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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

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Superduperman!

EC Comics, best known for their horror stories, such as Tales from the Crypt, also gave birth to Mad Magazine. In 1953 in Mad Magazine issue 4, Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood created Superduperman, a parody of Superman and Captain Marvel that was an instant success and helped propel the magazine to decades of success.

Here's the 8-page story:








From Wikipedia: Until Mad #4, the magazine had not been one of EC's top-selling titles, but "Superduperman" revolutionized their format and led to sales success. In his book Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels: A History of Graphic Narratives, Robert Petersen observes, "In April 1953, Mad #4 included a parody of Superman, 'Superduperman,' which originated a new formula that would significantly raise the popularity of the new magazine. Instead of broadly lampooning a genre of comics, 'Superduperman' levelled its sights on a specific and recognizable comic character." National, the owners of Superman's copyright, threatened to file a lawsuit over the parody. EC and National shared the same lawyer, who advised Gaines to quit publishing parodies. While Gaines was weighing this advice, Kurtzman located a legal precedent that backed his and Mad's right to publish. Gaines hired the author of that precedent to write a brief substantiating EC's position, but the companies' shared lawyer disagreed, siding with National over EC. Gaines consulted a third lawyer, who advised Gaines to simply ignore the threat and continue publishing parodies. National never filed suit, and this legal cover establishing the basis for Kurtzman's new editorial direction became the bedrock of Mad's humor.

Most likely, Image/Extreme/Maximum would have used this parody protection should DC have sued them over all the Superman similarities in Supreme. Of course, DC had other ideas in mind, but I'll get to that much later.

The important part is the significance Superduperman had on a young Alan Moore:

"I remember being so knocked out by the 'Superduperman' story that I immediately began thinking – I was 11, remember, so this would have been purely a comics strip for my own fun – but I thought maybe I could do a parody story about Marvelman. This thing is fair game to my 11-year-old mind. I wanted to do a super-hero parody story that was as funny as 'Superduperman,' but I thought it would be better if I did it about an English superhero."

That was the genesis for Marvelman/Miracleman. Eventually, it would lead to Watchmen, too: "We wanted to take Superduperman 180 degrees – dramatic, instead of comedic."

The idea of using his own imagination to create stories, even for characters that were already being published. It was a magical idea!

6 comments:

  1. Shared lawyer? That seems like an incredible conflict of interests. I'm glad EC continued publishing parodies. Any IP that's worth publishing is worth poking fun at.

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    1. Right? Good thing Gaines decided to get another opinion (the "oh, just ignore it" opinion). It's funny because now parody protection is taught in law and journalism schools regularly as one of the "fair uses." No one would even think twice about it today.

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  2. Since this was one of the influences in Alan Moore's MIRACLEMAN and WATCHMEN, both in the 1980s, it just goes to show you: Inspiration can come from anywhere, even at the most unlikeliest of sources.

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    1. Exactly. And also, inspiration doesn't lead you to copy what you're inspired by but to use it to shoot you off in a different direction.

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