Recreating Chris Sprouse's Supreme #50 cover... but with more characters

Thinking about Alan Moore's Supreme run, there are very few great covers. Perhaps the best was Chris Sprouse's special cover for issue #50:

 

 

Looking at it, it's got a lot of characters and highlights the breadth of the world Moore is creating. But #50 was early on in Sprouse's own run on Supreme. Looking closer, Supreme's face doesn't quite look right... maybe too rounded?

Also, some of the character choices are... interesting. I love the Glory, Die Hard side, with the Televillain and Vor-Em, Judy and HILDA, Billy Friday and Lucas Tate. On the other side, Professor Night is great, but does Roman really play any sort of role in the series? Diana is nice, but that Korgo is terrible. Shadow Supreme isn't shadowed. Fortunately, a really nice Suprema and Radar round it out.

 

Here's a better look at the line art for the cover:

 

 

This art is in the hands of a private collector and congratulations to them on their great piece of art! But I have a friend who does recreations and I mentioned that I wanted a recreation of this cover, but not an exact one. I wanted a cover like this that Sprouse would have done at the end of his run, after he was more familiar with the series and characters. 

My friend took up the challenge as long as I found all the reference images of the characters as Sprouse had drawn them and assembled them in a balanced design. I did so and he made this for me, complete with fake paste ups of the Supreme and Awesome logos:

We used the same Supreme body from the cover of #50 but used a head from later in Sprouse's run. The head is squarer and has the tufts of hair up front, which I think looks more in line.

We took out Roman and added Twilight from Sprouse's variant cover to Youngblood #1. Twilight felt necessary to combine with Professor Night and she appeared in Supreme #56 in her modern costume.

Over Supreme's shoulder, we kept Diana, but moved Billy and Lucas and added Carl and the issues of Omniman to make that whole corner feel themed around Dazzle Comics. Over them are MAGNO, from Sprouse's cover for #52b and Optilux from Return #1. As long as Diana was going to appear on the cover, I thought we needed to include young Judy nearby to play off their rivalry, so she appears from #54. Below them are Shadow Supreme, now shadowed, and we added Slaver Ant from Return #1.

Suprema and Radar keep their spot, but since we moved the Omniman comics, we added the League of Infinity below, with Future Girl here and Achilles here from Sprouse's League pin up from the gallery in #50.

On the bottom left, we included the other original members of the League with Witch Wench, Wild Bill and Giganthro. Above them is a better Krogo, from Return #1.

We combined Korgo with Vor-Em and the Tellevillain, below old Judy and Hilda and Darius Dax from Sprouse's cover for #52a (one of the only times he drew Dax). This creates a nice villain sections.

Above the villains we kept Glory and Die Hard. We included Dax's hand, reaching toward Supreme because it felt menacing.

And it wouldn't be complete without Szazs, appearing in Supreme #53.

Sprouse only worked on about 6 issues of Supreme, and many of those issues weren't completely done by him, sharing chores with Rick Veitch and others. But even in so few issues, he managed to portray so many of the quintessential characters from the series that we were able to put this recreation together. There's a few more characters I wish we could have added, but Sprouse never worked on Squeak or 60s Supreme. But I think this came out great and I have it hanging over my desk so I can enjoy it everyday.