Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Gladiator/Supreme

Gladiator/Supreme came out in March 1997. Written by Keith Giffen. Penciled be Ed Benes and Carlos Mota. Inked by Wellington Dias, Rene Micheletti, and Joe Pimentel.

Was there anyone dying to read a pre-Moore Supreme versus Gladiator of the Shi'Ar comic? Probably not. But here we are. Despite this coming out the same month as Supreme 47, with Moore fully reworking Supreme, this one shot features Giffen's Bible-spouting murderous space Supreme who pops into the comics every now and again.

The issue starts with Gladiator investigating a destroyed Shi'Ar garrison outside the primitive world of Denuvi-7. Someone with extreme power destroyed this place and Gladiator gets a black box to try to figure it out.

On Denuvi-7, Supreme is hanging out when he realizes the people of the planet are making idols of their god. 

Deciding to check it out, he also spouts some exposition about how he destroyed the garrison because he didn't want them subjugating the innocent. He gets down to the people, who can't understand him, but he sees their idol, and it looks like him.

Meanwhile Gladiator is reviewing the black box and conclude only two beings could have done it: either that alien who came to earth as a baby or Supreme. (A nice little Superman joke for you.) They warn Gladiator that the people on this planet worship a figure like Supreme, so if he's not careful, he could taint the entire planet against the Shi'Ar. They also don't want Gladiator to become a new idol for the population.

Supreme goes to a church and realizes the priests want Supreme to be their new false god, which he's not having. 

So he goes nuts and starts killing the priests and destroying the church when Gladiator shows up. And this being the last pre-Moore Supreme comic, they do what they do and fight for pretty much the rest of the issue. 

As they do, they destroy parts of the planet, so the people turn on the priests who told them to worship Supreme. To give credit where it is due. Giffen tells this without any understandable dialog, which is actually some really clever sequential storytelling.  

 

Back to the fighting, Supreme ends up crushing Gladiator into unconsciousness. He checks Gladiator's pulse and can't find one and assumes Gladiator is dead. So he flies off. Gladiator then wakes up and explains that the Shi'Ar don't have pulses or heartbeats. 

We end the story with the Shi'Ar opening relations with the inhabitants of Denuvi-7 and the population replacing their faith in Supreme with their faith in the Shi'Ar.

There's almost enough there to be an interesting comic, but just not quite. But it doesn't matter because Moore was already well on his way to turning Supreme into something much better, 

So let's end this there. Pre-Moore Supreme was often terribly written, had all kinds of continuity problems, lacked any kind of interesting or consistent backstory or characterization, and never added up even when Jim Valentino tried to retcon the whole thing. People used to ask me if after reading Moore's version, they should read the early issues. I always said I didn't know, as I hadn't read them. Well, the answer is a lot more firm now. But still, it was a fun little trip through the early 1990s Image Comics boom. But I'm also glad to return to much better comics. 

Thanks for coming on this trip through time with me. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop them int he comments. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Lady Supreme 1-2 and Asylum 10

I'm not going to bother with the individual issues for Lady Supreme, either. Lady Supreme is Probe. At the end of Supreme 40, she has decided to stay on Other Earth and become the hero for that planet. Terry Moore of Strangers in Paradise was lured in to write the series while Craig Wagner and Deodato Studios (Mike Deodato Jr. and his father Deodato Borges) handled the pencils. The issues came out from May-August 1996. 

The series opens with Lady Coffin (gee, I wonder if she's going to be a villain), who runs Coffin Industries by shooting her underlings who don't have good performance reviews. 

 

Lady Supreme decides to intervene (after watching Lady C shoot an underling) and give Coffin a warning that she's watching.

She then flies off and violently stops a back alley robbery before Glory shows up and says Lady S is supposed to be making a better example of herself. 

Lady S asks why she cares and Glory reveals that she is Lady Supreme's mother. 

The second issue introduces a mercenary named Ryder tracking Lady S. for Lady C. He figures out Lady S.'s secret identity but refuses to give it to Lady C.

We see a bit of the reporters introduced in Supreme but they don't get a ton to do more than warn of an impending rain storm that drops fire. Out of the storm comes another super powered woman, Manassa, who demands to face Lady Supreme.

By this point, they realized that the other Moore wrote out Probe/Lady Supreme in issue 41. So, much like with Kid Supreme, they ran the last issue in Asylum, this time in issue 10 in December 1996.

The last issue has the reporters see the terrible results of the fire storm and go see the fight between Manassa and Lady Supreme. After another long and pointless fight, Lady Supreme uses Manassa's sword and kills her, but not before she reveals that Lady C. summoned her to kill Lady S. 

And that's where it ended. It wasn't a good story and Terry Moore never got to write any interesting character moments that he's known for. So, I can't say I was sorry to see it go. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Kid Supreme 1-3 and Asylum 9

 

I'm not going to bother with the individual issues for Kid Supreme because frankly, I just don't care that much. Kid Supreme was a mostly empty character in Supreme, having randomly gotten powers from Supreme while on a field trip to Washington, DC, and then the field trip just seemingly continued for the rest of his time in the series. For some reason, he was given his own series, plotted and penciled Dan Fraga and scripted by Eric Stephenson. The issues came out from March-July 1996.

The series follows Danny Fuller, now living with his grandparents, who know about his powers. He is trying to live a normal life, skateboarding and playing football, but falls for rich girl Tiffany, who happens to be the daughter of a crime boss. 

Unsurprisingly, Kid Supreme interferes with the crime boss's business and he decides to have Kid Supreme killed.

 

The series wanted to be a lot like Spider-Man, and since this was an Extreme comic, it lazily just ripped off Spider-Man. There's a scientist teacher take a formula and become a lizard guy called Reptyle. And there's an electricity guy called Kilowatt. 

 

There's a fun 1990s energy to it, even as it is really dumb. 

Fraga and Stephenson thought they were continuing the series and seemed to be caught by surprise when Moore took the character out of circulation by leaving him in the Supremacy in Supreme 41. There was no issue 4, despite the story and art having been completed.

Since December 1995, Maximum Press, one of Liefeld's other comics goup, had been printing an anthology called Asylum. It was just random stuff, often leftover parts from comics that were being stopped. So, in issue 9 in November 1996, Asylum published the story that would have been Kid Supreme 4.

 

The issue begins with the aftereffects of Kid Supreme's fight in issue 3, but then randomly he is abducted from his bed and dragged to the Supremacy. Unlike in issue 41, he doesn't want to stay and escapes through Supreme's Golden Gateway back to Earth. 

I guess Stephenson wasn't too happy with how Moore had written out his character and Stephenson didn't even bother to try to keep continuity.

He seems down about the whole situation until he remembers that he has a party to go to and everything is fine again. He soon runs into a Sandman-like bad guy, so yeah, thank goodness we didn't leave this character in the Supremacy.

Kid Supreme would later turn up Brigade 1 and occasionally in comics after Awesome ended, but he was pretty much pointless from the start.