Weekly Reading: Supreme #55

Supreme #55

Published by Awesome Entertainment in November 1997

The cover:

Title: Silence at Gettysburg

(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.)

I've heard from a number of people who don't like Moore's second year of Supreme as much as his first, and I guess I understand that. The Story of the Year was a single story told in twelve chapters, all leading up to a conclusion. It tied up the whole history of Supreme. And the second year is primarily single-issue stories told in modern times with no flashbacks. It's not supposed to be a graphic novel told in chapters.

But, freed of those constraints, the short stories told in these are some of the best, cleanest, most beautifully illustrated stories of the Supreme run. There's a relaxed, more enjoyable feeling to them. To me, this is what comics are supposed to be.

I don't know. I'm not sure I would love Supreme the way that I do without these stories.

All that is to say that I love the story told in this issue. It comes from a simple idea: would Supreme ever kill someone (or participate in a killing)? And what would it take to get there?

Splashed on the cover of this issue is the line: "Possibly the most controversial story you'll read all year!" Personally, I don't find it all that controversial, but I can see why some might, what with Supreme participating in the killing, but also why. Let's find out if it's as controversial as they thought, shall we?

First off, Todd Klein's credits page:

Let's note that the flashback artist is Gil Kane, whose work on this issue is superb. We've talked about him during the Judgment Day miniseries, but I think his work here is much stronger. But we'll get to that.

We start off with Ethan Crane waking up, turning off the radio alarm and putting a Supreme uniform on under his civilian clothes. But that's not the Supreme uniform we know with the stars and bars from the Confederate States of America flag. But Ethan's too tired to notice.

Let's not ignore the radio, though. We find out they're broadcasting from "Leeville" with Elvis at 60 (outliving his real death at 48) singing "An American Trilogy" (he really did sing the song, as you can hear here).  An American Trilogy is an odd song, as it's a mixture of "Dixie" the confederate anthem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" the marching song of the Union army and "All My Trials" an African American spiritual. (Elvis was a firm believer in covering his bases.)

Here's the lyrics, which are really interesting to consider, when thinking about it's placement at the beginning of this issue:

Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old things they are not forgotten
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Oh I wish I was in Dixie, away, away
In Dixieland I take my stand to live and die in Dixie
Cause Dixieland, that's where I was born
Early Lord one frosty morning
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory hallelujah
His truth is marching on
So hush little baby
Don't you cry
You know your daddy's bound to die
But all my trials, Lord will soon be over

We see Ethan grab a bus, missing the sign above the bus stop that says, "Whites Only." At Dazzle, he asks Carl if things seem odd, but Carl waves him off, to get back to his mopping. Diana comes and sets him straight, telling him not to be so forward and not to talk to "coloreds." Mr. Tate, Diana's father in this timeline, arrives and tells Ethan that, no, they don't work on Omniman, they work on something called the Klansman, which looks as awful as it sounds.

(I assume the artist holding the pages is Chris Sprouse, though it doesn't really look like him.)

Tate asks Ethan if he has the pages of The Klansman battling the Carpetbagger? Diana says that she wants to get home to hear president Jesse Helms' speech.

Ethan excuses himself, "I have to go check something out. I'll see you at the next torchlight rally or something..." He flies off to the Citadel, with the citizens below him shouting, "Look it's the Supremacist! He must be flying over to Stuart City to team up with White Night and his partner Dixie!" obviously this timeline's version of Professor Night and Twilight.

At the Citadel, he has a black robotic servant called a "Ro-boy." Supreme makes his way to the League of Infinity Time Tower and finds it in ruins. Future Woman tells him that Bill Hickok of their own betrayed them and collapsed history in on itself, which is why only the League can remember the real history. Hickok revised history so the South won the Civil War all for the love of a woman.

And then we get Gil Kane's flashback. We find out that Hickok was a scout for the North during the war, where he got the name Wild Bill. And look at that splash page!

After the war, he became marshal of Abilene, TX in 1871. There he met Jessie Hazel, a dance hall girl, at a saloon where he played cards. The owner of the saloon got into a feud with Wild Bill and after a fight over cards, Bill killed the owner. He went crazy with rage and drove all the cowboys out of town. But Jessie spurned Bill, saying, "Just one more damn Yankee who'd helped humiliate her people in that recent, bitter war."

Bill, more and more unhinged, decided to try to win Jessie's heart by winning the war for her people. From 100 years in the future, he brought back technical plans for the South, giving them to General Lee. Confederates smuggled the newly-built device into Washington just before what would be the battle at Gettysburg. (Just a note, as I live near Washington, and it doesn't look anything like that. Also, why are the Southern uniforms blue? Oh well.) The South set off a nuclear bomb, forcing the Union to unconditionally surrender the next day.

Hence the title of this issue. The silence of Gettysburg is because there was no battle fought there. There was no Union victory. Lincoln, dead in an explosion, never issued the Gettysburg Address, the most famous speech in American history, which helped lead to the overwhelming idea that "All men are created equal." It's such a great title.

Back in the ruined Time Tower, the League talks about what they should do. Witch Woman recommends killing Wild Bill earlier in time to stop him from ruining time. She demands they put it to a vote, which they do in a nicely illustrated sequence as we see Witch Woman and Achilles raise their hands. Then Aladdin. Then Giganthro. Only Future Woman and Supreme vote no.

Supreme, flying Future Woman down to the correct time, wonders how Bill's change would have affected other time, such as the world wars. You can hear him trying to justify Bill's killing: "Passing a death sentence would violate my standards supreme, but even so, I have a disturbing feeling that Witch Woman is right!"

They go to 1876, the one from before Bill made the time split, to when he fell in love with Jessie. Witch Woman clothes them in western outfits. Supreme says that he recalls that Bill died in 1976, as he starts to remember how they will change history. They head to the saloon where Bill will have died, but note that they need to get Bill to face away from the door. To distract him, Witch Woman makes Future Woman look like Jessie.

Future Woman wanders to the bar, causing Bill to turn toward her. With tears in her eyes, she says, "Bill, I... I love you, Bill." And of course she does.

Then Achilles walks in and shoots him in the back. All we see are flying playing cards and hear the shot.

They run back through the time door and see that the Tower is back to normal, as is Supreme's costume. They fly up to their headquarters, and Supreme notes that it'll be strange without Bill around. But Future Woman notes that the younger Bill will still be adventuring with them, as he always has.

Supreme returns to his time and finds Dazzle Comics as they should be. There's all kinds of bad puns about Ethan's clock going south and Carl treating them like slaves. Also, Billy Friday still wants his communicator that he left in the Hell of Mirrors back.

Speaking of which, we get an epilogue with the villains in the Hell of Mirrors finding the communicator. The Televillain notes that it looks rather like a television.

But that's for next issue.

As I was saying, I didn't find the issue all that controversial. But considering the Twitter outrage generated recently by the Game of Thrones showrunners announcing they would do a new HBO series about the Confederacy winning the war, maybe I'm not the best one to judge.

Instead, I enjoyed the League of Infinity, as I always do, and Moore's playing with time as a fourth dimension that has already happened. And mostly I just felt the emotion of Future Woman, who didn't want to kill Bill, forced to play the bait so Achilles could kill him in the back. That emotion, tied with the messy morality of what Bill had done and what the League should do to fix it, made for an amazing issue. How much richer this series was by allowing Moore to do single-issue stories like this.

In the back of the issue, the letters page finally returns. There are a couple of nuggets worth touching on.

I'll talk about Alex Ross and his work on Supreme in a post after Supreme: The Return #1 in a couple of weeks.

In question 3, we see that at the time, Eric and Rob were working on putting together a team for The Allies, but hadn't gotten far on it. We'll touch base on this one after Supreme: The Return #1, too.

This is where I say, "As always, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for all of the details and references that I completely missed," except I've run out of the Supreme annotations by Aaron Severson and am now doing them myself. Please help me by letting me know anything I missed that can be added to the annotations. Thanks!