Weekly Reading: Supreme #56

Supreme #56

Published by Awesome Entertainment in February 1998

The covers:

Title: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side...

(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.)

This is it guys - the breaking point. The beginning of the end. This two-parter that begins with this issue is the last story Chris Sprouse will do. After this issue was published, Moore stops working for Awesome, leaving behind several scripts and proposals that Liefeld and company will release intermittently at best.

1998 was a very cruel year.

At least this is a fun two-parter, so we can go out with a smile. So, let's get into it. We get two covers for this issue, as Awesome was doing a company-wide set of variants by Ed McGuinness doing his sort of chibi versions of characters (as we saw on Judgment Day: Aftermath). The other cover shows that Chris Sprouse finally figured out how to draw Suprema's costume.

Then we have the last of Todd Klein's credits pages:

We start the story with two suprematons getting us up-to-date on everything. Supreme is off with Diana; Suprema is off with Twilight in Star City, Radar is off in space. Amalynth is complaining about being in close proximity to Optilux, who turned them into living light. All of the suprematons are getting upgrades in consciousness to match the former S-1, now Talos, and might need a bill of rights, though maybe they don't want consciousness.

In the background, we see the Televillain take over all the screens before appearing in person. There's a fun chase as the suprematons talk in robot while chasing the Televillain: "Rhetorical question: Isn't that the Tellevillain?"

They chase him to the Hell of Mirrors, where he has let out the other villains. In addition to the Tellevillain, Korgo, Shadow Supreme, Sentinel and Slaver Ant (a bug woman) all escape, with Slaver Ant telling us that The End refused to go with them. Sentinel quickly takes off (we'll see him later in the pages of Youngblood) leaving the others to decide what to do. The Televillain and Slaver Ant find Optilux's prison, which can only spell trouble.

We cut to Ethan and Diana in Diana's apartment, where she's about to turn on Friends. In 1998, it would have been in its fourth season, having become quite the hit by this point. As they watch, the Televillain turns up on the show and guns down Monica and Rachel, threatening the TV networks that unless they pay him, he's going to kill their ratings.

"Pay up by tomorrow or I whack Commander Picard and the fruity robot guy!" he says. (That's Captain Picard to you!)

What a wonderfully ridiculous comicbook villain scheme.

Ethan goes to the phone to call the Kendalls to check on Sally. Taylor Kendall replies that she was there taking a look at Linda's new Twilight costume, but left to meet Radar at the Citadel.

Just a note on that middle panel. So, Twilight, who mentioned in Judgment Day that she thought modern superheroines had an interesting look, has updated hers. Gone is the innocent "Robin" sort of look for a leather and chains look that looks like something the Comedian might appreciate. Also, isn't it a little odd how Taylor is just sort of sitting there watching, with Linda's civilian clothes tossed off to the side. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

Ethan tells Diana that he's going to alert Supreme and tells her to stay inside. As he leaves, the television reports that the cast of Friends were fine, but the fictional ones on the show were not. Just another little touch of Moore suggesting the power of story over reality.

Back at the Citadel, the Tellevillain joins Slaver Ant, Korgo and the lion-headed alien executioner Vor-Em, who also left the prison. They decide to go cause some mischief, leaving the Shadow Supreme to kill suprematons.

A little later, Suprema flies down and sees Supreme in the distance and starts explaining how ridiculous Twilight's new costume is. But as she gets closer, she realizes that it isn't Supreme, but the Shadow Supreme covered in blood with Radar's body tossed aside. Suprema isn't the only one horrified by this.

Shadow Supreme does a number on Sally, threatening her with death and far worse, all because she helped wo kill Darius Dax, the Shadow Supreme's creator. This part goes on too long and probably goes too far in my opinion, but has to so that when Supreme shows up and says, "Leave my sister alone!" while giving him a good pounding, it's awesome.

The heroes are shellshocked by the death of Radar. They realize they need to recapture all of the villains before things get even more out of hand. Suprema volunteers to take the others if Supreme will handle the Shadow Supreme. Supreme tries to think back to why he created the Hell of Mirrors in the first place, which leads us into a Rick Veitch flashback!

Supreme is babysitting Judy Jordan's niece and nephew, Janey and Jimmy, and they want to know where the mirrors came from. Supreme explains that the mirrors are a barrier of hard light between our world and another. In the home of a vanished mathematician named Dodgson, he found a mirror that led into Lewis Carroll's Wonderland from the Alice books.

A literary world that was real. Of course.

Another thing to consider about this. Professor Night has a pair of villains, the Walrus and the Carpenter, whom we've seen a little bit of here and there. Up until this point, everyone who thought about it believed they were themed after the Alice villains, like the Mad Hatter in Batman books. But they're not. They're the real Walrus and carpenter!

Moore's idea of a shared literary universe in the Awesome universe just got a lot bigger.

Anyway, Supreme used the technology to construct his mirror prison. Supreme captured Korgo the space tyrant and Vor-Em and put them there. He tells Janey and Jimmy that he added the Shadow Supreme in 1958 and then the Televillain. Slaver Ant was added later after she tried to steal children and raise them as servants.

There's an interesting cut away to the statues of the League of Infinity in the Citadel, showing a smiling Wild Bill next to a smiling Witch Woman. Obviously this is intended to remind us that Bill died last issue and that Witch Woman was the one who suggested it. It's that interplay of the old and innocent with the modern and experience that makes Supreme work so well, even just casually as this image is.

Supreme tells about a time the Supremium Man II tricked his way out and the time the backward Supreme Emerpus tried to un-jail the prisoners as he would do in his own world. Jimmy asks why Supreme doesn't execute them, but Supreme says it's against his oath.

Back in the modern story, Supreme goes to confront the Shadow Supreme while Suprema puts out a fire he started. The Tellevillain goads her into chasing him as he leaps from TV antenna to TV antenna. He tells her that Korgo and Vor-Em headed to Washington while Slaver Ant is checking out maternity hospitals. Meanwhile, he set up a guest act in the form of Optilux at a Bon Jovi concert.

What happens next? Well, for those of us following along back then, we had to wait more than a year to find out. You just have to wait a week.

In the letters section, there was this little bit from a letter that caught my eye:

 

If sales were weak for Supreme and the other Awesome titles, you can see why an investor might pull out of the company. 

Drat.

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!