[Typo3] Creative menus

[Miles Scruggs]

I'm trying to build some dynamic elements of a site, and I need a little 
help.

For example, say I have a section in my site called news, and under it 
were categories, under which are articles.  Now how could do things like:

1.)  Include the last 3 article's on the main page page titles as link, 
from category 4 (also how do I reference category 4)

2.)  Have an archive page which would list every leaf article grouped by 
categories.  Each page title, would be a link to that page.  Also I 
would like to include the Subtitle as text, for additional information. 
(I have built this, with the exception of the subtitle using HMENU, and 
TMENU, but I don't know how to include the subtitle, and format it)

The example of news is just used for reference since it is probably the 
most understood, please don't suggest a news handling plugin, since it 
will not work for the type of content that I need to handle.  I need to 
know how to do this natively with typo3 or a couple low level plugins 
that enable me to manipulate specific things.

Thanks

Miles Scruggs