Supreme issue 23 came out in January 1995. Rob Liefeld did the story. It was scripted by Gary Carlson. Penciled by Cedric Nocon and inked by Norm Rapmund. And lettering by Kurt Hathaway.
Oh boy, this comic is part 2 of Extreme Sacrifice, a company-wide crossover event. Those are my favorite kind of company-wide events. Forget picnics. Crossovers!
You know how you can tell this stuff sucked? There's no Wikipedia entry for it. That means I actually have to figure out what it is to explain it. Ugh.
As far as I can tell, Chapel, one of the Youngblood, kills himself to take over Hell and now plans to start Armageddon. He sends a guy named Crypt to lead the apocalypse and kill some newborn, who is the only hope for humanity. Crypt attacks Supreme, which gets us to this issue.
We start the issue with Supreme on the moon in a costume much like the one from Legend of Supreme for absolutely no reason, since the personality is not the same at all and that one had powers and this one must still rely on Thor's hammer. But why should we let continuity bother us by this point?
Supreme is having big, existential thoughts about the state of superheroes in the Extreme universe while hanging all over the American flag left by the Apollo astronauts. Why? No idea.
Suddenly Crypt shows up and stabs Supreme through the back.
They fight for a bit, with Crypt doing most of the damage before Crypt impales Supreme with the flagpole.
Splurting blood in ways that blood does not splurt in outer space (thank you Star Trek VI), Supreme continues to fight and Crypt teleports Supreme back to Earth, where he is ultimately found to be dead.
Except, no, a reporter reports Supreme felt better and flew off after Crypt.
I think they realized they hadn't actually finished the page count for the issue, so they just stretched the fight out even longer and ignored the dialog about Supreme being dead.
There's a side plot about Knightsabre and Graves fighting about who is on whose side in this war of good and evil. Moore will later cast these two as father and son, but they sure don't act like it here.
In New York, we see Supreme and Crypt continuing to fight.
Sometimes I feel like maybe I should write more about these fight scenes. Like maybe I'm doing a disservice to these comics. But they include dialog like, "I'm sick of your mouth, Crypt! You keep taunting me, but you forget one thing--I am Supreme!" And that's why I'm happy to skip over these pages and pages of pointless fighting.
So Crypt finally kills him (or does he) and tosses the body into Spawn's alley.
But all Spawn finds is a ragged cloak and some blood. Supreme's body is gone!
What will happen next? A whole new era of Supreme. Yay! But not a good one. Boo!
