Welcome

So a long time ago (the mid-1990s), the greatest writer in comics agreed to take over the writing duties for Image Comics' Supreme. He would radically reshape the character, the book, and due to forces beyond his control, a whole comic book universe. And it led to an award-winning run of comics, three additional titles (among several proposed) and ultimately led to the genesis of Moore's much better known America's Best Comics. And then it all went out of print and was forgotten by way too many.

Having gathered quite a bit of information about Moore's Supreme and Awesome runs, I decided to create a home for the forgotten Awesome. Over the course of a year, I put it all together here.

Each week I did a main "Weekly Reading" post that was a read-through of that issue. I followed that up with a couple of other posts about topics from that Weekly Reading or whatever else I came up with to talk about. You'll find the lost Youngbloods in the Youngblood section and the fan-edit of the last Supreme in After Awesome.

Below is the archive of posts broken up by book. Thanks for checking the site out!

Book 1: Supreme: The Story of the Year

Book 1: Judgment Day

Book 3: Supreme: The Return

Book 4: Youngblood

Book 5: Glory

Book 6: After Awesome

Book 7: 1963

Book 8: Night Raven

Book 9: A Small Killing

Friday, December 1, 2017

The Allies (or are they?)

While Moore was working for Awesome, he wrote a proposal for an Allies series, which never saw the light of day. It was going to feature Supreme, Glory, Professor Night, Roman, Die Hard, Spacehunter and The Fisherman. I can only assume the stories would have been similar to the one that appeared in Judgment Day: Aftermath.

Strangely, in 1999, long after Moore had left, Awesome announced an Allies series written by Eric Stephenson based on Moore's story ideas. They even had an ad for it in the back of Supreme: The Return #1:


Of course, those weren't the characters from Moore's suggestions. Here's what Stephenson said about working on it:

"The Allies is going to be a lot of fun. I'm trying to stay true to what Alan laid down for these characters as far as the groundwork goes, but at the same time, I'm not slavishly imitating his style or approach. I don't even know if it's possible to do that! At any rate, the line up for the new team is Die Hard, Supreme, Glory, Badrock, Spellcaster, Thor and Fighting American and the first issue deals more or less with how this new team is assembled and how they deal with their first threat. An important thing to note about the team is that it's essentially a group of seven heavy hitters. These guys will be handling huge, larger than life crises in a way that teams like Youngblood just plain couldn't."

And here's what Rob Liefeld had to say about it in November 1998 in Newsarama:

"While the majority of titles that Awesome has published have catered to the
fantasy/sci-fi audience we want to get back into the super-hero business in a
big way and THE ALLIES is our ticket," said Liefeld. "Alan has created a great
batch of new super-villains in Dr. Drang, The Killer Mist, The Basilisk, and
Florax The Dominator! This team boasts what I believe to be the most powerful
line up in comics history. It's not often you get the Thunder God of Myth
standing next to the most powerful man in the universe. The stories will be on
a grand scale with epic confrontations, but we know that the characterization
is what will bring the readers back. Eric and I collaborated on what many
agree to be the best work of my career in YOUNGBLOOD #6-10 and a few TEAM
YOUNGBLOODs, and this work will easily top those efforts. I'll be doing the
first four issues of THE ALLIES and then I'll begin work on the RE:GEX movie
and begin working on a new RE:GEX mini-series. THE ALLIES will be a big book
for Awesome and will open up a whole new field of opportunities for us."
Newsarama later asked More about the Allies:
"Allies comes from a bunch of very, very short, very brief synopses that
I did for Awesome a couple of years ago," Moore says. "The ad that ran in
Previews is actually completely out of date and has noting to do with the
comic that is going to be coming out. As Rob explained it to me that was the
art they had, on hand. The team I wrote was made up of completely different
characters."

Also, the creator credit will be slightly different than originally reported.
"I've got no objection to Rob using any stuff of mine that he paid for," Moore
says. "However, I told him that I'd prefer if he downplayed the "stories by
Alan Moore" aspect because my input if anything was very skeletal outlines.
But Rob assures me that nevertheless, they are bigger, stronger outlines than
anyone else in the business, but by my standards, these are three or four
line, vague ideas for possible stories. As far as I am concerned, The Allies
is a Rob Liefeld/Eric Stephenson production, and any resemblance to my stories
will probably be coincidental. There wasn't much there to begin with."

Rob Liefeld however, politely disagrees with Moore. "As you can imagine with
the stories that have circulated about how detailed Alan's scripts are (We
have his scripts for a four-issue Warchild miniseries that he wrote for us,
and literally, Alan wrote four pages describing the first page of the issue.
The first panel is an entire page!), his synopses and outlines much more than
the standard length and content."

"Alan wrote very thorough synopses for The Allies that have true beginnings,
middles and ends," Liefeld says. "What he calls 'synopses' are more complete
than what some creators call 'scripts.' But in accordance with Alan's wishes,
The Allies will now read, "from stories by Alan Moore." But everything else
that will be coming from Awesome is fully written by him, and I think people
are going to be very excited to see it."
Moore need not have worried, as none of the issues from The Allies ever made it to print. Maybe one day we'll get to read the proposal so we at least know what his ideas for the series were.