Supreme issue 8 was published in December 1993. Ripley provides the story. Kurt Hathaway does the story, scripting, lettering and editing. Shawn McManus does the pencils and the inks.
This is such an aggravating issue. Basically, Thor was fooled into working for Hitler during WWII. He learned of his error and after some kind of delay, is now back to do it. In fact, that's what he tells Supreme.
Not understanding what Thor tells him explicitly, Supreme decides to just fight Thor.
Ugh.
Meanwhile Max has convinced her editors to let her do a live interview with Supreme. The only problem, she doesn't know how to get ahold of Supreme to agree to it.
The long-forgotten subplot of the serial killer Grizlock continues with him returning to his secret lab. And he immediately starts shouting at the top of his lungs. Why?
Because it's EXTREME!
The fight between Supreme and Thor continues. And despite Thor explaining exactly why he's there...
...Supreme is like, "Is it possible he doesn't realize--" that Hitler is dead.
This is so stupid.
Also stupid, the fight is going to continue on for a third issue. yay
Interestingly enough, Shawn McManus, who handles the art here, illustrated two of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing issues and, later, with his daughter Leah Moore on Wildstorm's Wild Girl. He also worked on Sandman and a number of other good series. He's definitely better than what he got to work with in Supreme.
This is one of my favourite issues in the early extreme universe. Mostly because it's so dumb and it's art is so extreme that it's just fun to read.
ReplyDeleteI find the Thor stuff so dumb, and the hammer thing stays around for a long time. But I am enjoying all the Grizlock stuff. That feels like the foundation for the Dax stuff that comes later.
DeleteHonestly it seems strange that Moore didn't use the original names when he rebooted. But I guess Grizlock didn't really fit with the more silver age ascetic.
DeleteYeah, but Moore could have made "Grizlock" the alias of Darius Dax. It would have been a cool easter egg and not changed anything he did. I do wonder how much of these old issues he actually read.
DeleteI doubt Moore read many, if any issues of Supreme. I'm guessing he just quizzed Liefeld for details and then incorporate anything he felt was useful. Frankly I'm surprised that no one has ever incorporated Grizlock into Darius Dax. Honestly one of my biggest curiosity's about the new extreme stuff is how much Moore lore it'll incorporate. Last Blood made a bunch of book of judgement references, so we'll see.
DeleteEarly on, whenever Moore took over a title, he'd ask for as many back issues as he could get and would try to keep the continuity as well as he could. I don't think we get a Dr. Wells reference in there if he didn't. But maybe by this point in his career, he didn't devour it the way he used to.
DeleteI'm a big Moore fan, I've even been lucky enough to interact with the great wizard. But I didn't know that detail. Makes me wonder if he would have put in more connections to the original in year 3. While I'm told Larsen's run is a mixed bag, I've always liked the idea of a confrontation between the two Supreme’s.
DeleteIt doesn't sound like it. The rumor is he was going to take Supreme and send him into the Supremium meteor and have him interact with analogs of other companies' Superman clones. So Miracleman, etc.
DeleteI'm not a fan of Larsen's run. You might like it more than I did.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the analogs ending he planned.
DeleteI do own Larsen's run, I was planning on reading it once I've finished the original run, since I started with Moore's. It would be interesting to see you revisit Larsen's run once you've finished the original, with the added context.