Alex Ross and Supreme: World War Infinity

Alex Ross is a huge Alan Moore fan. Kingdom Come, which was Ross's idea, seemed to be based heavily on Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes proposal. And Alex Ross loved Moore's work on Supreme.

As Eric Stephenson mentioned in one of the letters column in Supreme, the plan had been to have Alex Ross paint a cover for a Supreme issue. Then came the financial crash and that idea went up in smoke. But Ross had painted two images for Supreme before then that are absolutely beautiful.

This one...

...was planned to be used as the cover for the first trade paperback of Moore's run on Supreme, as seen in this ad in Wizard Magazine #81 from May 1998:

It was eventually produced as a poster in another issue of Wizard as Awesome never produced the Supreme trades.

And the other image was this one, which was released as a signed lithograph from Dynamic Forces (there's a rumor that this was intended as a fold-up cover to issue #64):

Note Suprema's costume on this one. This came from her appearances in Youngblood, which suggests that this painting was done in late 1997 or early 1998. Supposedly Moore loved this image and mentioned that it included some Supremes he hadn't even thought of yet!

After Awesome's financial implosion, it was rumored that Ross wanted to do something to revive Supreme. Supposedly, he proposed a series or graphic novel called Supreme: World War Infinity. I assume that it would have taken place after Awesome finished publishing the remaining Alan Moore Supreme scripts, which end on a cliffhanger of (spoiler) all of the Daxes from Daxia (as we'll see in Supreme: The Return #2) about to attack Supreme's Citadel (end spoiler). Supposedly Alan Moore, who was working on his ABC line at this point, would have collaborated, but Ross would have been the primary creator. But I can't get anyone to confirm exactly what it was.

Here's Liefeld explaining the project's genesis:

"Alan and I are talking about a project that would team him with Alex Ross,"

Liefeld says. "It originally stemmed from me calling Alex and Alan in October

and telling them that if I only had a limited amount of dollars left to

publish comics in this business, I would give it to Alex and Alan and ask them

to do a book together. They both thought that was funny, and said they'd think

about it. It turns out that Alex really took to it and has talked to Alan

about it. Through their discussions, Alan really got interested, so it's

something that's in the development stages at the moment. Can't say if it will

happen for sure, but the possibility of it coming together gets better with

each day."

Later it seemed that Ross's Earth X writer Jim Krueger came on as to help with the writing. Here's a bit more about the proposed series (from Greg Williams' wonderful Supreme site), from a webpost in 1999:

ROSS, KRUEGER ON SUPREME

by Rob Allstetter

Awesome Comics' Rob Liefeld said that Earth X collaborators Jim Krueger and

Alex Ross will be working on a Supreme mini-series to be released next year.

"I'm a huge fan of these two gentlemen's work and we're going to be doing a

huge project with them in the middle of 2000," Liefeld said. "Alex Ross and

Jim Krueger are doing a Supreme Prestige Format, three-issue mini-series.

"I can't tell you the title, but Alex called me months ago and said, 'I've

created a hundred new characters for this series.' I said, 'You did not.

Don't tell me a hundred because I'll go repeat that.' He said, 'I'm telling

you, it's a hundred new characters.'

"It's a story I've never seen done in comics before. Alex will be doing the

third book. He's designing all the characters, painting all the promotion

pieces, he's painting all the covers and he's doing the third book of the

series."

Liefeld said he couldn't announce the other artists for the project's first

two issues because the deals haven't been signed yet.

"You're going to see a lot of build-up over the next year," Liefeld said. "I

think of it as our Kingdom Come. I'm extremely flattered that someone as busy

and talented as Alex and Jim have decided to do this for us.

"Alex has shown me some of the sketches and they will blow you away. Alex

continues to cement himself as one of the most versatile creators in the

field and this stuff is going to take him to the next level.

"He said, 'Rob, this will be the most controversial thing I've ever done.'

And I said, 'Well, if you're doing it with me, I can guarantee that will be

the case - whether you want it to or not.'"

Anyway, Ross did a number of sketches, most likely for the proposal, which showed new uniforms for Supreme, Suprema and Radar. In these sketches, Supreme appears much older and balder from Ross' previous paintings, which suggests to me that he planned for quite some time to have passed. But again, who knows.

Awesome published these sketches in something called Alan Moore's Awesome Universe Handbook in April 1999, just before launching Supreme: The Return. The sketches included quotes from Moore's various proposals and whatnot about Supreme and Suprema. Awesome also published the proposals for Glory and Youngblood, but I'll get to those later. Awesome supposedly planned another handbook with more of Moore's proposals, but for whatever reason, decided not to (I can't imagine it sold very well).

Anyway, here are the images from the handbook (and the two variant covers, one of which was digitally painted):

 

Some of the sketches are great (who doesn't love Radar?) and some aren't to my taste, but they certainly point to interesting directions the series could have gone.

The images of Supreme and Radar were so popular that Ross did a real painting, which he released as a lithograph with a statue of the pair:

You can hear Ross describe his design process for Supreme's new costume and for the bust here:



It's funny, I have one of these busts, but it's really hard to explain to people that the only collectible produced for your favorite series is one with a costume that never was explained and came from an unpublished story that nobody really has any grasp of what it was supposed to be about.

Oh well.

Two years after the Awesome Universe Handbook came out, in 2001, just before Awesome went belly-up for good, Awesome licensed a small reprinting (limited to 50 copies) of Supreme #41 in a "Museum Edition" by the Jay Company. They used the same sketch and digitally painted sketch for the covers.

According to the Jay Company website:

Museum Edition Comics are produced by Jay Company comics in the US & are limited edition comic books with new variant artwork covers. Each Museum Edition is crafted on archival museum stock paper & individually hand numbered.

Here's the only information I've been able to find on the edition (thanks for the tip, Brandon), from an auction site:

Supreme Vol. 2 #41 Museum Edition, 1 of 50 (Image, 1996) Condition: NM. Here we have a supremely rare comic. Only 50 of these Museum Editions were produced, and this is number one of the 50! This comic also has the distinction of being scripted by Alan Moore, with his revision of the Supreme mythos. And it's got gorgeous front and back covers by Alex Ross. Museum Editions are not just rare, their extremely high-quality presentation have proved to make them highly sought after collectibles.

Because Alex Ross is a hot artist, later when Checker published the collections of Supreme, they used these sketches of Supreme for the covers. Again, Supreme never appears in this costume nor appears this old in these collections, but why worry about making any kind of sense.

Anyway, all of this was to explain how that Alex Ross variant cover on Supreme: The Return #1 got there. Now you know.