Welcome

So a long time ago (the mid-1990s), the greatest writer in comics agreed to take over the writing duties for Image Comics' Supreme. He would radically reshape the character, the book, and due to forces beyond his control, a whole comic book universe. And it led to an award-winning run of comics, three additional titles (among several proposed) and ultimately led to the genesis of Moore's much better known America's Best Comics. And then it all went out of print and was forgotten by way too many.

Having gathered quite a bit of information about Moore's Supreme and Awesome runs, I decided to create a home for the forgotten Awesome. Over the course of a year, I put it all together here.

Each week I did a main "Weekly Reading" post that was a read-through of that issue. I followed that up with a couple of other posts about topics from that Weekly Reading or whatever else I came up with to talk about. You'll find the lost Youngbloods in the Youngblood section and the fan-edit of the last Supreme in After Awesome.

Below is the archive of posts broken up by book. Thanks for checking the site out!

Book 1: Supreme: The Story of the Year

Book 1: Judgment Day

Book 3: Supreme: The Return

Book 4: Youngblood

Book 5: Glory

Book 6: After Awesome

Book 7: 1963

Book 8: Night Raven

Book 9: A Small Killing

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Rob Liefeld, Warchild and Awesome/DC



Another article is making the rounds on the internet with Moore saying disparaging things about superheroes and American culture. However this time, Rob Liefeld chimed in on social media with this:



There's a few interesting things that come up from his post. First is the recording of conversations with Alan Moore. Liefeld recorded Moore's pitch for Warchild. Written shortly after Moore saw Pulp Fiction for the first time, it's a knights-of-the-round-table concept set in a Tarantino-esque inner city gangland setting. But don't get too excited, according to Eric Stephenson, Moore never finished the limited series and two scripts were left undone. You can read more about that here.

Second is how much Moore got paid. I'm not into speculating on Moore's wealth, but it's interesting that with all the scripts and pitches that went unproduced (four Youngbloods, two Glories, two Warchild, pitches for The Allies, Prophet and New Men), Liefeld has/had $80,000+ of Moore work that he never did anything with.

Finally, Moore was rightfully wary of DC. According to a couple of sources, while Alan was working for Awesome, there was an effort (I believe from inside Awesome) to do a crossover with DC, which Alan wanted no part of. There was also talk that as times got bad for Awesome, that Rob could sell the company to DC (as Jim Lee later did with Wildstorm). Alan continually pointed out that he wasn’t under contract and could walk away from Awesome whenever he wanted. A lot of these reports are third and fourth hand, so take them with a grain of salt.

Special thanks to Flavio Pessanha for letting me steal the Liefeld post.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Another fanfic Youngblood story

If you've been reading me for a while, you know that I like Awesome fan fiction. It makes the characters feel still alive. I talked about the Awesome Army Online and their Outpost fan fiction digests in posts here and here. My friend Rob Messick was involved with the AAO back in the day and was nice enough to send me the Outposts, which now live here.

In talking with him, he told me he and his artist partner Brian Milligan, had done another Youngblood story that they distributed with their other Youngblood stories as a Youngblood Bootleg at a convention back in the 2000s. He was nice enough to send it to me and even nicer to give me permission to reprint it here.

(He made me promise to say that it was one of the first comics he wrote and it was designed to be given away for free, but if I didn't think it was great, I wouldn't be sharing it. By the way, you can check out his great Facebook page here: facebook.com/AwestruckComics.)

I love the humor to these guys' Youngblood and the irreverent cartoony look and feel. It's just a fun comic and you can tell they have a genuine love of the Awesome and Extreme Universes. Check it out:































In addition, he showed me a couple of the celebrity artist sketches he's gotten to work on Youngblood characters over the years, including this beauty from Art Adams...


 ...and this one from Mark Bagley (which is for sale, incidentally).


Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Brent Anderson... almost artist on Supreme The Return

You might know Brent Anderson from his amazing run on Astro City or even his superlative work on X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills. Well, he also almost worked on Alan Moore's Supreme.

As I mentioned here, there was a report in The Ivory Informer fanzine that Brent Anderson was going to do the art for Supreme: The Return #4. However, he never did and Matthew Dow Smith ended up doing the art instead.

My friend Rob recently asked Anderson about the missed opportunity and was kind enough to pass on the exchange:

Q: Hello! I'm a long time fan. Been a reader of Astro City since the beginning! I've had a question for you for almost 20 years. I remember that you were named as an artist for one of the last few issues of Alan Moore's Supreme run. Unfortunately it never happened. Could you please clarify what went down. Did Rob ask you? Did you do any work on it? What issue was it? And finally why didn't it happen? I appreciate any answer that you can give. Those Alan Moore comics from Awesome are some of my favorites! Thanks!

A: It has been a long time, but I recall I was sent two scripts and asked to pick a favorite between them. They were both excellent and I couldn't immediately choose one over the other. While I was dithering, I guess the series ended, and there was no follow-up. I never did get to have a conversation with Moore. I still have the scripts and refer to them now and again and marvel at how adroit and accomplished a writer Alan Moore really is! I hope this info is useful to you. Best, -B.