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

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #1

For years now, I've been meaning to read the 40+ issues of Supreme before Alan Moore took the series over. As I just found them while cleaning out my closet, I've decided to read them all to see what Moore took and adapted for his run.

So I'll be doing short little snapshots of each issue as I read them. You're welcome to read along and add your thoughts or you're welcome to ignore this endeavor entirely as a way to maintain your good taste and sanity.

Let's start with Supreme 1, which came out in November 1992:


This issue was written by Rob Liefeld and Brian Murray. Murray penciled it and Liefeld inked it. In this issue, Supreme returns from space, is confronted by Youngblood, and is brought to someone within the U.S. government, who tries to recruit him to join a covert super powered team. We learn that Supreme is one of the most powerful beings they've encountered.  

Like most early Image comics, there's a lot of fighting, a lot of characters standing around with odd inhuman-like expressions, but not a lot of story. They spend page after page of Supreme flying. And some of the reaction comments are unintentionally hilariously written...

 


At least it was a quick read. 

8 comments:

  1. Hell yeah, I love your reviews. I can't wait to see you're takes on the original stuff. Most of it isn't great, but certainly entertaining in that over the top Extreme way. I think the definitive take on the character was done by Keith Giffen. You could easily do a whole post about his contributions to mean Supreme.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really like Keith Giffen, so I'm interested to see what he did with the series.

      Delete
    2. I also strongly recommend Bloodstrike 4-6 if you haven't already checked them out. They are easily the best written early extreme comics. Issue 5 also contains Giffen's first Supreme story.

      Delete
  2. Can't wait to see the update on the annotations page to appreciate all the nuance and detail hidding in this gem...!

    Just joking, but loving to see you keep up with this. I just discovered your blog and it granted a full re-read of the Awesome universe, extras an everything and I'm enjoying it so much. Maybe this is the push I need to try dip my toes into """classic""" Supreme. Is it in your plans to also check the spin-offs (Lady and Kid) or you're trying to keep sane?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hah! I can't imagine having to try to annotate this stuff and where they ripped it off from!

      I do intend to look at the Kid Supreme and Lady Supreme spinoffs (they're pretty short) and Glory Days, which I've heard good things about.

      Delete
  3. Thanks! I've been feeling bad about neglecting the blog and thought this might be fun... or weirdly masochistic. lol

    ReplyDelete
  4. This issue does make more sense if you read the little preview in Youngblood #2. Or 3, maybe?

    Whichever.

    I don't mean to sound too sarcastic, since it's all pretty badly written and nonsensical. But the little preview in Youngblood did at least make some of the stuff in Supreme 1 seems a smidge less arbitrary.

    As you go along, I'll probably have other "helpful" footnotes regarding what happens in other Liefeld books that tie in to Supreme. If you're just reading Supreme 1-40 with nothing in between, you'll be reading a lot of parts of crossovers that don't make a lot of sense taken on their own.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That'd be great. It's funny that they did expect that everyone was collecting everything and knew how it all fit together.

      That said, I read the little preview in Youngblood #3 and it's really, "Here's Heavy Mettle. It's a shame there's no one on Earth who can lead it.

      Delete