Diamondback's Bad Year (Mark Gruenwald Year Seven and Eight)

In Captain America 405 a parent wrote to complain about the Diamondback backup story in issue 399 (from which the above scene was taken). She cancelled the subscription to Captain America that she'd bought for her eight year old, because she thought this story was inappropriately violent and graphic (and perhaps even titillating). Credit the parent, for screening the material before giving it to her kid to read.

I'm surprisingly sympathetic. Sure, I wouldn't want all Marvel comics to be limited to what's appropriate for eight year olds. On the other hand, these days there's a lot of stories in comics with sadistic "Natural Born Killer" types brutally abusing good people with glee. It's not why I got into comics, to be honest. I don't like reading it. And I definitely don't like reading it as often as it shows up in comics nowadays.

So far, 1992 has been a very bad year for Diamondback. After being drowned by an old enemy, she lost her nerve and has opted out of the adventurer's lifestyle, choosing to become Captain America's secretary instead. But the Red Skull's old operative Crossbones has kidnapped her, and she's spent over a month trapped in a hole, while Crossbones works on brainwashing her to use as a potential tool against Cap. Now, Mark Gruenwald created Diamondback, and he's free to do with her what he pleases. I know that eventually she'll triumph and be the stronger for it (and Marvel even promised as much in their letter's page). But I can't say it's my idea of fun reading.

Mark Gruenwald Year Six (Captain America 372-386)

Wait, Bernie's graduated from law school already? Geez, I guess comic book time goes much faster when you're no longer in the comic. Lucky for her the Captain America/Diamondback relationship has been progressing very, very slowly.

Diamondback in Love (Mark Gruenwald Year Five, Cap 355-371)

Seeing as Mark Gruenwald felt that Captain America didn't need a civilian life (he promptly ended Cap's relationship with Bernie Rosenthal), it seemed the only real romantic prospects left for Cap during this era were in the adventurer community. Hence Cap's improbable relationship with Diamondback, one of the villainous Serpent Squad.

Mark Gruenwald had an obvious interest in workplace dynamics, and one of the first things he did was introduce a new Serpent Squad, featuring villains who were just out to make a buck and get health insurance, via gigs for hire. It didn't really catch fire, but Gruenwald followed up on it by showing more of the logistics behind Cap's leadership of the Avengers, and the Red Skull's ongoing relationships with his newly enlarged group of cronies. Only the Red Skull's crew reached the level of passably interesting so far.

Ignoring the fact that simply being a member of the Serpent Society arguably makes Diamondback an accessory to murder, Gruenwald seemed to have positioned Diamondback as a possibly love interest from the start, introducing her as a relatively benign mercenary who began crushing on Cap almost from the start. It's a little hard to buy that a goody-goody like Gruenwald's Cap would ever show much interest in such a character, but readers were, I think, willing to suspend disbelief so that we could see Cap doing something in his off-hours besides attended meetings with architects regarding the new Avengers headquarters.

The big problem is that Diamondback is a pretty one-dimensional character, even by Gruenwald standards. (Character creation definitely wasn't Gruenwald's forté.) I really don't have a thing to say about her.

For all that, I'm generally enjoying reading Gruenwald's run at this point. He didn't push the medium forward any, but Gruenwald's lack of pretensions and love of classic superhero serial storytelling make his run a pretty easy read.