Weekly Reading: Supreme: The Return #5

Supreme: The Return #5

Published by Awesome Entertainment in May 2000

The cover:

Title: Suddenly... The Supremium Man

(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.)

Wow, only a two-month wait for an issue of Supreme: The Return this time! Good job guys!

So by this point, Ian Churchill--who does the art for the modern story in this issue--is one of the few regular artists left still working for Awesome. I can imagine that this led him to getting called on to do this issue of Supreme.

It's such an odd change of style to go from the minimalism of Matt Smith last issue to the hyper-detail of Ian Churchill this issue.

Well, at least Alan Moore didn't know this would end this way when he wrote it and both Churchill and Veitch do their best on the story. So let's get into it, shall we?

We start the story in Miskatonic Asylum, where Billy Friday is waiting to use the phone while Jack-A-Dandy uses the phone ahead of him in line and Fake Face sloughs off faces behind him. It's a weird joke about Fake Face's Rock disguise being Winston Churchill that I'm pretty sure I'm just not getting.

Friday finally gets the phone and calls Diana and tells her that he might stop by the office tomorrow when they let him out of the asylum. Diana, on the other end of the phone is barely paying attention, first watching TV and then shocked by Ethan changing into his Supreme costume.

There's some good jokes about Billy's losing out at the Eisner's to Kurt Busiek and being fought over by the Walrus and the Carpenter in the shower room as she quickly gets off the phone with him. And then she's staring at Supreme.

And look, I'm sorry to be this guy, but Churchill's decisions are so far off here:

 

Diana, up until this point, was a character who wore sweaters and flowered 90s vests. Now she's wearing half t-shirts and jogging pants? And Supreme just glowers at her with a costume that now has a sort of half belt? Frankly, if this issue devolved into the pornography version of Supreme, I wouldn't be surprised after this splash page.

Ugh.

They're both a little surprised that she didn't see through the Ethan Crane disguise before, or that others haven't seen through it over the years.

Supreme: "Maybe it's just how things are with me. Maybe it's just, like, part of my story..."

Darius Dax is also wondering about his story, as he discusses Daxia with his Torquemada computer program.

Dax: "It's as if we each have leading roles in some vast, multi-dimensional drama."

And that drama involves him and Supreme.

Dax: "Across a whole string of alternate realities, the common factor is always a version of myself. In eternal conflict with a version of Supreme! ... It's almost as if our conflict was the sole reason for reality to exist..."

The other constant is Supremium, though no supremium still exists in this time, after the results of the Story of the Year. The only time supremium existed outside of the Story of Year's timeloop was from the Supremium Man Mark 1 (Mark 2 being Dax himself when he fused with the isotope). Dax met that Supremium Man back in the 1930s when he was called Master Meteor.

And Rick Veitch flashback! In the teenaged Darius Dax's treehouse lab he builds a device where a teenaged Master Meteor comes through a portal. Meteor tells this "earlier Dax" that he has the power over different colors of supremium: Emerald promotes organic growth, sapphire affects probabilities, ruby transmutes matter, amber alters time, onyx erases time.

But he doesn't have white. It only exists in this small time loop. Dax offers to help him get it from Dr. Erwin Well's lab. They break in and Master Meteor steals a small fragment to fuel his power gem. It also turns his hair white.

Kid Supreme and Radar show up, but Master Meteor, having dealt with an adult Supreme, thinks he can take care of the heroes. He says he can't kill Supreme because it would cause time paradoxes. Eventually he uses the white supremium, weakening Supreme and Radar. But it also starts messing with his other power gem as it tries to fuse with the supremium in Supreme's body and eventually turns violet.

Master Meteor is remembering that he has mental problems and that an adult Supreme had put him in an asylum. To take revenge on adult Supreme he uses his amber gem to go to the future, leaving Dax to be captured by a revived Supreme.

In a weird twist that I still don't really understand, apparently Master Meteor, renamed the Supremium Man Mark 1, returned to plague Supreme many more times. Modern Dax finds his Enigmatron and creates another portal that Master Meteor steps into, clearly having just ported from the end of the flashback story.

I don't know why the colorist made all of the gems the same color, but as always, it's best to not worry over these things. Master Meteor decides to take revenge on Supreme and uses the white supremium to locate the supremium inside Supreme's body tissue.

At the Dazzle offices, Diana and Ethan are talking to Carl about the dummy cover Ethan drew up, which basically matches Supreme #41, but for Omniman. In a sad twist, Carl suggests getting Albert at Comicraft (who lettered this issue) to do the old-fashioned lettering, when it's most likely Alan would have had it be Todd Klein in the script (as he did issue #41).

Ethan isn't sure he wants it to be too retro, as Frank Miller called is "nostalgia with a nose-ring," which is something Frank Miller actually said about Moore's work on Supreme. (It was a compliment, which makes Moore's jabs at Frank in Judgment Day all the more disappointing).

Diana: "I'm thinking more 'nostalgia on acid.' We could explore all those weird ideas... y'know, like the different dimensions, the imps, the super-pets, the bizarre villains..."

Then Master Meteor comes crashing in. Carl wonders why other companies don't get attacked by villains like Dazzle does, but Diana points out that Stan Lee once got attacked by Dr. Doom, which may have been a reference to this.

There's a bit of humor as Ethan says he's feeling faint and has to leave and Diana thinks he's really feeling faint, even though she should know that he's going to turn into Supreme.

Master Meteor says that his white jewel is pulsing, anxious to fuse with someone who has been exposed to supremium before.

Just then, a (for some reason blonde) drugged Billy Friday shows up, noting that something is different (that being the missing wall). Billy volunteers to talk to the "plausibility challenged and differently moral" villain, like he did back in group therapy in Miskatonic. The supremium in Billy's tissue causes him to fuse with master meteor, giving Master Meteor what should be red hair and turns him into a teenager (I guess).

Master Meteor's white gem has burned out, but Billy now wants to be known as the Supremium Man. His thinking and memory clearly off, he says he's a supervillain because he was in the asylum. He uses his amber supremium to go back in time to when there was white supremium, teleporting back to the 1930s and the flashback, creating a timeloop paradox.

That still raises the question of how did the Supremium Man have more adventures battling Supreme if he only exists in this timeloop? Maybe the Enigmatron made a copy of Master Meteor? Sure, why not? Let's go with that.

Ethan and Diana head back to Ethan's apartment and she asks if he has any anxieties about their relationship. But he can't imagine any repercussions coming from their relationship, as we see the sketch of the Omniman cover. Obviously some repercussions are coming.

Next week, we'll get to the last of The Return issues with Veitch's pinnacle: New Jack City!

In issue #6, there was this pinup, which I guess was supposed to be Liefeld's variant cover for this issue:

 

As always, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for more details and references and please help me by letting me know anything I missed that can be added. Thanks!