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So a long time ago (the mid-1990s), the greatest writer in comics agreed to take over the writing duties for Image Comics' Supreme. He would radically reshape the character, the book, and due to forces beyond his control, a whole comic book universe. And it led to an award-winning run of comics, three additional titles (among several proposed) and ultimately led to the genesis of Moore's much better known America's Best Comics. And then it all went out of print and was forgotten by way too many.

Having gathered quite a bit of information about Moore's Supreme and Awesome runs, I decided to create a home for the forgotten Awesome. Over the course of a year, I put it all together here.

Each week I did a main "Weekly Reading" post that was a read-through of that issue. I followed that up with a couple of other posts about topics from that Weekly Reading or whatever else I came up with to talk about. You'll find the lost Youngbloods in the Youngblood section and the fan-edit of the last Supreme in After Awesome.

Below is the archive of posts broken up by book. Thanks for checking the site out!

Book 1: Supreme: The Story of the Year

Book 1: Judgment Day

Book 3: Supreme: The Return

Book 4: Youngblood

Book 5: Glory

Book 6: After Awesome

Book 7: 1963

Book 8: Night Raven

Book 9: A Small Killing

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

The psychedelic existentialism of Jim Starlin

During the 1970s there was a run of wonderful existential-inspired cosmic stories, and few did them better than Jim Starlin. While I missed out on his Warlock days, I was a big fan of Dreadstar and the nihilistic anti-organized religion story he had to tell. But it's impossible to tell the story of comics without touching on his run on Warlock.

Starlin took a secondary superhero who had adventures like this:


And turned him into a cosmic hero battling an evil future self and grappling with the ramifications like this:

 

To stop himself from becoming the villain he hates, he confronts a future self and convinces himself to kill himself.


To the modern reader, it's overwritten and overwrought, but it was new and different and spoke to the times in a way that comics hadn't yet. This would all grow into the Thanos/Infinity War stories that swallowed the Marvel Universe and is now swallowing the Marvel movies. If you want more on the weird Warlock story and Starlin's writing, check out this great blog.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to show off some of Starlin's incredible artwork that obviously helped inspire Rick Veitch for the flashback in Supreme #49. Enjoy!


 



As we've seen, some of the great artists of yesteryear turn up to work on Supreme, and Starlin is no exception. He'll do the art of an entire issue later in Moore's Supreme run.

3 comments:

  1. I want to get hold of Supreme The New Adventures #46 & #48. Its not entirely clear which volume they are included in. Its not vol 1 The Story of the Year, as i have that here and its stops at #46. Any help appreciated

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    1. sorry, i meant that i want to get hold of issues #47 & #48

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    2. Your Story of the Year volume doesn't have issues 41-52 a & b? That's interesting. Is it one of those European ones where they broke Story of the Year in two parts?

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