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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

Friday, July 14, 2017

Comics' "persecuted legends"

Moore has gone on record about how EC Comics were comic book rebels. He has a great quote from his Writing for Comics essay:

"If there was no point to being offensive (as with a high number of comedians who frequent the average working men's club), then the perpetrator will either be squeezed out of business or be relegated to working in bottom-of-the-heap sleaze pits where nothing more than vulgarity is demanded. Alternately, if there was some integrity behind all the outrage, the perpetrators become persecuted legends with a fanatical cult following and generally exercise tremendous influence upon the artists that come after them. In comedy, Lenny Bruce is an example. In music, perhaps the Sex Pistols. In comic books, EC would fit the bill."
The Comics Cube had a good essay on the whole EC Comics era here, if you want to know more. But one point made there that I want to make here is that EC were as progressive in their tackling of social issues as Moore duplicated in Supreme. There's a famous ending to the story "Judgement Day" in Weird Fantasy where an astronaut refuses to allow a planet of segregated robots into the community of planets. The story ends:


It does make superheroes look small, doesn't it?

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