Weekly Reading: Supreme #44

Supreme #44

Published by Maximum Press in January 1997

The cover:

Title: The Age of Gold

(As always: Supreme is currently out of print. There are a number of ways to read it, which can be found on the How do I read Moore's Awesome works page.)

Happy 1997 everyone! Bill Clinton has just been re-elected president! Nintendo is releasing the N64! Supreme won two Overstreet's Fan Awards for best writer and best revamp! It's a new golden age! So let's dig into The Age of Gold.

Let's give a warm welcome to a new artist on the "modern story merry go round" with Richard Horie. He had worked on Brigade and some other comics for Rob Liefeld over the years and will continue with Awesome until the end, when he and his wife, Tanya (a colorist whose name shows up a lot on these books), will move on to DC to become almost full-time colorists (though occasionally will do the art, like on this steampunk Aquaman).

Let's also welcome Bill Wray, who is inking Rick Veitch's flashback sequences. Wray has worked in traditional comics as a penciller and inker, as well as at Mad Magazine and Cracked, and would go on to work on the Ren and Stimpy cartoon. As you'll see, he's the perfect choice to work on these flashbacks.

We start off catching up with Ethan and Diana Dane talking about the Omniman comic that she'll be taking over the writing chores on. Apparently it wasn't that the fans were upset with Billy Friday's storylines, but that the editor didn't like the perceived antisemitism mixed in. That's kind of a sad little joke on a number of levels, so I'm just going to leave it alone.

Meanwhile we see Supreme cleaning up the Citadel and following up on his returning memories of the Allied Supermen of America. He returns to their abandoned hideout and pushes the button on his signal to call the group together. While he waits, he wanders through another trophy room (third in as many issues!) where we see MAGNO, the super-humanoid; the Roman-looking battle helmet of Helios, king of the sun; and the Future-o-scope, before opening a yearbook to the Allies' New Year's Eve party at the end of 1949.

And then it's on to our first (of three!) flashbacks from that night, as the Future-o-scope reveals what the future has in store for them, in the form of three figures who should be recognizable to anyone with a passing history of comics. These are the three Mayhe-Maniacs, stand-ins for the three narrators from the EC Comics line of horror titles, such as Tales from the Crypt: the Crypt-Keeper, the Vault-Keeper and the Old Witch.

Before we get to them, let's take a moment to appreciate the Allied Supermen of America. They are (what will soon be known as) the Awesome Universe's version of the Justice Society of America, a golden-age superhero team. Because I love this stuff, here are the list of Allied Supermen and their counterparts (where they have one):

• Supreme (Superman)
• Glory (Wonder Woman, though Wonder Woman was only allowed to be the secretary of the JSA)
• Professor Night (Batman)
• Die Hard (the cyborg from Youngblood is sometimes an analog of Captain America)
• Mighty Man (Captain Marvel)
• SuperPatriot (Captain America)
• Alley Cat (Black Canary/Catwoman)
• Black Hand (Green Lantern)
• Doc Rocket (Flash)
• Jack O'Lantern (Spectre)
• Roy Roman (Aquaman)
• Storybook Smith (Johnny Thunder)
• Waxman (Sandman)

Many of these characters will become more important as Moore builds out the universe. For now, there's too many for them to get much notice here.

So, anyway, back to the story. The Three Mayhe-Maniacs dare to fortell the end of the Allies, if they want to see it. The first group of heroes take them up on the offer and follow them into a nightmarish future of America. The heroes are attacked by a group of alien-looking beings. The heroes beat the aliens back to (wait for the EC Comics storytelling twist) a fallout shelter. The aliens are the mutated remains of the human race!

What use are superhero powers against the fear of nuclear apocalypse? The heroes return, beaten by the startling vision.

A couple of notes before we move on. Is there any comics fan who doesn't love the old EC Comics style from the art to the twist endings? Moore spent his comics journeyman years working on short sci-fi stories for 2000AD with twists like these, and he said that it made him a better storyteller, so it's no surprise that these are really well done homages to the EC style.

Anyway, back to the modern story. Glory appears and mentions that her own memories are becoming blurred. I wonder if Moore already knew that he was going to rewrite her story the way he had Supreme's? And then the retired Doc Rocket and Alley Cat show up, who are all kinds of wonderful, in only the way snarky grandparents can be:

Doc Rocket: "Better climb down off me, Serena honey, before you start something you can't finish!"

Alley Cat: "Hah! Just listen to Mr. three-nanoseconds-and-it's-all-over!"

And then we're off on the second flashback, into the quiet suburb of Gainesville, 1955. They witness a murderous adulterer conspiring with the chief of police while their son has gotten hooked on heroin. The mayor is too busy to help, as he's leading a KKK lynching. The heroes try to stop the evil, but what good are they against the social nightmares the next decade will bring? Beaten, they return to their headquarters.

Back in the modern time, the heroes reflect on how the 1940s had made more sense with the war and easily recognizable evil. Mighty Man and Waxy Doyle (Waxman) show up. Waxy has quit superheroing and made a fortune in the furniture polish business. Waxy will become important once we get to Moore's Youngblood. They then remember the third flashback. As Supreme said, it took them "somewhere utterly MAD!"

And then Rick Veitch takes us to a homage of a Mad Magazine parody:

So there's kind of a lot going on here. EC Comics' longest-lasting legacy was not their horror, sci-fi or war books, it was Mad Magazine. The comics magazine is still being put out.

One of the most important parodies to its legacy was Superduperman, from issue 4. Its popularity helped to boost the magazine's sales. It also left an indelible mark on young Alan Moore. I'll get into this more in a post later this week.

So Supreme and company go through the surreal parody before crying uncle and returning to the New Year's Eve party. As the Mayh-Maniacs say, "Your golden age is finished. It's our turn now. This is the dawn of the ghoul-den age!"

And it was true. EC Comics became incredibly popular in the early 1950s and the Justice Society stopped at about the same time. Superhoes just didn't sell anymore.

What's amazing is how Moore is not just walking us through Superman's history, he's walking us through the history of the whole comic book medium. Superheroes, horror, parody, they're all fair game in this series. And they all coexist in this universe. Think about that for a second. If everything that was ever done in comics could exist all in a single universe, does that mean we could see an Archie equivalent? How about war or western tales? Fantasy? Anything is possible.

As an aside, this wasn't the first time Moore had started mashing together literary ideas from various sources. In 1991 he started working with Melinda Gebbie on Lost Girls, a pornographic story of the meeting of Wendy from Peter Pan, Dorothy from Wizard of Oz and Alice from Alice in Wonderland. (And before that was In Pictopia, but I want to save that one for when we get to Judgment Day.) But Moore's creation of the Awesome Universe essentially opened up all the doors.

It also shouldn't be surprising that while he was doing this work for Liefeld, he was also setting up a creator-owned comic for Jim Lee's Homage Studio at WildStorm. As he said in an interview with Joseph P. Rybandt:

"There's talk of me coming up with a creator-owned series with Homage. I've enjoyed working with the WildStorm people a great deal. As much as the Extreme people are treating me well, I want to carry on doing stuff for WildStorm. So we'll do this creator-owned thing, which is still under wraps, but when we get nearer the time, I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk about that."  

In a 1997 interview that I can't locate, Moore expanded on the idea, explaining that it was about a group of Victorian-era literary heroes all joining together: The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk. It would eventually evolve into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Sorry, that was a long aside. Anyway, the Allied Supermen disbanded six months after that and most of the lesser known heroes retired. The modern group recollects about what a strange time the '50s were with Supreme being transformed by supremium and Glory minding a group of prep school girls called the Danger Damsels (amazingly, even that becomes important later). They then decide to take off, with Supreme taking some of the trophies from the headquarters back to the Citadel.

We then get a small epilogue about Supreme deciding to properly examine the supremium meteor that turned him into Supreme so many years ago. That'll have to wait until next week, though.

Anyway, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for all of the details that I completely missed.

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Prior to Supreme, Moore had already contributed two major works to the Superman mythos. The first was a story for a Superman annual: For the Man Who Has Everything, which is one of the finest Superman stories ever told and if you haven't read it, please go find it. A year later Moore wrote the second, and better known, which was the last story of the silver-aged Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Does this cover look familiar?

As I've mentioned before, by the 1980s, DC was overwhelmed by continuity. There were multiple Earths, with different versions of Superman and the other DC heroes. DC being DC decided to wipe them all away and start again from scratch with the big crossover event: Crisis on Infinite Earths. While Moore was opposed to the wiping away of the old continuity, he couldn't stop it.

Outgoing Superman editor, Julius Schwartz, decided to "make believe" his last two issues of Superman and Action Comics were the actual last two issues ever. Moore demanded that Schwartz let him write this final story. Longtime Superman artist Curt Swan drew the issues.

The story was amazingly well received and has often been cited as one of the best Superman stories ever. Which makes it weird for me to say this - I don't particularly like it. But I'll get to that in a second. Let me detail the story.

So the book starts with Bizarro, the jokey Superman opposite, going on a murderous rampage, destroying his planet and ultimately committing suicide to truly be the opposite of an alive Superman. And then Lois Lane, in a future framing structure says, "Still, after what came next, Bizarro's death seemed trivial."

In other words: prepare for blood.

So more people die as Clark Kent is unmasked as Superman. The Daily Planet building is attacked. So Superman takes those closest to him and holes up in the Fortress of Solitude. Meanwhile Braniac's robot head fuses to Lex Luthor's body, taking him over, and they move to attack Superman and his friends. Ultimately Superboy's childhood sweetheart Lana discovers that Superman loves Lois and not her. She attacks Braniac and Lex asks her to kill him, which she does. She then gets killed. Jimmy Olsen gets killed, too. The Kryptonite Man is killed by Krypto, who dies protecting his master. And then it's revealed this is all a plot by Mr. Mxyzptlk, who has decided he wants to be evil rather than a trickster. So Superman kills him.

Ugh.

Look, I know I'm selling the story short, and there are a lot of poignant and well done moments that are well regarded, but frankly, the basic plot of this story is awful. When you think of the silver-age Superman, do you want his final chapter to be one of large swaths of death and destruction? Can't we just leave that to Zack Snyder?

One of Superman's most important traits, which is often neglected by lesser creators, is gentleness. If he is a being who can do almost anything and could easily destroy a person or a world without meaning it, he would have to spend his life willfully making sure he never does. That's what makes Superman compelling to me. I didn't want to see the end of this gentle character and his richly imaginative world splattered with so much blood.

(As bad as this is, it's nothing compared to what Moore had planned for Superman and the other heroes of the DC universe in his Twilight of The Superheroes proposal. If you want to read the whole text, it can currently be found here.)

That's what makes me wonder about the opening jokes of Supreme #43. Was Moore aware of how much of that blood is on his hands, or is he projecting it onto Billy Friday, representing the writers and editors who decided to tear apart the old continuity? Or onto the writers who followed him and used Watchmen as an excuse to grim and gritty every superhero? I'm not sure.

Moore has acknowledged that some of his 80s DC work left a bad taste even in his mouth. He has said that he regrets The Killing Joke for its viciousness and that he is upset how many writers saw Watchmen as a license to do grim and gritty superheroes. This is a favorite quote of mine where he talks about the comics that followed Watchmen:

"The apocalyptic bleakness of comics over the past 15 years sometimes seems odd to me, because it's like that was a bad mood that I was in 15 years ago. It was the 1980s, we'd got this insane right-wing voter fear running the country, and I was in a bad mood, politically and socially and in most other ways. So that tended to reflect in my work. But it was a genuine bad mood, and it was mine. I tend to think that I've seen a lot of things over the past 15 years that have been a bizarre echo of somebody else's bad mood. It's not even their bad mood, it's mine, but they're still working out the ramifications of me being a bit grumpy 15 years ago. So, for my part, I wouldn't say that my new stuff is all bunny rabbits and blue-skies optimism, but it's probably got a lot more of a positive spin on it than the work I was doing back in the '80s. This is a different century."

Which brings me back to Supreme. Moore has said that he felt like Supreme was a chance for him to sort of apologize for the bad mood of the '80s. And there is a wonderful optimism and joy in Supreme that wasn't always noticeable in his previous superhero work. There's a gentleness. And that's what I love about it.

Anyway, there's one more part that I want to get into with Whatever Happened... Moore wrote a little introduction to the story, which is as famous as the story itself. In it, he explained that this was an Imaginary Story, which was a kind of story told in silver-age Superman comics, where it was understood that what happened there didn't affect what was happening to the real Superman. They were What If... or Elseworlds stories of their times.

But aren't all stories imaginary? Of course. But what the combination of the imagination and the story produces is an idea important to Alan Moore and would become very important to the Awesome Universe to come, as we'll soon see.

The Super-Key to Fort Superman!

In 1958, Action Comics featured the story: "The Super-Key to Fort Superman!" which was the basis for Supreme #43's flashback. Drawn by Wayne Boring, this tale appeared in what is known as the "in-between years" between Superman's golden and silver ages. You can find out about this period of Superman (and a lot more) at the wonderfully informative fortress.net.nu.

We'll see Moore's take on the Superman-Batman... I mean Supreme-Professor Night team coming up soon.