark Philips · letterer Janice Chiang · cover Bob Hall, Bob Layton

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Marvel Comics Squadron Supreme Lady Lark #4 December 1985 $14

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History

Mark Gruenwald, then simultaneously serving as a Marvel editor and the writer of Captain America, conceived the twelve-issue Squadron Supreme maxiseries as his magnum opus — the project he considered the fullest expression of his ideas about superhero ethics. Gruenwald had been a lifelong Justice League fan who, unable to write DC's characters, channeled that passion into Marvel's Earth-712 JLA analogues, giving them their first self-contained starring vehicle. Issue #4 was written by Gruenwald, pencilled by Bob Hall (who handled the bulk of the early issues alongside Paul Ryan), inked by Sam de la Rosa, lettered by Janice Chiang, colored by Mark Philips, and edited by Ralph Macchio, with a cover by Hall and Bob Layton. After Gruenwald's death in 1996, his ashes were mixed into the ink of the first printing of the Squadron Supreme trade paperback — a request he had made known to friends and family — giving the series a deeply personal posthumous dimension.

Trivia · 8 facts

Story title: 'Change of Heart'; cover date: December 1985; release date: August 27, 1985; issue #4 of a 12-issue maxiseries (Marvel, Earth-712 / Squadron Supreme Vol. 1).
Creative team: Written by Mark Gruenwald; pencils by Bob Hall; inks by Sam de la Rosa; letters by Janice Chiang; colors by Mark Philips; edited by Ralph Macchio; cover by Bob Hall and Bob Layton.
First in-series introduction of Tom Thumb's Behavior Modification Device — the brain-reprogramming machine central to the Utopia Program's criminal-rehabilitation effort and to the entire series' ethical debate.
Golden Archer (Wyatt McDonald / Stanley Stewart) secretly uses the Behavior Modification Device on Lady Lark (Linda Lewis) after she refuses his marriage proposal, causing her to become irrationally devoted to him — the act that will ultimately lead to his expulsion from the Squadron (resolved in issues #5–6).
Issue contains the secret-origin backstory of Doctor Spectrum (Joe Ledger / Jerome Myers), fleshing out how he bonded with the Power Prism — a key character-history moment for one of the series' central figures.
Amphibian (Thomas Thompson / Sk'ym'x / Skymax) and Arcanna (Arcanna Jones) are the only two members who abstain when the team votes to adopt the Behavior Modification Device, establishing them as the series' consistent moral dissenters alongside Nighthawk.
The full series (issues #1–12) has been collected multiple times: in a landmark trade paperback (first printing notably contained Gruenwald's cremated ashes mixed into the ink), and later in a comprehensive Marvel Omnibus edition collecting Squadron Supreme #1–12, Captain America #314, and Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe.
The 1985 Squadron Supreme maxiseries is widely regarded as a precursor to the superhero-deconstruction wave of the mid-1980s, predating Watchmen; issue #4's Behavior Modification subplot directly influenced later 'power and accountability' storytelling across both Marvel and DC.