In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just one of the five examples that I chose. Today, we look at some times that Mark Gruenwald's vast encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel Comics obscurities had its impact on Captain America stories.

Mark Gruenwald was one of the top Marvel Comics editors of the 1980s and 1990s. Besides being a swell guy, Gruenwald was well known for just how much he knew about the Marvel Universe (and the DC Universe, to boot). The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe was Gruenwald's baby. He loved the obscure aspects of the Marvel Universe. He loved it so much that during his decade-long run on Captain America from 1985-1995, he would often craft storylines that specifically revolved around his knowledge of obscure Marvel characters.

The most famous one by far is a story idea that Gruenwald had that expanded throughout the Marvel Universe. Gruenwald believed that there had been too many supervillains introduced into the Marvel Universe and that they needed to do a bit of a culling of the less-useful ones. So he introduced the idea of a new character called the Scourge, who would go from comic to comic, killing off supervillains throughout the Marvel Universe before things came to a head in Captain America #319 (by Mark Gruenwald, Paul Neary and John Beatty), where a group of villains got together to decide what to do with the problem and they were all killed at once...

After the villain Water Wizard (who only avoided the massacre by happenstance) turns Cap on to the murders, Cap ultimately defeats Scourge, only to see that Scourge taken out by ANOTHER Scourge, suggesting that it was a whole organization dedicated to wiping out supervillains.

Next, in a six-part storyline in Captain America #387-392 called "The Superia Strategem" (by Gruenwald and artists Rik Levins and Danny Bulanadi), the super villain known as Superia puts together a luxury cruise for female supervillains, including a number of super obscure characters...

In Captain America #395 (by Gruenwald, Levins and Bulanadi), with Crossbones quitting as Red Skull's chief enforcer, Mother Night goes out to hire a new right hand man for the Skull. She auditions three killers, all of whom had made minor appearances in other comic book titles of the past. There was Mangler (from the Thing), Cutthroat (from Marvel Team-Up) and Deathstroke (from Spider-Woman, which I just wrote about earlier. Okay, I will admit that that article inspired this article).

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In the storyline "Man and Wolf," Captain American and Doctor Druid investigate a city that keeps drawing werewolves to it. Cap thinks that John Jameson (who used to be Man-Wolf is there), so he investigates it (along with former Avenger Doctor Druid) because John was his pilot before he disappeared.

It turns out that it is all a plot by an obscure Cap villain, Dredmund the Druid...

and the story allowed Gruenwald to find as many wolf characters as possible (as Cap himself is turned into a wolf), including Fera from Power Man and Iron Fist, who made her first appearance in over a decade in Gruenwald's previous storyline involving the female supervillains! There were other, more notable wolf characters, as well, of course, like Wolfsbane and Wolverine...

Finally, the final story before Gruenwald's exit from Captain America (Captain America #442 by Gruenwald, Dave Hoover and Sandu Florea) resolved an at the time unresolved plot from Alpha Flight with a character named Zeitgeist killing obscure superheroes...

Weird stuff.

I could probably do a whole other one of these for Gruenwald's Quasar run, which had a lot of issues like these. I think I will!

Feel free to write me at brianc@cbr.com with suggestions for future Drawing Crazy Patterns!