The second season of Loki has finally premiered on Disney Plus. The God of Mischief’s series has returned in style after the major cliffhanger from the first season, and it has done so with a new grand adventure to unravel, but with the familiar characters at the forefront: Tom Hiddleston’s own Loki and Owen Wilson’s Mobius.
This particular character is someone we already saw in the first season and it seems that it will be explored much further in the new episodes of the Marvel Studios series. However, what many don’t know is that the Temporal Variance Authority official is entirely inspired by Mark Gruenwald, a legendary editor and writer at Marvel for decades.
Who is Mark Gruenwald?
Mark Gruenwald was known in Marvel for his great sense of humor, as well as his amusing resemblance to Bill Murray. The author entered the world of comics through his fanzine Omniverse, where he meticulously analyzed continuity in the fictional superhero worlds. This work impressed Jim Shooter, the editor at Marvel at the time, who offered him jobs in the company’s titles and eventually promoted him from assistant to editor of The Avengers comics. Gruenwald contributed to the development of various series, including Spider-Woman and The Mighty Thor, and co-wrote Contest of Champions, the publisher’s first limited series and a precursor to Marvel crossovers.
However, his most prominent legacy includes his ten years at the helm of Captain America and his masterpiece, Squadron Supreme, often compared to Watchmen in terms of quality. He is also known for his work on The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, a massive encyclopedia he coordinated that contained vast information about the Marvel universe.
Gruenwald’s influence on Marvel’s continuity, something he took very seriously for years, earned him the nickname “the great guardian of continuity.” In an ironic twist, Walt Simonson created the Time Variance Authority, where Mobius M. Mobius, a character eerily similar to Gruenwald, made his debut in The Fantastic Four. Eventually, Marvel acknowledged the resemblance in an editor’s note.
Mark Gruenwald passed away in 1996, but his legacy endures. Part of his ashes were mixed with the ink used to reprint Squadron Supreme, his most successful work. Another portion of his ashes were scattered on the Captain America statue in Brooklyn in 2016. His contribution to the world of comics continues to be remembered and honored.
