Welcome

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

Monday, April 26, 2021

The "fixed" Checker trade paperback

Hey everyone. It's been some time since I posted. I'll still post whenever I have anything to talk about, but there's not much new to say. Currently, I've started a Facebook group and we're working to annotate the later issues of Supreme. If you'd like to help, let me know and I'll send you an invite to the group.

Anyway, let's talk Checker today. 

After Awesome published Supreme: The Return #6 and it was clear there weren't going to be any more issues coming out, Liefeld sold the reprint rights to a group called Checker, which handled old newspaper reprints. I talked about it at length, here.

The reprints were terrible, especially for Story of the Year. They scanned actual comics and did very little cleanup. As Chris Sprouse said, you could see the words from the other side of the page in their scans.

Checker apologized and said they would fix the problems when they published The Return TPB and ran off a new version of Story of the Year. 

I never followed up to compare the two until a friend explained how to spot the differences. Here are some ways to spot the differences:

 

On the left is the original 2002 reprint and on the right is the fixed 2003 version. 

 

The spine is the easiest way to tell the difference. The old Checker logo is on the left and the newer one is on the right. 

Notice that Checker had decided to highlight Chris Sprouse over  Joe Bennett from the old one to the new one, despite Bennett doing a lot more work on the stories in this book. In between the two, Tom Strong had become a hit and Checker wanted to emphasize that the Moore and Sprouse team had started on Supreme.
 

 
The back has a few other clues about which is which. Left is the older one and the newer one is at right.
 
 
On the older one, Checker had Swamp Thing coming out from Marvel. 
 
 
They fixed Swamp Thing for the newer one.

 
Joe Bennett got a bio on the back of the old one.

 
Bennett was replaced by Sprouse on the new one.

 
The older one was printed in Korea.

 
The newer one was printed in China.
 
 
It might be hard to tell from these images but the art is lighter and has more scanning fragments in the older ones (left). The blacks are deeper and the colors brighter in the newer one (right).

 
Older version with more fragments.

 
Newer version that is darker and cleaner.

 
Old at left. New at right.

 
You can see the words coming through the old one.

 
You can still see the words in the new one, but it is cleaner and less obvious. It might also be the thin paper.

 
The ending is a little different. The old one has an ad for a Clive Barker book.

 
The new one has an ad for Checker's Supreme: The Return trade.
 
Frankly, you're better off getting the floppies, as they're still the best version of Supreme out there. But if you're going to get a trade of Story of the Year, look for the newer one.

 








3 comments:

  1. As that very friend, I am pleased a blog or Reddit guy showed the logo and I could pass on the insight.

    It was a very surprising difference (an improvement) in page quality and color;  over time I wondered about the 'white leather' hardbound books Checker did - I found and got each of two and the hardback ones seem to have GOOD printing and color inside.

    -
    Steve

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I remember thinking the HCs were actually decent. I know I liked them before I started making my own books.

      I really appreciate you sharing this, as this is a cool little thing that would never get recorded if it didn't get recorded here.

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    2. (Speaking eight or nine months on)-
      You are welcome, and THANK YOU and Moore followers who are fond of the works on these blogs and finding worthy interviews and Alan Moore ephemeral items.

      We are aging each year and now as Moore is older we may have prose collections he will create and that is a marvelous thing to wait for ...

      AjenoDelgado
      -
      SWB

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