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.

Weekly Reading: Supreme #43

Supreme #43

Published by Maximum Press in October 1996

The cover:

Title: Obscured by Clouds

(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.)

If you want to know what the late-90s were like as far as comic collecting, just point to this: three issues in and they've already changed the name and the publisher! The name change won't stick, so don't get used to it. Actually, the publisher won't either, but at least that I explained in a post last week.

Anyway, even with all the changes to the cover, Alan Moore and company keep rolling on inside. So let's get to it.

We start with this wonderful splash page at left. Omniman is the name of the Superman knock off that Ethan Crane draws in Supreme. Omniman's death has been engineered by British deconstructionist writer Billy Friday.

This splash page was drawn by Dan Jurgens, who is tweaking his nose at his own work in the sales-exploding Death of Superman arc a few years before at DC Comics. There, Superman died in a fistfight with a space alien named Doomsday.

Moore is tweaking his own nose at the onset of British comics writers who would follow him from Britain after his success on Swamp Thing and Watchmen. If you're into that whole Moore vs. Grant Morrison thing, this can be marked down as one more battle in the last war of Albion.

We get to hear Billy Friday expand on his desire to destroy all the wonderful old marvels of Omniman's silver age, including Omni-Dog's rape ordeal. (Fear not Alan Moore fans, that's the only rape reference I remember for the rest of the series.) There's kind of a lot to unpack there, especially about Moore's involvement with the decision by DC Comics to jettison all the silver age Superman marvels, so I'm going to save that for a post for later this week.

It's pretty funny stuff, and highlights the separation of what's going on in mainstream comics that Moore is pushing so hard against.

Alright, let's get away from the Moore fan references and just read the darn comic.

In the last issue, Supreme started to remember about Radar, the dog Supreme, S-1 and the other robot decoys, and the Citadel, Supreme's secret hideout in the clouds. Supreme sets out to remember what he can as he flies into the clouds.

He quickly finds the Citadel and opens it with a lightning bolt from the friction of rubbing his hands together.

It's been a while since I read this, but I'm not sure I understand the style of the captions on these pages. It's written as though Supreme is a robot, talking about his amnesia as though he had memory banks. It's an odd choice that I'm not sure works entirely.

Supreme wanders through the second trophy gallery in as many issues. But since these trophy galleries are awesome, I'm not complaining. There's Stupendo, the Simian Supreme! And an image from the first broadcast from the Citadel in 1958, which prompts this issue's Rick Veitch flashback.

Supreme had taken his K!ZAM co-workers to the Citadel to do a broadcast. But once there they found evidence that intruders had broken in. The whole plot is basically a wonderfully hokey way to watch as the characters explore the Citadel and see all the various rooms. Apparently, this is based on another wonderfully hokey story: "The Super Key to Fort Superman!" which I'll talk about later this week.

We see the Hell of Mirrors, where he keeps his rogue's gallery confined, as well as the Prism-World of Amazlynth, a planet turned into coherent light. We see his galleries of friends: the Allies and the League of Infinity, and enemies: the League of Infamy! There's even an imaginary menagerie, filled with mythological animals, such as mermaids and dragons, from a place called Myth-Space.

Myth-Space will become important later, as you'll see.

Supreme figures out the mystery, as he realizes that it's just a prank, played by his friends Professor Night and the Allies.

Moore does a wonderful job of educating us about the Citadel, while at the same time, leading us further down his story, as now that we're curious about the Allies, he'll explore more about them in the next issue.

Back in modern time, Supreme is startled by his father! Dumbfounded, Supreme is taken aback even more when his mother and Judy Jordan... no, Judy Crane turn up! But the Cranes are dead and Judy Jordan is an old woman in Littlehaven!

Another Supreme turns up and we get a fist fight Supreme. We also get our first modern take on Radar, who will become a fan favorite.

Interestingly, Radar was introduced last issue as a brown dog whose fur turned white when exposed to Supremium radiation. Somehow he's now become a dalmatian. (Maybe they were afraid to have a white dog that looks exactly like Krypto - Superman's dog?) It's best not to dwell on these things for long, especially when he says dialog such as, "That's it, master! He has his tail between his legs now!"

Poor Radar doesn't last long as the real Supreme hits his head clear off, revealing him to be one of the robot decoy suprematons. Supreme then does the same to S-1, who he realizes did all of this because he's the only decoy capable of free will, setting up his own dollhouse in the sky, never telling the other suprematons that they weren't real.

There's a disturbing little seed in this. If S-1 was the only one capable of free will, he was living with four other suprematons who weren't capable of free will. Granted, they didn't know they weren't real, but even if they did, they had no choice but to live out this sad little scenario.

There's a lovely, heartbreaking moment, where Supreme has to turn off the other robots impersonating his parents and former love.

This is what Moore does that keeps me reading whatever he writes. He's taken the ridiculous, but toned it down, and gave it room to be heartbreaking, too. There will be a nice callback to this Judy suprematon in Moore's second year that is one of my favorite issues.

Anyway, from this scene of the real Supreme mourning the fake Judy Crane we jump to the old woman Judy Jordan and her granddaughter Hilda, thinking about where Supreme is at that very moment.

Then it's on to the letter's page! Fans could write in and interact with the editorial staff, thanks to a design by Todd Klein. (Klein also suggests that Moore may have written all the letters himself--though I tend to doubt it--as that was a practice by some creators back in the day.) 

I wanted to highlight a few questions, as they'll become relevant as we continue these weekly readings. Here's the bit about Curt Swan contributing to Supreme:

Here's something about Extreme Genesis, which I had assumed was what became the upcoming Judgment Day miniseries as after Judgment Day, Moore would write proposals for Youngblood, Prophet, New Men and Glory (but more on those later). However, my friend Rob explained that Liefeld had different plans. Extreme Genesis was going to be a reworked Extreme 3000, which Liefeld had started in Team Youngblod about a Badrock from the future. Extreme Genesis didn't fare any better.

And then they leave us with this nice little in-house ad, because nothing brings readers back to the pages of Supreme like the image of our hero decapitating a super pooch! 

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