Weird Bequest - Mark Gruenwald

When Mark Gruenwald, of Marvel Comics fame, died in 1996, he left instructions in his will for his heirs blend the ashes of his body with ink and use the mixture within the pages of a comic book. According to an Associated Press story, 4,000 copies of Gruenwald’s ‘ink-and-ashes’ edition was distributed in 1997.

Hired initially as an assistant editor in January 1978, Gruenwald was promoted to full editorship by Jim Shooter in January 1980. In the late 1980s he became executive editor, with a particular remit as the keeper of Marvel continuity. Most fans, as well as Gruenwald’s colleagues at Marvel, believe that had there not been a restructuring of the entire company by the owners in the early 1990s, he would have become editor-in-chief.

As a writer, Gruenwald is best-known for a ten-year long stint as the writer of Captain America (from 1985 to 1995), and for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Although it suffered from low sales, his sixty-issue run on Quasar (1989-1994) realized Gruenwald’s ambition to write his own kind of superhero. However, his magnum opus is widely regarded to be his mid-1980s 12-issue miniseries Squadron Supreme, which told the story of an alternate universe where a group of well-intentioned superheroes decide that they would be best suited to run the planet. His work is notable for the realistic touch he brought to his characters. For example, in the D.P.7 series he created for Marvel’s New Universe, the main characters were all regular people who gained odd abilities, and never put on a single costume.

In 1996, Gruenwald succumbed to a heart attack, the result of an unsuspected congenital heart defect. Per his request, he was cremated, and his ashes were mixed with the ink used to print the first trade paperback compilation of Squadron Supreme.