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, October 15, 2025

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme Annual #1

 

Annual #1 came out in May 1995. The plot and pencils are by Keith Giffen. The script is by Giffen's Legion writing partners Tom & Mary Bierbuaum. The inks are by Charles Adlard. We're told on the credits page that this story takes place before Supreme #1.

They didn't really need to tell us that since the very first line of the story is that this occurred probably around 1960. Supreme finds a world that has been torn apart by an automated mining operation. 

Supreme finds a little sentient crystal life form calling for help, and--this being the Biblical quoting Supreme of Legend of Supreme--starts quoting scripture to himself to help. 


He destroys the mining machine and flies off. Unbeknownst to him, he was being recorded.

We cut to a world filled with strange and interesting plants. A servant approaches "Noble Chi" and tells him about Supreme destroying the mining operation. Chi then calls in someone who can deal with Supreme.


On an alien world, we a big armored guy kill the last warrior of a world, and mostly be bored. Afterward, he transforms back into a human, who we learn is Herr Vergessen, and goes to visit Chi, who hires him to kill Supreme. 


Vergessen knows Supreme and we flash back to WWII where Supreme captured him and seemingly killed him with his laser eyes. But apparently, Vergessen is much harder to kill.

Vergessen tracks Supreme to a planet of commerce and promises to kill Supreme and parade his head around on a pole. It's nice when old friends get to catch up.


Vergessen explodes and as the smoke clears, we see he has become a big rock guy. They fight some and then Vergessen becomes a crystal creature, like the lifeform Supreme found on the mining planet. They fight some more and Supreme quotes some scripture. 

Eventually they take the fight to space with Vergessen becoming electricity, driving Supreme into a star. Even that can't kill Supreme. So Vergessen decides to transform into the one thing in Supreme's mind that he thinks can kill him. But as Vergessen transforms, he realizes too late his error... 


Supreme thinks nothing can kill him. So Vergessen transforms into nothing and is gone.

Supreme decides that he will go after the man who hired Vergessen and on his planet, Chi receives the message: "Soon. -Supreme" And then we get the caption "Not quite the end!"


I wanted to like this story and I get for the clever twist they were trying to go for with Vergessen becoming nothing, but it needed another pass or two on the script to make the twist feel earned. 

Anyway, the story will continue in a future issue of Supreme. But this isn't it for the annual. We get a backup story by Len Wein, penciled by Shannon Denton, inked by Norm Rapmund and lettered by Kurt Hathaway.

Back in France in 1943, Supreme is tearing apart some German soldiers when Superpatriot, Glory and Die Hard show up to recruit him. They help Supreme out but of course, Supreme is never grateful. They still ask if he'll join The Allies. Supreme scoffs but when he finds out that they're on a mission to liberate a town and fight a bunch of Nazis, Supreme is in.


They go and start fighting the Nazis and helping the townspeople when Supreme goes up, rips some bombs off an overflying plane and drops them on the town, killing Nazis and civilians alike. 


When Glory tries to rebuke him, he grabs her and kisses her before flying off. And The Allies decide they don't need him.

The end.

Oof. That was pretty bad. It's so weird how the Supreme writers are all over the map on Supreme in WWII. Was he a hero? Was he a ruthless killer? Did Glory and he like each other? Was he an ass and Glory hated him? There is no consistency. Then again, Giffen is writing his own version of the character who is completely different from the way Hathaway wrote him. It's very weird and frustrating.

There was talk of Wein doing more Allies stories, but they never came to fruition, and if this is what they would be like, good riddance.

We then get a couple of pinups and we're done. 

 

 

Monday, October 13, 2025

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #28

 


Supreme issue 28 came out in May 1995. Gary Carlson was the writer. Penciled by Joe Bennett. Inked by Norm Rapmund. Lettered and associate editored by Kurt Hathaway. There's also a variant cover by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti.

Picking right up from the last issue, Amnesia Supreme rushes Original Kid Supreme to the hospital for his heart attack. The hospital staff is too busy to help Amnesia Supreme's friend, so he sets the nurse's desk on fire and uses his vision rays to cut out the cancer cells in another patient, to free up a doctor. 

 

The doctor tells him Original Kid Supreme is in rough shape, so Amnesia Supreme tells him to try to keep him alive long enough to get help from the one person who might be able to help... New Kid Supreme. He finds New Kid Supreme on the Washington Monument and guilts him into helping Original Kid Supreme.


Meanwhile, at Cor-Tek HQ, a scientist is overseeing the transfer of Dexter Cortex's personality from a computer into the brain of a lobotomized man. However, once he's in, he complains of pain and the body bleeds out. Dexter and the scientist agree that he needs a body that is either super strong or can regenerate.

Cut to the hospital, where Glory randomly shows up to see Original Kid Supreme. She's also shocked to see Amnesia Supreme, who she immediately recognizes as Supreme. He explains about the amnesia and she says that the man she loved has been gone for a long time.

 

Okay, hold up. I've read all of Supreme and Glory Days and while they've said that Supreme and Glory were a thing, we've never actually seen it. Supreme has pretty much always been a jerk. This is such a weird comic.

A doctor shows up to take over the case and we find out he's the Baptist. He turns Original Kid Supreme into Blackthornn (the extra N is for naughty) when New Kid Supreme shows up. Baptist has two Blackheart creatures fight him. As they fight, Glory and Amnesia Supreme join the brawl.

 

While Glory and Amnesia Supreme fight the Blackhearts, New Kid Supreme tries to get Original Kid Supreme to reject the Baptist. Original Kid Supreme, in a daze, thinks Kid Supreme is Real Supreme, takes a portion of New Kid Supreme's powers and fights back against the Baptist. 


The Baptist transports away and everyone just laughs about how Original Kid Supreme used to use his x-ray vision to check out Glory back in the WWII days. 

 
What better way to end a story than by laughing at inappropriate voyeurism! Ha ha!

Friday, October 10, 2025

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #27

Supreme issue 27 came out in April 1995. Gary Carlson was the writer. Penciled by Joe Bennett. Inked by Norm Rapmund. Lettered and associate editored by Kurt Hathaway

We start the issue with Amnesia Supreme and New Kid Supreme watching Original Flavor Kid Supreme's home movies of Real Supreme dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. 

New Kid Supreme is bored and takes off, running into Blackheart, one of the cult guys, who feeds off hate and anger. He absorbs Kid Supreme into his cape, kind of like Cloak from Cloak & Dagger.


Back with Original Kid Supreme, Amnesia Supreme learns a bit more about Louise Masters and Bobby Nelson, two of Supreme's friends who got killed by Grizlock after Supreme left Earth. Original Kid Supreme makes a remark about how he sometimes wished he was a girl so Supreme liked him the way he liked Glory and Louise. But Amnesia Supreme decides to avoid that conversation.

He asks about how Original Kid Supreme was able to borrow power from Supreme and they try to do it again, but no luck, leaving Original Kid Supreme feeling angry and forlorn. He never married (shocker) and became a comic writer for Supreme comics. But when Supreme returned and licensed the comic to a new publisher (how did we not get that story?), Original Kid Supreme was fired. 

 

Then New Kid Supreme shows up, cold and nearly comatose. Amnesia Supreme flies off to find out what happened and when Original Kid Supreme touches New Kid Supreme, he is able to access the power he couldn't from Amnesia Supreme.


That's when Blackheart shows up and promises to give to Original Kid Supreme his heart's desire, to be bigger, better and badder than Supreme. He then finds Amnesia Supreme and they start fighting, because Original Kid Supreme wants to be the only Supreme.


New Kid Supreme wakes up, bound and without powers.

As the fight is going on, Blackheart reaches into Amnesia Supreme and offers to tell him who he really is. But instead, Amnesia Supreme reaches into Blackheart and rips out his heart before smashing it.


New Kid Supreme can now take back his powers and Original Kid Supreme loses all of his and starts falling from where he was flying. But New Kid Supreme finds him and realizes he's having a heart attack and takes him to the hospital while the remains of Blackheart turn into dust.


It's kind of funny to see the first Supreme with the triangle logo as opposed to the square or trapezoid one. Not surprising it's from a design by Joe Bennett, who will do a redesign on Supreme for Moore's run.

Carlson's run as writer has been vaguely interesting so far, though I'm not sure I'd call it a great improvement over Hathaway's. Amnesia Supreme isn't really all that interesting and the mystery of is he or isn't he the true Supreme is only vaguely compelling. That said, I do appreciate him picking up on some of the dangling threads of Supreme's past.

Only thirteen(ish) issues left.