Weekly Reading: Supreme #43

Supreme #43

Published by Maximum Press in October 1996

The cover:

Title: Obscured by Clouds

(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.)

If you want to know what the late-90s were like as far as comic collecting, just point to this: three issues in and they've already changed the name and the publisher! The name change won't stick, so don't get used to it. Actually, the publisher won't either, but at least that I explained in a post last week.

Anyway, even with all the changes to the cover, Alan Moore and company keep rolling on inside. So let's get to it.

We start with this wonderful splash page at left. Omniman is the name of the Superman knock off that Ethan Crane draws in Supreme. Omniman's death has been engineered by British deconstructionist writer Billy Friday.

This splash page was drawn by Dan Jurgens, who is tweaking his nose at his own work in the sales-exploding Death of Superman arc a few years before at DC Comics. There, Superman died in a fistfight with a space alien named Doomsday.

Moore is tweaking his own nose at the onset of British comics writers who would follow him from Britain after his success on Swamp Thing and Watchmen. If you're into that whole Moore vs. Grant Morrison thing, this can be marked down as one more battle in the last war of Albion.

We get to hear Billy Friday expand on his desire to destroy all the wonderful old marvels of Omniman's silver age, including Omni-Dog's rape ordeal. (Fear not Alan Moore fans, that's the only rape reference I remember for the rest of the series.) There's kind of a lot to unpack there, especially about Moore's involvement with the decision by DC Comics to jettison all the silver age Superman marvels, so I'm going to save that for a post for later this week.

It's pretty funny stuff, and highlights the separation of what's going on in mainstream comics that Moore is pushing so hard against.

Alright, let's get away from the Moore fan references and just read the darn comic.

In the last issue, Supreme started to remember about Radar, the dog Supreme, S-1 and the other robot decoys, and the Citadel, Supreme's secret hideout in the clouds. Supreme sets out to remember what he can as he flies into the clouds.

He quickly finds the Citadel and opens it with a lightning bolt from the friction of rubbing his hands together.

It's been a while since I read this, but I'm not sure I understand the style of the captions on these pages. It's written as though Supreme is a robot, talking about his amnesia as though he had memory banks. It's an odd choice that I'm not sure works entirely.

Supreme wanders through the second trophy gallery in as many issues. But since these trophy galleries are awesome, I'm not complaining. There's Stupendo, the Simian Supreme! And an image from the first broadcast from the Citadel in 1958, which prompts this issue's Rick Veitch flashback.

Supreme had taken his K!ZAM co-workers to the Citadel to do a broadcast. But once there they found evidence that intruders had broken in. The whole plot is basically a wonderfully hokey way to watch as the characters explore the Citadel and see all the various rooms. Apparently, this is based on another wonderfully hokey story: "The Super Key to Fort Superman!" which I'll talk about later this week.

We see the Hell of Mirrors, where he keeps his rogue's gallery confined, as well as the Prism-World of Amazlynth, a planet turned into coherent light. We see his galleries of friends: the Allies and the League of Infinity, and enemies: the League of Infamy! There's even an imaginary menagerie, filled with mythological animals, such as mermaids and dragons, from a place called Myth-Space.

Myth-Space will become important later, as you'll see.

Supreme figures out the mystery, as he realizes that it's just a prank, played by his friends Professor Night and the Allies.

Moore does a wonderful job of educating us about the Citadel, while at the same time, leading us further down his story, as now that we're curious about the Allies, he'll explore more about them in the next issue.

Back in modern time, Supreme is startled by his father! Dumbfounded, Supreme is taken aback even more when his mother and Judy Jordan... no, Judy Crane turn up! But the Cranes are dead and Judy Jordan is an old woman in Littlehaven!

Another Supreme turns up and we get a fist fight Supreme. We also get our first modern take on Radar, who will become a fan favorite.

Interestingly, Radar was introduced last issue as a brown dog whose fur turned white when exposed to Supremium radiation. Somehow he's now become a dalmatian. (Maybe they were afraid to have a white dog that looks exactly like Krypto - Superman's dog?) It's best not to dwell on these things for long, especially when he says dialog such as, "That's it, master! He has his tail between his legs now!"

Poor Radar doesn't last long as the real Supreme hits his head clear off, revealing him to be one of the robot decoy suprematons. Supreme then does the same to S-1, who he realizes did all of this because he's the only decoy capable of free will, setting up his own dollhouse in the sky, never telling the other suprematons that they weren't real.

There's a disturbing little seed in this. If S-1 was the only one capable of free will, he was living with four other suprematons who weren't capable of free will. Granted, they didn't know they weren't real, but even if they did, they had no choice but to live out this sad little scenario.

There's a lovely, heartbreaking moment, where Supreme has to turn off the other robots impersonating his parents and former love.

This is what Moore does that keeps me reading whatever he writes. He's taken the ridiculous, but toned it down, and gave it room to be heartbreaking, too. There will be a nice callback to this Judy suprematon in Moore's second year that is one of my favorite issues.

Anyway, from this scene of the real Supreme mourning the fake Judy Crane we jump to the old woman Judy Jordan and her granddaughter Hilda, thinking about where Supreme is at that very moment.

Then it's on to the letter's page! Fans could write in and interact with the editorial staff, thanks to a design by Todd Klein. (Klein also suggests that Moore may have written all the letters himself--though I tend to doubt it--as that was a practice by some creators back in the day.) 

I wanted to highlight a few questions, as they'll become relevant as we continue these weekly readings. Here's the bit about Curt Swan contributing to Supreme:

Here's something about Extreme Genesis, which I had assumed was what became the upcoming Judgment Day miniseries as after Judgment Day, Moore would write proposals for Youngblood, Prophet, New Men and Glory (but more on those later). However, my friend Rob explained that Liefeld had different plans. Extreme Genesis was going to be a reworked Extreme 3000, which Liefeld had started in Team Youngblod about a Badrock from the future. Extreme Genesis didn't fare any better.

And then they leave us with this nice little in-house ad, because nothing brings readers back to the pages of Supreme like the image of our hero decapitating a super pooch! 

Anyway, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for all of the details that I completely missed.