Weekly Reading: Youngblood #2

Published by Awesome Entertainment in August 1998

The covers:

Title: Bad Blood

(Youngblood 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.)

So six months after Youngblood #1 hit shelves, Awesome finally came out with issue #2. Of course, the financial backer for Awesome Entertainment had left right after the first issue came out, pulling all of his funding. Rob Liefeld supposedly never told anyone that Awesome was done and the art kept coming in from the freelancers doing their assignments. So Youngblood #2 was probably already completed by the crash or very soon after that. Awesome sort of merged with a company called Hyperwerks, which published Deity and had ties to Film Roman. But at least they got some comics out, so whatever it took.

Of course, most fans who had tried issue #1 had moved on by the time this one finally came out, killing any momentum the series had. Not that it mattered, as this was the last issue of Alan Moore's Youngblood that would be published with that name. He wrote five more scripts, too, but only one more would see print. It's a shame because this is a fun issue and could have encouraged readers to stick with the series.

As an added bonus, we have Alan Moore's script for this issue to compare it to. At some point, someone leaked the scripts for issues 2 through 7 here. What a treasure trove!

Alright, this is going to be great. Let's dig in.

The prologue starts in Hoods, an accomplice agency. Ha. I love how Moore has given up on any sense of reality to this universe and is treating it with almost cartoon-like logic, where there'd be an agency for putting together evil superteams. Of course.

Check out this description of Mr. Archie Hood:

Anyway, someone is putting together a team of villains and going to call them Youngblood. This brief mention of Kirby's Atlas Comics (what came before Marvel) for the look of Atomo is interesting:

I'll talk more about Kirby's monsters in a post later this week. We then cut to Suprema and Twilight cleaning up a gang war. It's bloody and violent, but mostly feels funny:

Here's the thing for me about Steve Skroce's art, it's beautiful and cartoony in the best sense, and incredibly detailed. If there's a drawback it's that with all the detail, my eyes don't always know where to look first or see all the detail. So sometimes I miss things and only see them later.

Moore pretty much let Skroce do what he wanted to on this one:

Moore, in order to give each character some attention, will split his stories up into smaller bites about a smaller group of characters. He makes it fun, as he does here with each character's own logo. By the way, these aren't by Todd Klein, they're from Richard Starkings and his Comicraft lettering company. They look great, though.

It's interesting that Moore has a police officer thank Suprema and Twilight. They're the most old-style of the heroes and we know that Suprema has a pretty conservative outlook. I might be reading too much into it, but it seems like she'd definitely lean toward law-and-order style politics.

And it's obvious that the speech bubbles are pointing to the wrong women, because it was Suprema who destroyed Star City, not Twilight. (There's a cleaned up version online, if you check my Reading Moore's Awesome works page, if you want to check it out.)

And then Satana shows up. We haven't seen her since the flashback in Supreme #46. Skroce has updated her look a little (I like the little Satans on her knees), but she's just as fun as she was then. Satana throws her magic pitchfork, which pins Suprema, while the Lounge Lizard (check out the pajamas!) takes out Twilight.

Then we're off to Doc Rocket and Johnny Panic at the House of Wax. Johnny is projecting fake images of himself all over the mansion and Doc is racing around checking each one at superspeed. God, can you imagine how long it took Skroce to draw this:

It seems like he put in a lot more detail than even Moore called for:

 

I'm going to have to look up Johnny Double's logo:

It's interesting that Doc is now wearing red tights. Her costume without them was maybe a tad too revealing.

We're having more lettering problems with the repeated line on this page. Maybe Awesome fired their copy editors first.

Doc finds the real Johnny, but the friction from her hands burns him. Good thing she's a doctor! Doc expositions that Twilight and Suprema are cleaning up the gang war and Leonard and Shaft have gone to Coast City to testify at Stormhead's committal hearing. Waxey is around somewhere. Johnny does some pop psychology, wondering what Waxey's wax gun represents when Doc notices something out the window and slips into superspeed.

The windows come shattering in but Doc grabs each shard. Can you imagine anyone else drawing this much detail? No, me either. Doc throws the shards at the superspeedster attacking her, but the heat around him melts the glass.

We meet two new villains: Speedwell and his sister Poppy, children of drug-crazed commune-living parents.

Here's Moore's description of Speedwell:

 

And Poppy, which is really quite lovely:

 

In real time, Poppy, pretending to be Doc Rocket, tries to make Johnny fall asleep. But Speedwell notes that's because the real Johnny was disguised as a clock. Then Poppy puts the real Johnny under her spell.

Speedwell makes a joke about how they're a refreshingly-different team concept. If Shaft and his team are putting the Young back in their Youngblood, Speedwell and his team are putting the blood back in to theirs. This sort of meta commentary, where Moore is obviously not taking Youngblood very seriously, is filled with so much charm and wit that it's infectious.

Then we cut to Shaft and Big Brother landing at the mansion. Shaft uses a trick arrow with a parachute to descend to the mansion, which Leonard gives him grief for: "Trick arrows? Man, you're going to end up like dad on his retro trip."

It's interesting that Leonard calls Waxey his dad. I wonder how long he's been his foster father?

Then Leonard says, in Waxey's voice: "Groups don't split up into small groups like they used to." Ha.

Shaft notes the damage to the mansion and then Sentinel, now in an all-black suit attacks Shaft. Here's Moore's description of Sentinel's new costume:

 

Sentinel mentions escaping from Supreme's Hell of Mirrors (and Korgo's run as president). Sentinel wants to take back Youngblood as his team. After Big Brother enters the fight, the earth starts shaking and we get our first glimpse of Atomo, who looks absolutely crazy. You would too, if you slept in Uranium.

Shaft quickly gets knocked out and after swallowing some of Big Brother's missiles, Atomo belches all over Big Brother, destroying the robot. Fortunately, Leonard gets out and hides behind some rubble.

Youngblood are stuck up on crucifixes as we finally get our Youngblood logo. So, this is the start of the team story, I guess? Sentinel tells the three of them that were on the Judgment Day jury (Shaft, Suprema and Twilight, I presume) that he wants his rightful place as leader of Youngblood, but then Waxey shows up as Waxman and all heck breaks loose.

Waxman: "There's regulations governing super-team names. It's like when the Justice Squadron sued the Justice Syndicate that time. Also I think there were two sets of Thunder Agents once..."

Ha ha.Waxey is the best. Even the description is awesome:

While he distracts the evil Youngblood with his wax gun, Twilight twists to the point of twisting the whole panel to remove the pitchfork from Suprema with her feet:

 Though that could just be because Moore couldn't figure out a way to get Shaft to speak first:

 

Then Leonard, in Biggest Brother, smashes through the wall, looking for a fight.

And what a fight! I want to take a moment to appreciate this page, which I think is one of the most brilliant examples of how you can play with time within a single panel of a comic:

We have Big Brother punching Atomo. While they're appearing stone still in superspeed, Doc Rocket is racing after Speedwell over the bodies of both monster-sized combatants. Because Skroce is doing his multiple images of the same character technique, it feels like time is passing for Rocket as she eventually hits Speedwell. Then time reverts to normal as Sentinel and and Satana decide to retreat. According to Moore's script, this idea came from a telephone conversation between Moore and Skroce:

 

When I met Chris Sprouse, he said that Moore gave him a questionnaire, which I guess he must give to all of his partners, asking them what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what they'd like to draw, what their interests are, that sort of thing. Clearly he was playing to Skroce's strengths here.

The evil Youngblood get out through a tunnel that they fill in behind them, leaving the Lounge Lizard behind in Waxey's wax grip. Waxey's proud of his catch and asks them to deliver the Lizard to Miskatonic Asylum.

Later, in Miskatonic, the Lounge Lizard is telling an old Jack-A-Dandy about the new Youngblood:

In the background we can see Professor Night's old villains Fakeface, the Walrus and the Carpenter thrashing around. According to Moore, Fakeface is supposed to be doing Michael Jackson? Really? I thought maybe Plastic Man:

 

Lounge Lizard tells Jack that even he couldn't defeat Twilight and the new Youngblood. Of course Jack, the twisted old psycho, takes that as a challenge. I wouldn't want to mess with him:

But that'll have to wait until next time in Dandy in the Underworld. Back in 1998, readers would have to wait a loooong time. You just have to wait until next week... but I promise you a fun surprise!

In the back of the book, we get this letter from Rob Liefeld:

Most of the comics he talks about here did eventually turn up, but usually only for a single issue, before disappearing forever. But I'll talk about those in a post later. I want to focus on him saying that there would be an issue #3 of Youngblood (there won't) and that Awesome Adventures would feature the work of Brandon Peterson and Chris Sprouse (it won't). Clearly he meant that Awesome Adventures was going to feature the already-completed work on Glory and Supreme. Both of those would eventually show up in their own series, but Youngblood #3 would become Awesome Adventures, as we'll see next week.

In addition, there was this ad for Rob's Re:Gex, which is clearly ripped off from Masamune Shirow:...

...and an ad for some comic called The Mark...

...which I have never heard of since. Did it even exist? With Awesome, it's impossible to know.

UPDATE (4/28/18): So, it turns out, The Mark was an idea Rob Liefeld worked up for Tom Cruise, as was reported here: "According to hot comics artist Rob Liefeld, Tom Cruise was so eager to get in on this spandex fetish that he asked Liefeld to create a comic-book concept for him. Liefeld came up with the Mark, a hero who receives superpowers from a magical tattoo. 'It’s a great story and it was very much tailor-made for [Cruise],' says Liefeld. Cruise’s production company is currently working on a script, while Liefeld is creating the comic book"

Eventually, Cruise left and Will Smith stepped in, as was reported here:  "Smith is set to star in “The Mark,” which is a futuristic actioner about a man who finds himself with superhuman powers after an older man transfers a supernatural mark to his hand."

But after The Matrix, things changed a bit, as reported here:

"Following an unsuccessful rewrite of his original screenplay, Awesome Entertainment's Rob Liefeld said he remains hopeful that The Mark movie -- with Will Smith attached at Universal Pictures - will still happen.
'"I eat, sleep, drink The Mark,' Liefeld said. 'That's all I think about everyday.'
...
'I was there at The Matrix premiere, sitting in front of Will, and we watched The Matrix,' Liefeld said. 'And, I kid you not, there are probably 125 of the same scenes (as The Mark). And I sat there and my heart just sank.'
So, Liefeld has re-tinkered the concept. 'The story is that there have been bearers of The Mark throughout the history of time,' he said. 'It's been underground for quite some time, and it's resurfaces at this particular time as the forces of good and evil are about to do battle.
'"The original script that I wrote, the opening 20 pages or 20 minutes, took place during World War II. Will and his partner called me and said, "Rob, we like the World War II stuff so much," because Hitler is looking for The Mark. If he can get it, he will dominate mankind; that's kind of the opening of the movie.
'You see the guys that escape with it. There's a group called The Disciples that have always protected it. Christ had The Mark, King Arthur had The Mark and it's been passed on throughout time.
'The movie is now all set in World War II, and that's what we're working on right now.'
Liefeld said The Mark will have an Indiana Jones influence.
'Think of if Indiana Jones went into a cave and found an artifact - this isn't in the movie - and it gave him incredible powers he didn't want, that actually screw up his life. Everybody starts hunting him and trying to kill him.
'"And he's like, "I just want to give it back." But he can't give it back. Because if he gives it back, it kills him.'
Despite the typical Hollywood struggles, Liefeld said he remains optimistic about The Mark, even envisioning a trilogy.
'It's completely different than what it was, but actually it's better,' he said."

Obviously not that much better, since it died in Hollywood development hell. That said, Liefeld made plenty of money through the process. And there's a whole story about a one page ad for a comic that never came out.

And as long as we're talking about movies, Liefeld was also pitching a movie called Krash, a movie about giant robots from outer space. Liefeld wrote a script, but the Iron Giant and Transformers later sunk any chance of Liefeld's movie getting made. That said, he was well paid for both movies, which he shared with his Awesome investor, who promptly took the money, pulled out his investment from Awesome and left, causing Awesome to go down the financial tubes. And that's why when we see Youngblood next it's in the pages of Awesome Adventures.

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.

The other Awesome comics: Odds and ends

Welcome back to the ongoing feature where I read the other comics published by Awesome that ran alongside Supreme. I read them so you don't have to!

Awesome only existed from 1997 until 2000, so it didn't have the time or the money to put out too many series. Of course there was Supreme and the other Moore-scripted spinoffs (which I'm reviewing issue-by-issue), as well as Fighting American, Coven and Kaboom (which I've already covered in standalone posts). But we also have some random one-shots or titles that lasted at most two issues.

The main reason we never got more series was Awesome's financial crash in early 1998. I'll get into the details of that later, but that meant some series that came out just before this crash or were being prepared during this crash lost all momentum and died short deaths. As Awesome struggled to continue, it would release issues that had been completed or were close to completed (with no way to continue them) or start new series and hope that they caught on fast.

So, what we're left with are the odds and ends, which, for some reason that I thought was good at the time, I have read all of. I'll give you quick snapshots of all of them below:

Chapel vol. 3 #1 (Sept. 1997)

The third volume of Chapel was one of the first Awesome books, though it probably would have made more sense as the last book of the Extreme era. It features the former Youngblood hero-turned-villain Chapel. If you never read Spawn or Youngblood, Chapel probably doesn't mean anything to you. I knew a little, but that was barely any better.

So, Chapel, the guy at left with a skull tattoo on his face and fangs, was a mercenary assassin for a black-ops agency of the U.S. government (seriously, wasn't every early Image character a mercenary working for a black ops agency? No wonder the U.S. debt is so high; all those damn mercs!). He was on Youngblood for a while before fighting against them. He also had a whole plot in Todd McFarlane's Spawn, as Al Simmons' (the man who died and became Spawn) friend-turned-killer. Eventually Chapel killed himself to become a dark lord in hell (yes, this really happened).

That's all in the future, though, as this issue's about a mission he had back in the 1980s.

Written by some guy named Robert Napton (According to a note in the comments below, he wrote an obscure 1990 comic titled "Q-Unit" before writing for Liefeld and Image. Later he wrote some comics for Dynamite Comics.) and drawn by John Stinsman (more on him in a minute), the issue reveals that some terrorist has gotten the secret serum to allow him to have the same powers as Chapel and Chapel goes on a mission to kill him. Blah, blah, people are shot and stabbed and otherwise meaninglessly killed until Chapel gets into a fistfight with the terrorist.

 

Guys, just get a room, already. Anyway, Chapel kills the terrorist. The issue ends with Chapel being assigned the mission to kill Al Simmons! (Twist! Oh wait, we already knew this. Who cares?)

At least the cover was painted well. It's also clear that they hadn't figured out the standard design for the Awesome covers yet.

Yeah, I'm not really mourning for the Extreme days.

Scarlet Crush #1-2 (Jan. and Feb. 1998)

John Stinsman had worked for Extreme for quite a while before Awesome came out, mostly handling Avengelyne. Avengelyne was a fallen angel who had the superpower of doing all kinds of obnoxious poses on covers that for some reason sold comics in the mid-'90s. He finally got the chance to write one with Scarlet Crush! Luck being a two-sided coin, the series came out in early 1998 just as Awesome went through the financial wringer and he only got to write two issues of his life's work. But what issues they were!

A sci-fi story, it's basically a mix of so many more famous sci-fi movies: there's spice mining on Venus (I guess Arrakis must be trademarked); there's our heroine, a lady cop gone outside the law, who happens to use a glowing laser sword. She hires a shady, lovable rogue in a bar and gets his larger, non-understandable partner thrown in as part of the deal. (I guess if you're going to steal from sci-fi classics, one should expect a lot of Star Wars elements).

The heroine is looking for a kidnapped scientist (who happens to be her father) who no one else seems to want recovered.

The second issue wasn't much better as it starts with the lady cop throwing her badge at her superior as she quits. (At least it wasn't a rip off of a sci-fi movie?) She then dons the skimpy outfit from the cover at left (seriously, it has a zipper but not enough fabric to be capable to be zipped up - yeah, I wonder why comics got such a sexist reputation?) and with her hired crew break in to an alien stronghold to rescue her father. Despite shooting nearly everyone and not suffering any injuries, the heroes somehow let the aliens get away with her dad.

I wonder why the aliens wanted her dad so much? I wonder how she kept her softball-sized breasts from falling out of that outfit? I'm left wondering about a lot of things because the series went nowhere, lasting only those two issues.

Stinsman's an okay artist, but the dialog feels recycled and the storyline has zero originality. There are at least a few nice beats between some of the supporting characters, which makes me think he may have had potential. That's about all he had as, after Awesome, he pretty much disappeared from comics.

Six-String Samurai #1 (Aug. 1998)

Having seen an early cut of the minor cult film Six-String Samurai, Rob Liefeld felt that he had to make a comic to go with it. Created by Awesome regulars (written by Matt Hawkins and Liefeld and with art by Dan Fraga and John Stinsman), the story is a continuation rather than an adaptation of the film.

Here's the summary at the beginning:

"In this alternate universe, in 1957 the Russians took the United States by nuclear force. Only one piece of the American frontier remained free, a patch of land known as Lost Vegas. Through this desert wasteland wanders the 'six string samurai,' a latter-day Buddy Holly who handles a guitar or a sword with equal skill. He’s a man on a collision course with destiny: It seems that King Elvis, who ruled over the land of Vegas for forty years, has finally taken his last curtain call and the throne now stands empty. But it’s a rough road to the big city and the body count is likely to be high, as demonstrated in this postapocalyptic future with a beat we can dance to."

Imagine a mashup of the Mariachi movies and Mad Max. Doesn't that sound awesome? We get two little tales that are not nearly crazy enough. One is of an unnamed hero taking out a gang in a diner as they try to install the Duke as the new king.

 

The other is of a hero fighting a death-like villain who wants his guitar.

 

Look, I get that movies are expensive and so they need to do a lot with a little. Indie filmmakers can only afford a diner rather than building giant sets. But comics aren't expensive and you can show the whole, damn, crazy world, rather than just the inside of a diner. Show us this world and make it big and weird and wonderful. Don't make it like something we've seen before and seen better.

Moving on.

Re:Gex #1 (Sept. 1998) and #0 (Dec. 1998)

Wait, so issue #1 came out before issue #0? Okay, I guess comics do that sometimes. But before these issues, there were two back-up previews in issues of The Coven, which if you haven't read them make this series harder to understand?

Oh Awesome, never change.

So Re:Gex, written and drawn by Rob Liefeld, is the story of a superpowered being named Scarab who can identify other superpowered beings. He would find them and kill them for an organization called The Company. However, touched by an angel, he decided to change his ways and save them instead of killing them.

When he sees Genie, a beautiful, scantily-clad blonde with a giant sword and crazy demon boots, fall from the sky, he rescues her and The Company starts chasing after them.

The Company's henchmen are destroyed by Scarab's robot pal Primer, who can turn into any weapon system or vehicle. They're joined by Psidon (an underwater being) and Felix (the fix-it guy). But there's more pages devoted to Genie really enjoying a shower than those guys (four, including a two page spread turned sideways like a Playboy centerfold) so let's not worry about character development, shall we. Here's the pages, after which, you'll need a shower, too.

 

 

As long as we're going down this road, here was one of the variant covers for this issue.

 

Sigh... Okay, so then we get to see the big bad guy in Lord Sharpe, who has captured Avengelyne (more on her in a bit) and put her in the mitts of a looney-looking woman named Tragedy Ann.

So that was all in issue #1. Issue #0 should fill us in on their backgrounds, right? Wrong.

Issue #0 features Scarab, Genie and Primer at some point in the future who have been joined by some guys named Cairo and Beowulf. They fight off The Company's henchmen and make their escape. Two small backups tell us more about Scarab's past (we see him touched by the angel) and Beowulf (he kills a bunch of people). So, um, yeah, that was Re:Gex.

Menace #1 (Nov. 1998)

Written by Jada Pinkett Smith, Menace is a dark urban story about one woman assassin who gets killed but comes back.

This issue shows Menace and her cohorts, Crystal and Taffy, as they snort some coke, march in to a rival gang's boss's office and distract them with their scantily clad... look, from now on I'm going to just point out when a woman isn't scantily clad in one of these issues, as it'll be a shock... and kill them, taking the cocaine and cash and running off.

They're summoned to a payphone (back during the pager days - remember those?) by their boss, Black, who sets them up in an ambush, killing them.


Menace holds on long enough to make it to the E.R., where she sees an angel-like being named Malick, who judges Menace poorly for her evil deeds during life. And she dies.

We see her dig her way out of the grave during a moonlit night and someone (maybe Malick) welcomes her back to life as a dark angel.

 

This is just the beginning!

Except it's not, as it was the only issue. Longtime Liefeld artist Dan Fraga doesn't bring anything more to the proceedings. About the most fun you can have with this issue is reading this great snarky write-up here.

Avengelyne #1 (March 1999)

So last seen in Re:Gex, Avengelyne was in Lord Sharpe's prison. Maybe we'll see her escape, join up with Re:Gex, destroy Lord Sharpe and the world will be a better place?

Created by writer Robert Napton and penciller Dan Fraga, Avengelyne starts with the titular fallen angel hanging out in a garden, trying to come to peace with the world and her place in it. A strange being shows up and tells her that she wasn't a fallen angel, she was actually sent to Earth to foil a plan to destroy humanity.

Fast forward to Avengelyne in Sharpe's bondage who tells her that the Bible was a hoax, that aliens like himself gave the word to Moses to make humanity more controllable and that the end of humanity is coming.

Um, okay.

The strange being finds her in her prison and shows her a vision of her being God's warrior angel and frees her. And then we get a small note at the end that Jesus Christ might have returned. And that's the end of the Re:Gex/Avengelyne thread. Or is it the beginning? No. No, it's certainly the end.

Prophet #1 and Legacy (March 2000)

Prophet was a superpowered being created by Rob Liefeld with swords and big shoulder pads as part of some super secret experiment that created him to be a killer.

Anyway, Liefeld and writer Robert Napton enlisted two newbie artists in the Walker Brothers for this story about a future Prophet clone/daughter who is a kind of cop. In 3025, she gets attacked by some punks, whom she dispatches pretty easily and then returns to headquarters, where she has a vision she is being summoned by the original John Prophet. There's some future speak dialog that's kind of clever.

There's a backup story in 2025 where John Prophet gets brought back to life and immediately attacks everyone around him. Fortunately for them, the scientists who brought him back used clones to do it and communicate through holograms to tell them that he can atone for his past sins by saving the world. I guess he did it, since the world is still around in 3025! So we don't even need a second issue!

Somehow, Awesome convinced Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane to do variant covers for this issue, which is nice that the Image guys could make up. Meanwhile, the Walker brothers did a little more work for Liefeld before leaving for the video game industry.

Brigade vol. 3 #1 (July 2000)

And the last Awesome comic goes down with the ship. Most of these odds and ends series were just random series that were retreading the Extreme era or weird one-offs, such as Six-String Samurai. But Brigade is different, because it's actually following what was going on in the other Awesome comics and trying to follow through on the obvious desire to see them interact.

Sadly, this last series gave us one final hurrah of what the Awesome universe should have looked like.

Written by longtime inker Lary Stucker, this version of Brigade was supposed to be the teenage superhero team for the Awesome universe. Wait, I thought that was Moore's Youngblood. Oh, what the hell, since no one was paying any attention anymore, let's go ahead and say there can be two.

With art by Dietrich Smith (and Stucker's own inks), we get the formation of Brigade as Badrock and the two Kabooms face off against Kid Supreme (a pre-Moore Supreme character), Dash (a superspeedster from NewMen) and a wounded SPICE android. Badrock and the Kabooms want SPICE to answer for blowing up a space station and killing all aboard.

There's an enjoyable fight as one set of heroes takes on another...

 

...before we find out that SPICE was set up as the government tried to replace her with a new, killier version.

We also find out that Fighting American called in all the available heroes, including Youngblood and Supreme to investigate.

 

It's fun to see all the heroes from the various comics turn up (kind of what Moore intended way back when Awesome seemed like it might succeed) and a little sad that this is how it turned out: as one forgotten issue of a comic no one really cared about.

Drat.

Back to our teens, who have started to figure out that they need to work together. Fighting American turns up and throws his shield, knocking them over.

 

(I guess we know the real reason Awesome folded. Marvel followed through on their Fighting American shield-throwing legal threat.) Once he finds out the truth, FA empowers the teen heroes to become a team and find out the truth. But, of course, that wasn't meant to be.

 

Damn it, I totally would have followed this series if it had turned into anything. It had that enjoyable, bouncy spirit that Awesome should have gone for consistently. Instead, this was it.

But, this being Awesome, in the back of this issue, we then got a 9-page look at an upcoming comic called Century. According to my friend Rob, Century was Rob Liefeld's third attempt at a story set in the future (the first two being Extreme 3000 and Extreme Genesis). Youngblood was the world police with the NewMen being underground resistance. Supreme was married to Glory and had superpowers kids. Several pages were drawn, but nothing came of it. Supposedly, some of the advertising for the series included pages from Liefeld's Legion of Superheroes pitch.

And that's the real lesson one should take away from Rob Liefeld and Awesome Entertainment. He always moves ever onward, creating new things and letting new people tell new stories. It's an awesome way to handle his comic characters even if it can also be frustrating, as we'll see in the comics that followed after Awesome.

Steve Skroce, eh?

I had never heard of Steve Skroce before Youngblood, so I guess it's a good idea to talk a little bit about him. He's a Canadian, so he must be nice. (That's a thing, right?)

He broke into comics in 1993 on the Clive Barker series Ectokid for Marvel Comics' Razorline imprint, where he worked with one of the Wachowski Brothers (now sisters). He went to work on the Marvel series Cable and X-Man before moving onto The Amazing Spider-Man in 1996.

After that, Awesome came calling for Youngblood. He'd do two+ issues before Awesome went belly up. Moore approached him about doing Top Ten for his ABC line, but Skroce didn't want to do a monthly comic at the time.

Having worked on Ectokid, Skroce was contacted to create storyboards for The Matrix, which were used by the writing-producing-directing Wachowskis team to help pitch their movie to Warner Bros.

Here's some of his storyboards:

Skroce briefly returned to Marvel in 2000 to write and pencil four issues of Wolverine before drawing storyboards for the rest of the Matrix Trilogy. Here's an interesting interview about his storyboarding work.

Skroce often works on movies with the Wachowskis, and has done storyboards for I, Robot (2004), V for Vendetta (2005), Speed Racer (2008), Ninja Assassin (2009), Cloud Atlas (2012), and Jupiter Ascending (2015).

In 2004, he co-created (along with comicbook artist Geof Darrow) and drew Doc Frankenstein for Burlyman Entertainment, which is written by the Wachowskis.

With Brian K. Vaughan in 2015, Skroce was the co-creator and artist of the Image Comics science fiction series We Stand On Guard.

More recently, it was announced that he's doing an Image comic called Maestros.