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.
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