Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #20

 

 

Supreme issue 20 came out in October 1994. Written, edited and lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Layouts by Marat Mychaels. Penciled by Cedric Nocon and inked by Norm Rapmund, Lary Stucker, Jonathan Sibal and Robert Lacko. Additional art by Vince Russell. Apparently Nocon was well regarded by the fans, who asked for him to stay on as the regular artist. 

We pick up the story with Kid Supreme, in his red and white costume that he got who knows where, flying to Twist's, the mafia boss, office which had been destroyed in the fight between Supreme and Overtkill. 

 

He overhears Twit mention the boat Lucky Lady, Hudson River and 7:30. Gosh, I wonder if those will become important later?

Kid Supreme wants to know about the death of Patch and Twist says that Supreme already asked him that. Which is when Kid Supreme notices the ongoing fight between Supreme and Overtkill on the streets below. 

So, this being the book it is, Kid Supreme jumps into the fight. At which point, Supreme basically yells at him to get lost. 

Ah, ever the gentleman, that Supreme. In the fray, Overtkill gets away. Supreme and Kid Supreme yell at each other a bit until Kid mentions what he overheard and Supreme flies off. 

Later that night, Twist and Overtkill turn up at Pug's boat and we learn that Pug is secretly going to blow it up to kill Twist. Meanwhile, Kid Supreme steals a tux and pretends to be working at the party on the boat. He overhears a deal going down where Twist is buying high tech weapons from Pug. Kid Supreme gets notices, chucks a guard in the water as Supreme flies up and it all quickly goes to hell. 

Supreme and Kid Supreme fight Overtkill. Pug says they're going to blow the boat, which Twist overhears and yells to everyone, causing a stampede to jump over the side. Twist and Overtkill get away while Supreme and Kid Supreme get caught in the boat explosion. But they're fine, except Kid Supreme's costume, which since he miraculously got it free between issues last time, I'm sure he can get another.

They capture Pug, who agrees to testify against Twist. If he ever gets caught. Which he won't. But the writer doesn't care, so neither should we. 

 

The issue ends with a weird two page epilogue of Glory bumping into Odin walking a dog, which turns out to be Loki. 

They're looking for Supreme because they want Thor's hammer back. Which makes sense. He's had the hammer for a lot longer than I thought he would and is he ever going to get his powers back? 

Guess we'll find out in the next 20 issues, because we are officially halfway through the pre-Moore Supremes! How we've made it through 20 pages and learned so little about Supreme and found so little that is worthwhile is a true accomplishment. That'll do, Image. That'll do. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #19

 

Supreme issue 19 came out in September 1994. Written, edited and lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Layouts by Marat Mychaels. Penciled by Cedric Nocon and inked by Norm Rapmund. Additional art by Vince Russell, Robert Lacko and Robert Hedden.

The issue opens with Supreme sleeping on a meteor, recovering from the six-part Supreme Tantrum... I mean Supreme Madness storyline. With Grizlock dead, Supreme doesn't have any ongoing storylines, so he goes to visit the grave of Louise, his Lois Lane-like love interest from the 1940s. 

Meanwhile, we see a school bus filled with kids on a field trip to Washington, DC. It turns out that one of the boys, Danny Fuller, got separated from the group and was near the explosion that killed Grizlock in issue 14 and caused Supreme to get mad, and now he has super powers.

Seriously, this is terrible writing to write an explosion in issue 14 and then it took us several issues later in an editor's comment to realize the explosion killed Grizlock and then several issues after that, in a flashback, to realize there was a kid nearby who now has powers. The old advice is "Show, don't tell." But for these guys it should be "Show, don't tell several issues later in the least interesting way possible."  

Anyway, Supreme recalls how Louise was the last person he allowed himself to feel anything for because it makes him vulnerable. So Supreme flashes back to 1947 in Chicago. 

Jesus Christ! There is very little backstory to Supreme, but the big one was he was in WWII and flew off into space before 1946 because Grizlock then killed Supreme's girlfriend and friends.

Sigh...

Anyway, a Chicago gang has Louise held hostage and tells Supreme to stay out of their business. Randomly, some waiter named Pug is serving the crime boss a drink. Supreme goes to leave but then smashes back into the office, cutting off Pug's arm while rescuing Louise. 

 

The caption then says he saved her many more times after that. How did he do that from outer space!?! Aargh! 

Retconning, Supreme then remembers his other girlfriend Glory, as a way to hype us for the upcoming Supreme: Glory Days miniseries. He then flies off, leaving the graveyard. But we see Maxine Winslow, the reporter who still wants revenge for her father dying in the Dulles Airport explosion way back in Supreme issue 3. Will we ever get the end of that storyline? Probably not.

In one of the worst scenes in this series, Supreme flies to D.C. and meets Patch, a mafia guy who surprisingly doesn't wear a patch. Patch tells him the mafia boss is Twistelli and is in New York. But it's like there's panel or dialog missing. Who knows? It wouldn't have helped anyway.

But as Supreme flies off, he says, "Hey, I think I was followed." 

The next day, the teen from the field trip happens upon Patch bleeding to death in an alley. Patch tells the kid... something, and the kid decides to solve the murder so he can prove to Youngblood that he should be allowed to join.

We cut to New York where Twitch finds out that his goon killed Patch but that Supreme is on the case. Meanwhile, another crime boss, the one-armed Pug, also finds out about Supreme. Pug is worried that it might interfere with his plan to take over Twist's operation.

But then the teen bursts in. They try to shoot him, but the bullets bounce off. He gets Pug to tell him that Twist's men killed Patch.  

 Meanwhile Twist has hired a Sicilian superpowered enforcer named Overtkill to protect him from Supreme. If you don't know Overtkill, it's a character Liefeld and Todd McFarlane designed together while Stan Lee basically made fun of them. And there's video: https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/11awow/overkill_stan_lee_mcfarlane_liefeld_design_a/

 

Anyway, Supreme shows up and fights with Overtkill for a bit until the issue ends in the middle of their fight.

What a truly stupid issue. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #18

 

Supreme issue 18 came out in August 1994. Story by Rob Liefeld. Written, edited and lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Layouts by Marat Mychaels. Penciled by Cedric Nocon and inked by Norm Rapmund. 

Supreme Madness concludes! We stick with Pitt, who when we saw him last, had ripped Thor's hammer out of Supreme's hands. Despite fighting with Supreme for 20+ pages last issue, only now does Pitt recognize Supreme from his outer space days, when he rescued Pitt's planet from certain doom. I guess it didn't make such a big impression.

So Pitt drops Thor's hammer. Supreme picks it up and sit down to hash out Supreme's feelings of loss and questioning his self worth... oh wait, no. They start fighting again. 

But Pitt won't destroy Supreme, he just wants to render him ineffective... like when he didn't have the hammer that you just gave back to him? This is dumb.

Pitt rescues some innocent bystanders before Supreme collapses into sleep, remembering the events of Supreme Madness. 

A while later, Supreme is woken up by the cops. Pitt is gone, but Simple Simon shows up on his Green Goblin-like glider and proceeds to start fighting. 

Supreme keeps trying to talk Simon out of doing something stupid, but Simon is too simple-minded. Eventually Pitt shows back up and they capture Simon. 

Supreme and Pitt hash out their differences. In typical fashion, Supreme can't even take a compliment, as Pitt thanks him for saving his homeworld and Supreme was like, "Oh, I took care of that threat just for sport." 

 

They depart agreeing to stay out of each other's way.

I guess that means Supreme's over his poorly defined madness just in time for this six-part story arc to end. All he needed was a little sleep and a bit of reflection on the friends he met along the way. In other words, he threw a toddler-style temper tantrum because he was just sweepy.

And no need for messy psychotherapy! We're all winners.

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #17

 

Supreme issue 17 came out in August 1994. Story and layouts by Rob Liefeld. Written, edited and lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Penciled by Cedric Nocon and inked by Norm Rapmund. 

Supreme Madness rolls on! The Grand Tour of the Image universe picks up with Pitt. Pitt was created by Dale Keown. He's a human/alien hybrid, created by an alien race known as the Creed, genetically engineered to serve as a killing machine. 

This doesn't have anything to do with this issue, but I saw this on Wikipedia and thought it was funny: 

The series became noted for its massive scheduling delays with a six month break between the release of Pitt #1 and Pitt #2. Keown admitted that the delays came about due in part not only from his perfectionism, but also his inexperience with the business side of comics as well as becoming sidetracked with a Pitt related musical project called The Pitt Crew consisting of Keown and 4 other musicians that had developed 10 songs comprising a 42 minute master recording. 

Oh, Image. So pretty but so, so stupid.

Anyway, Supreme has crash landed in a merry-go-round, which happens to be the exact place the Pitt was. So, of course, they start fighting. 

 

Pitt thinks Supreme is part of the aliens chasing him and Supreme doesn't need a reason to start fighting, it's his book after all.

Meanwhile, we cut to Simple Simon, randomly standing in Grizlock's old lab and thinking about killing Supreme because Grizlock failed to do so. And the art gets really weird, because it slowly zooms in on Simon's eye until we've got a half page panel of just his eye. 

 

Why? Because it's EXTREME!

Meanwhile, the fight between Supreme and Pitt continues until Pitt takes Thor's hammer! 

What will happen? Do you even care? Either way, you have to wait until next issue because they really just fought pointlessly for 20-something pages. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #16

 

Supreme issue 16 came out in July 1994. Story by Rob Liefeld. Written, edited and lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Penciled by Todd Nauck and inked by Norm Rapmund. 

Supreme Madness rolls on! The Grand Tour of the Image universe picks up with Stormwatch. If you don't remember, and why should you, Stormwatch was a superhero team run by the United Nations, overseen from a satellite by its director, the Weatherman. The team was made up of Battalion, an American telekinetic, Hellstrike, an Irish police officer who is an energy being, Winter, an ex-Russian Spetznaz officer and an energy absorber, Fuji, a young Japanese man, an energy being trapped in a containment suit, and Diva, a young Italian woman with sonic powers. It was one of Jim Lee's series, which tended to look great but had the most boring, convoluted storylines. 

While looking for Supreme in their flying ship, and recapping the last few issues, Stormwatch literally runs into Supreme, who tells them to stop following him. And that's all the opportunity anyone needs to start fighting. This is so EXTREME!

Stormwatch knocks Supreme out of the sky, but now he's much more of a risk of doing harm, so they go down after him. The fight gets even more dumb, as Winter turns to the others, asking to take on Supreme, while Supreme walks up from behind and punches him out.

 

Battalion uses his psychic powers to sense that Supreme seems to be drowning in his feelings, in his madness. And still, Supreme rages on.

 

We cut to Simon "Simple Simon" Simpkins (that is a terrible name, no wonder he became a lackey of Grizlock), who is breaking into Grizlock's secret lab under Fort Knox... good think it's not very well guarded. 

 

Back on Supreme, he flies up and starts tearing up Stormwatch's ship. The Weatherman calls them up and says that they're making the situation with Supreme worse, and tells them to depart. They will, once they chuck Supreme out of the ship. Supreme crash lands into a building with a merry-go-round, where The Pitt happens to be standing.

 

I wonder if they'll fight next?

In the letters page, there's an interesting question, "Why the heck does it say Volume II on the front cover of Supreme #1?" That's a good question. The answer, according to the letters page, "The Supreme regular series is volume II because volume I will be a series chronicling the adventures of our hero before he left Earth. The upcoming Legend of Supreme will be volume III."

That makes absolutely no sense. But it is a good reminder that I'll be breaking from the regular series reviews to cover both Legends of Supreme and Glory Days miniseries as they come up soon.

I also like that someone custom made an action figure:

 

This comic really didn't deserve the fans it had. Ah well, more madness next time.

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #15

 

 

 

Supreme issue 15 came out in July 1994. The story was by Rob Liefeld. Kurt Hathaway does the witing, lettering, and editing. And guys... Pedi is back! Oh, this is going to be fun. 

 

We are on part 3 of Supreme Madness, the Grand Tour of the Image universe and we're hitting the big stop today... Spawn! I shouldn't even have to explain this, but I will, Spawn was a former black ops military guy (all of the Image "heroes" were) who got killed and made a deal with the devil to return to life as Spawn. But he only had a certain amount of magic before the devil reclaimed him. (Or something like that.) He lived in an alley with a bunch of homeless drunks. 

We start the issue in the alley where Spawn is doing some drinking, when in wanders Supreme and snuffs the fire for Thor's hammer. 

Spawn goes to confront Supreme and finds Supreme distraught that the name Supreme doesn't mean much to people, like it did in the 1940s. 

I guess his Supreme Madness has shifted to the self-pity part.

Then we get a little flashback to Supreme's origin, about Dr. Wells creating Supreme as a weapon, blah blah blah and became a hero. 

 

 

He then talks about the events since issue 1 and we find out in the editor's note that Grizlock actually was killed in the explosion in his lab. Well that's anticlimactic.  

Spawn, speaking for all of us, replies: "That sure was one sad story, Supreme, even if there was no point." Ha!

Spawn then tells his own pointless story about how he became Spawn. 

 

Supreme is upset, thinking Spawn is jealous and flies off. 

 

The end? We didn't even get to see them fight. What was the point of this issue, to bring the characters together and swap origin stories? Weird and really boring.

At least Pedi's art is insane, as always. Take away the Supreme stuff and his style fits the Spawn stuff really well. What's he doing at Extreme, he should have gone to work for Todd.

Anyway, Supreme Madness rolls on. Why is the better question. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #14

 

 

Supreme issue 14 had a story from Rob Liefeld, was written, edited and lettered by Kurt Hathaway, and had art by Dan Fraga. It came out in June 1994. (They were going for an every 2 week thing.)

 

This is part 2 of Supreme Madness, a 6-part storyline where Supreme takes the Grand Tour of the Image Universe. In this issue, we see Union  and his friend Jill at the Smithsonian when something blows up. Union jumps into action.

 

So... Union? Is he someone anyone remembers? He was one of the comics from Jim Lee's WildStorm and drawn by Mark Texiera. I guess he joined Stormwatch or something. Dunno. Doesn't really matter.

 

Union flies into the destruction of Grizlock's lab from last issue and finds Supreme, who has gone mad. He's convinced Union is Grizlock trying to get Thor's hammer from Supreme.

 

 

It's not really clear what happened to Grizlock. Did he die in the explosion? Did he escape? Does anyone care? 

 

Surprising no one, Supreme and Union proceed to fight. After page after page of fighting, Union realizes that the fight is only antagonizing Supreme's madness, so he pretends to lose the fight and Supreme flies off. 

 

 

We follow up on the Simple Simon Subplot Supreme. Simon kills Horace's (Grizlock's current crony) brother in an attempt to find out where Horace and Grizlock are. Giving up on that, he suffocates and strangles Horace's brother before setting him on fire. 

 

 

 

One thing you can say about Simple Simon is he is subtle.

 

Where will Supreme go next? No one knows! It's madness! 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #13

 

 

 

Supreme issue 13 came out in June 1994. Rob Liefeld came up with the story while Kurt Hathaway did the writing, editing and lettering. Shawn McManus did the layouts while Cedric Nocon did the pencils. Norm Rapmund did the inks.

 

This is part 1 of "Supreme Madness," a six-part story only in the Supreme series. Instead of a traditional crossover, where you then have to grab other comics to read the rest of the story and how it interacts with other characters in the universe, instead the other characters come to Supreme. It's kind of like the Grand Tour of Image, as we'll see starting next issue.

 

We pick up where we left off, with Supreme facing off against Grizlock in the Supreme Slayer robot suit thing. And then they fight. (Thank god, I was afraid we wouldn't get a good sprawling fight in an issue of Supreme!)

 

 

Even as Grizlock is kicking Supreme's ass, he doesn't understand why he's not kicking it more, since the suit is powered by the radium chunk that shares the same powers as Supreme. Well, Supreme lost his powers, so it doesn't affect him. 

 

The fight goes on for a while, but Supreme is unable to damage the machine until he realizes that if he can't get in, he can make Grizlock come out. Supreme damages the air conditioner. Grizlock comes out and Supreme smashes the machine with Thor's hammer.

 

  

It's interesting to me how similar this is to Darius Dax's Tremendroid story, where Supreme was also being beaten by this robot thing, but like in this story, Supreme is unaffected by the radioactive element powering it. In Moore's story, it's because the League of Infinity swapped Supreme with a decoy. That story is fun, clever, nostalgic and silly. In this, Supreme smashes the machine with a hammer. It's kind of a metaphor for the different approaches. 

 

 

Anway, Supreme is about to kill Grizlock--the evil mastermind who killed Supreme's girlfriend, best friend, and team of sidekicks, before mounting some of their heads on his wall--but Grizlock says that he can restore Supreme's powers. Supreme says ok, but if there's any trickery, he won't be so nice next time.

 

This is just really dumb. 

 

Meanwhile "Simple Simon," the incredibly uninteresting former sidekick of Grizlock tracks down Grizlock's new lab, where he's hooking Supreme up to a bunch of devices. Supreme is like, "Sure, hook me up to things that I have no idea what they do. And here's Thor's hammer, the only power I have. Feel free to plug it into your machine. Why shouldn't I trust you?"

 

Grizlock throws the switch, and surprise, surprise, he betrayed Supreme's trust! What!?! Who could have seen that coming!?!

 

 

 

But Supreme isn't dead and now he's mad--both angry and crazy! 

 

 

 

We'll find out how mad next issue. Get it... Supreme Madness. Oh, these Extreme guys were so clever.

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #12

 

 

Supreme issue 12 was published in May 1994. The story is by Rob Liefeld (still not calling himself Ripley). The script, lettering and editing is done by Kurt Hathaway. Shawn McManus does the layouts and fan-favorite Cedric Nocon does the pencils. And Norm Rapmund does the inks. 

Supreme wakes up in the jungles of South America and it turns out that he has lost his powers in the fight with Quantum in the last issue.  But it's ok because he has Thor's hammer and he'll just use that to do his... what do we call that he does? It's not superheroing. He mainly goes around and fights people until he kills them or something else happens. Let's be generous and call it adventuring. 

I thought this Thor's hammer thing was going to be an issue or two little joke but instead this becomes a major part of this series for way longer than it should. 

 

As he's flying, he suddenly remembers that Grizlock still exists in the least effective transition ever, but as it's my favorite subplot, let's go with that. Supreme flies to a bar in Washington D.C. and finds one of Grizlock's old cronies "Simple Simon," someone never previously mentioned, and tries to find out where Grizlock is. Simon doesn't know, admits to wanting to kill Grizlock is, and vows to become a criminal mastermind himself. 

 

I swear, reading this, it's like the writer read Batman or Spider-Man comics, didn't understand them, and is now trying to recreate them in the EXTREME.

Supreme flashes back to his pre-space sojourn, when some Nazi spies had tried to kidnap a scientist and had threatened to blow up his entire chemical factory. Ultimately they did but Supreme rescued them all from the explosion but the scientist refused to open a locked case that the Nazi's had stolen, despite needing to do so to help the authorities convict the spies. (I guess them blowing up the building wasn't enough of a crime to prosecute?) When the authorities confiscate the locked case, the scientist goes nuts and vows revenge. 

And that, boys and girls, is the really not very exciting origin of Grizlock.

Speaking of Grizlock, we then cut to him and his henchmen, Horace. They need to break into Grizlock's secret facility under... Fort Knox! 

We also find out that his secrets for heavy water were in the locked case. But apparently there was also enough in there to get him arrested and turn him into a comic book villain. 

Grizlock says the glowing Radium rock is starting to react. But rather than use it like Kryptonite, he plans to use it to power his Supreme Slayer suit, which looks kind of surprisingly like Darius Dax's Tremendroid from issue 42.

 

Supreme continues to fly around aimlessly looking for Grizlock when he sees a fire on the grounds of the White House. (These guys a re really subtle.)  There is Grizlock in his Supreme Slayer!

What will happen next? Will there be a really long, mostly pointless fight? I hope so!

Tucked into this issue is a really nice poster of Supreme by Chris Sprouse. 

 

It's a nice reminder that there are better days ahead for Supreme.