The Moore seeds for Youngblood #8

As I was reading the fan-creators-written issue #8, I would find myself noticing elements that suggested Alan Moore's ideas from the Youngblood proposal. I wanted to start a running log to see how those ideas were used in the issue. So here goes.

• Twilight starts in Star City, Moore's Awesome universe of Gotham City as seen in numerous issues of Supreme.
• The Walrus and the Carpenter are two villains we've seen before, most recently in Miskatonic Asylum in Youngblood #2. Their Clam Cannon appeared in an issue of Supreme, too.
• Twilight's decision to leave Professor Night was shown here, from Judgment Day: Aftermath. It's possible to read this and get the impression that Professor Night might be pushing her out or that she's deciding for herself to go:

 

• As for the possibility of a romantic/sexual relationship between the two, there's this from Moore''s proposal (and I'll go more into the historical basis for this relationship in a post on Friday):

• There's also this odd panel from Supreme that I've talked about before (isn't it odd how Taylor is just sort of drinking and watching her try on clothes) that suggests their relationship is more than just partners:

 

• Speaking of that proposal, here's Moore talking about Suprema and her morality and how it can be played for laughs and then for sympathy (as well as crossing over with Supreme):

 

• Moore also showed us Suprema's feelings of loneliness (and her superhearing), both in Youngblood and in Supreme:

 

  

  

• That the elder Doc Rocket is the nicer Doc Rocket is suggested here:

 

• And Doc Rocket not getting along with Suprema can be seen here:

 

 

• Moore also had a story idea about the team losing their powers and using their human skills to win the day. That could have been the inspiration for the third story:

 

Did you guys see any others?

Weekly Reading: Youngblood #8

Never published by Awesome Entertainment

The cover:

Title: True Girls' Adventures

(Later issues of Youngblood were never in print. The only way to read them can be found online. Obvious pseudo-lawyer language: If anyone who owns the rights to these issues/scripts has a problem with me linking to them or posting pages from them, let me know and I'll remove them.)

I know what you're thinking: "Um, what? Alan Moore stopped writing scripts at issue #7."

You're right. He did. But our fan-creators included files for issues up to #12.

"Wait, you're reviewing fan fiction now?"

I wasn't planning to. (Nor was I planning on having a conversation with an imaginary blog reader, but sometimes we find ourselves in weird places and you just have to roll with it.) But, just as I was willing to give Erik Larsen the benefit of the doubt with his version of Supreme as thanks to him for fighting to get the last Alan Moore Supreme script into print, so too do I feel grateful to our fan-creators for giving us the four+ issues of Alan Moore's Youngblood I never thought I'd see. So, I'm willing to give their version a try. And if the issues suck (spoiler: I don't think they do), then we can bail out and get on to Glory.

What do you say imaginary blog reader?

Good. (You imaginary blog readers are so agreeable.)

Our fan-creators continued the 80s TV-themed covers. I don't remember Charlie's Angels as well as I do The A-Team, so I don't know if the characters match up as well as they did last issue, but it's a nice bit of empowerment and I like how they look together:

 

Part 1: Partners in Crime

The fan-creators structured this issue in the same way that Moore structured #7, with three parts that are each 8 pages long and focus on one character. The first focuses on Twilight and gets the thing going pretty well.

Twilight is on patrol, which apparently she does by herself, as we saw in issues #1 and #7. We see her breaking into a Star City bank as Shaft radios her, expositioning that Johnny and Rachel are in his lab doing blood tests, Leonard is working on Big Brother and Suprema is setting up an umbrella for a meteor shower. Shaft suggests that maybe he could go on patrol with Twilight but she quickly cuts him off.

We get captions from Twilight's inner monologue, as we did with Shaft's story last issue. She says that she knows what Shaft wants, but she's sick of men trying to get it from her. "Putting their hands on my shoulders. Telling me what to do. Expecting me to laugh at their jokes."

But she's done with those kinds of men and she just needs to tell Jeff, "I'm never being anyone's kid sidekick ever again!" Ha. I love this setup.

One of the problems Moore hadn't addressed with his one-sided crush from Shaft is what Twilight thought of it. In his proposal, Moore suggested that she just wouldn't respond to it. But this idea, that she completely misunderstands what he wants, works so much better and gives Twilight a personality where she seemed a bit blank before.

(In case you were wondering, it was about here that I decided I'd stick with reading these fan-created issues.)

Meanwhile, in the bank, the Professor Night villains the Walrus and the Carpenter are trying to rob the vault. As they make their way in, Twilight thinks about how long she's been fighting these villains, even with her time in suspended animation before waking up to see older Kendall Manor manservant, Pratap.

In a nice bit, Twilight explains why she darkened up her appearance since the 1960s. "The world changed so much since then. Everything got much darker. It doesn't really bother me. I've lived my whole life in the dark." And then Professor Night taps her on the shoulder. (I wonder what she's been in the dark about with Professor Night?)

But she's not sure she wants to see her "ex."

We find out that Twilight felt forced out of her partnership with Professor Night to join Youngblood. Taylor told her that they could, "take a break" and "try fighting crime with other people." Ha.

Meanwhile, in the vault, the crooks are splitting the loot, but the Walrus seems to be taking more than his fair share. Wasn't that the point of the Walrus and Carpenter poem from Alice in Wonderland, which these are supposed to be those literal characters?

Twilight and Professor Night fall into position to take out the villains when Shaft comes crashing in through the ceiling, setting off the clam cannon. Shaft goes tumbling while Professor Night deals with the clam cannon, all to Twilight's embarrassment.

The villains try to make their escape with Shaft barging after them, but he gets hit in a spray of bullets. Twilight drags him back in the bank while Professor Night deals with the villains, who are now arguing over the stolen stolen loot. "What's a few clams among friends..." Groan.

Professor Night gives Twilight the keys to the Night Wagon to take Shaft to the hospital (Wouldn't she just take him to Doc at the mansion? Maybe if she knew Doc was at the hospital?). But before they go, Professor Night tells her, "Pratap says the Halls of Night aren't the same since you left." But, I guess Pratap is the emotional one. Then Professor Night says that Pratap blames him for Twilight leaving for Youngblood, which comes as a surprise to Twilight, as she thought it was Professor Night's idea.

"Had it been my decision to leave all along?" she wonders to herself. Shouldn't she know that? But I guess breakups can get messy like that.

"But he'll always see you as that little girl marvel," Professor Night says of Pratap. As though Professor Night sees her differently? She'll find out how he feels about her later that night, if she wants.

Um... are they going there? Or are they still talking about being crime-fighting partners? I guess it's up to Twilight.

"You know, I think the 'nineties aren't going to be so bad for a single heroine in the city," she concludes as she drives Shaft to the hospital.

It's a funny little story and complicates Twilight in ways that the character needed. Twilight had been defined by being a sidekick for so long, especially in Supreme where she existed solely as a Robin analog, that it's interesting seeing how she is developing into an adult. That might include mistakes and relationships with men I might not want her to have relationships with, but isn't that how people grow?

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that I liked that one a lot.

Part 2: The Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees

Next up is Suprema, who is in the upper atmosphere dealing with a strange meteor shower. We also get her inner monologue through her diary. Yeah, it seems like she would keep a diary, doesn't it?

In her diary, she wants to know why men are such "silly ninnies." She's talking about Leonard and her brother, Supreme. It turns out that Leonard has been avoiding her since their date last issue, to the point of hiding in a closet (which she can see through with her Sight Supreme) because he's afraid of Supreme.

Supreme blasts through one of the strange meteors and there's gunk inside. Maybe they'll find out more in the meteor cloud. But he wants to have a talk with Sally. He tells her that she's too young to see Leonard.

The meteor cloud seems to be hiding some kind of H.P. Lovecraft-inspired space plant. They go to give it a shove, but it's no good. Meanwhile she tells him that he needs to back off as she has already been married to Gorrl the Living galaxy and had human boyfriends like Troy Taylor from the '50s. But Supreme isn't having it.

I have to say, some of these diary entries are a little too on the nose for me, like when they can't move the plant, Sally is talking about how rigid Supreme is or when he gets hit on the head with a meteor and she writes how hard headed he is. But it doesn't bother me too much, as some of the entries add to the story.

The meteor that hits Supreme opens as they fall toward the Earth and covers him in the goo, eating through his costume. Suprema grabs him and helps him get the goo off.

Suprema: "Still think I can't handle myself?"

Supreme: "Sally, you won't even acknowledge that Paul McCartney got married."

Suprema: "He should have waited for me!"

Ha. I do like the sibling squabbling supreme. 

They then hear more meteors falling over somewhere in China. Suprema goes to check it out. As she does, Supreme tells her, "Boys today are only interested in one thing," (as we get a shot up her skirt).

In her diary, she explains that her brother knows her better than anyone and that if he doesn't understand how she feels, who will? And when you think about it, that makes sense. They both had the same powers growing up and he was a tremendous presence in her life. Who else does she have who would really understand her? Maybe Twilight? But as we saw, Twilight is going through her own changes.

Suprema finds another plant thing over China. Supreme realizes that they're using the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere to cross fertilize. Suprema suggests she knows where they could do that, if they can move them. Rather than push them apart, they try pushing them together, which seems to work. And then they start pushing them toward space.

I like how this is acting as a metaphor for the conversation they're having even if it's utterly ridiculous that they're having this talk while dealing with giant plants in outer space.

Supreme starts to say, "Sally, teens today..." but Sally doesn't want to hear it. She says she's around teens all the time and she knows that all they do is laugh at her, even from across the galaxy.

It's a nice bit of characterization that we see Suprema can be emotionally hurt, despite her tremendous powers.

"So I don't have friends other than Linda. Not really." Ouch. I don't know about you, but the room suddenly got a little dusty as I read this page.

Then she explains how Leonard became her friend. "I thought he hated me," she says. "He said that when people think someone is really strong, they forget that inside is someone who needs caring, just like everyone else."

As we'll see, Leonard might not just be talking about Sally, here.

"And how much worse than being alone it is to be lonely in a crowd full of people," she continues. Man, isn't that true.

I love this baring of Suprema's soul. She seems so confident all the time that it's nice to see that it might not all be true. And that Leonard has opened a door for her that she may not have even known about. All she wants is the opportunity to see where it leads. Supreme seems to finally get it.

Moore talked in the proposal about how he could use her outdated morality for laughs, but then those laughs as a way to show her as a vulnerable character. And I think the fan-creators just took that turn at full speed, and it mostly works.

Meanwhile, they've pushed the plants over Venus (how appropriate) and they start launching meteors again.

Supreme tells Sally that she should tell Leonard how she feels and that if he breaks her heart, he'll stick Leonard in his Hell of Mirrors. Ha.

Suprema gets called away but thanks Supreme for "the talk."

Part 3: In Our Blood

And now the Doc Rocket story. On the left, she's in the lab at the House of Wax with Johnny, making fun of Suprema. On the right, she's at the hospital talking to her grandfather, the original Doc Rocket--Dr. Richards, about how she's not so sure about being part of Youngblood. They keep messing up and destroying the mansion.

On the left she's telling Johnny how she learned the trick to seem like she's in two places at once by pronouncing each syllable at a time. It took her the longest three seconds of her life to learn the trick. Ha.

Johnny is trying to figure out what it is in her blood that gives her superspeed, but can't figure it out. He has perfected a slowing tab that can remove her power for a bit.

Rachel is telling her grandfather that she doesn't really like Suprema, but her grandfather says Suprema isn't so bad and that he thinks Johnny would have been considered a villain during his time back in the '40s.

With Johnny, she wonders why she would want to stop her powers, which Johnny replies for fun. With her grandfather, she's wondering if she'll quit Youngblood.

And then we see a cool city shot of her racing back and forth from the mansion to the hospital, while getting her caption monologue. We get a nice explanation of her powers in that she can basically control her personal time. "It also means it feels like hours waiting for a person to answer a question," she explains. "You'll just have to pardon me if I seem annoyed it took you that long to say something so boring."

It's an interesting take on the character, who has only been shown to be good natured (except to Suprema). Moore said in his proposal, how bad can it be to be the fastest girl in the world? I think we're about to find out.

We see Johnny slip a tab in Rachel's hand and then she slips that hand in her grandfather's hands. Her grandfather tells her that everyone needs someone sometime.

We then get a flashback to Rachel as a girl, using her speed to torment her older sister Cat, when her grandfather caught her. "Blah, blah, power, blah, blah, responsibility." Ha. He took her to his hospital and showed how he could use his speed to save people medically. And since he took her TV away for a week, she used that time to complete med school.

"Being a doctor is great, except for all the other people," she says. Again, this is such a different portrayal of Doc Rocket, as someone quite impatient. It makes a lot of sense to develop the character from Moore's sort of blank slate portrayal, but it does feel very different.

Back in the present, her grandfather is lecturing her about superteams when he gets a bloody nose and spots and then passes out. Rachel goes to help, but her superspeed is gone and she sees Johnny's slowing tab.

The nurses get her grandfather into a bed and they do a blood test to discover Leukemia. The tab slowed his immune system but not the rest of his blood. While they get him on chemo, she calls Johnny and reams him out to get something to help her grandfather.

We then get Rachel's racing thoughts about how they need to irradiate the marrow and transfuse it with new marrow. But with the blood moving at superspeed, she needs someone with superpowers to help. And then she realizes she needs to call in Suprema.

From a simple whisper, Suprema comes flying through the window and volunteers to help. She is taking out the bad cells when Big Brother pushes Johnny through the window with more of his slowing tabs. Leonard is awkward with Sally.

Suprema: "Leonard, so you've finally come out of the closet?"

Leonard: "Hey, that's not what that means!"

Groan. But they agree to talk later which is a nice little touch and a callback to Suprema's story.

Meanwhile Johnny uses the slowing tabs to slow down the rest of the original Doc Rocket's system, but they still need the marrow transfusion. Rachel threatens that she'll get him later. He replies, "You sound like my mom!"

Suprema finds a bone marrow match, which is obviously (conveniently) Shaft from when he got shot. Rachel, her superspeed back, races down, grabs him, brings him back, gets his consent and starts the transfusion. Twilight shows up and asks what's going on. "Sorry, I'm trying to save my grandfather from superspeed Leukemia," Doc replies. "Oh," Twilight responds, obviously confounded by this response. "Okay."

The story ends with Rachel thanking Suprema, though Suprema being Suprema asks if Rachel shouldn't be dressed more appropriately like a doctor.

There's the interesting note that Twilight has already left the hospital room and is out on the cold, snowy street, heading toward the Night Wagon. I wonder if Twilight has made up her mind about needing someone, too?

I don't know, this last one wasn't my favorite, partially because of how Doc's personality is changing, but also it comes together a little too snugly. But I like the writing and the art, especially on the Twilight and Suprema ones, to keep reading more issues. There seems to be some growth to the characters, which is something that it seems like Moore wasn't all that interested in before this, that is being handled really nicely.

What did you think imaginary blog reader?

I'm thinking that I'll do a post later this week to show where I think some of the elements that our fan creators are playing with probably came from Moore's proposal or previous issues. It feels very true to what Moore wanted to do, even if it obviously isn't written by Moore.

Next week: Crow John, What You Done?

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.

The Alan Moore Youngblood interview

Alan Moore gave an interview to Stevie Johnson about Youngblood as he was working on his scripts for the first six issues. In it, he outlines his plans for those issues. Though he doesn't mention issue 7, it's clear that Moore hadn't planned too far beyond issue #6 when Awesome went belly up. It's hard to tell if he even had the girls' stories planned for issue #8, as I've never heard of any plots ever mentioned.

The full interview, from the wonderful fortress.net.nu website, is reprinted here:

YOUNGBLOOD

Younger But Not As Bloody

by Steve Johnson


Youngblood is back!

Well, one of them is. The man who revived Supreme is now revitalizing Youngblood with a new team, a new rationale and a new structure: one-issue stories, plenty of legacy superheroes and a mix of the old and new.

Shaft, the archer from the original incarnation of Youngblood, finds himself in the unaccustomed role of the "old veteran" as Youngblood reboots under the sponsorship of Waxy Doyle, the 1940s superhero called the Waxman. Doyle once told his old comrade Supreme, "I mean, fighting crime with wax? What was I thinking? Went into the furniture polish business instead and made a friggin' fortune!"

But according to writer Alan Moore, Doyle still feels a nostalgia for the good old days of superheroing. And if he can't do it himself, he can use his millions to do it by proxy.

The new Youngblood boasts five members besides Shaft, all Moore creations. Some have been seen before in the pages of Supreme, the flagship title of the Moore-designed "Awesome Universe" which stretches back through sixty years of unpublished comics.

Doc Rocket is the granddaughter of the original Doc Rocket, a comrade of Waxman in the old Allied Supermen of America, Moore's version of the Justice Society. She has superspeed, which Moore hopes to use in a few unexpected ways, such as having her change clothes on the way to the site of a crime, possibly by dodging behind telephone poles or parked cars.

"Twilight and Suprema are both in similar positions, in that they're both junior super heroines from the '60s, who both have been, for separate reasons, been out of circulation in the equivalent of suspended animation for 20 or so years in each," Moore said. "And they're both only recently returned to the world of the '90s. And their reactions are different. Twilight I see as somebody who's very down-to-earth and practical. She is basically adapting to the times. Her new costume -- basically, she's pretty sensible -- she' still the person that she was, she's always been a practical and sensible person. But she's adapted to the times a lot more. And she's got an outfit that doesn't look quite so childish as her '60s one. She's decided that, you know, that's passed its sell-by date, and she needs a new look.

"Suprema is completely different. Suprema has got a sort of Puritan arrogance. She's sort of like Nancy Drew with super powers or something. And, to her, if the rest the world has changed and she's remained the same, it's because the rest of the world is just wrong. She's the only yardstick that she measures it by. She sees everybody else as just -- they're impolite, they're ill-mannered, they're rude, they wear their skirts too short -- it's stuff that's shocking to her, and, unlike Twilight, she refuses to go along with it. She treats everything as some sort of Girl Scout exercise with her in charge. Even if that's not the situation at all. So there's quite a bit of friction between her and the rest of the team.

"Twilight has a sympathetic take on her because they've known each other a long time, and she sort of understands why Suprema is how she is. But everybody else hates her. Because she's basically insufferable. The problem is, she's also omnipotent. So it's not like just having somebody with a snooty attitude. If you've got someone with a snooty attitude who is omnipotent, then it's a bit more of a problem. So that's an angle that we play up.

Then there are two Youngbloods we haven't seen anywhere yet:


Big Brother is the adopted son of Waxy Doyle. He's a black guy in a wheelchair named Leonard "who's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder for quite a lot of reasons, really," as Moore says. Leonard has 2 or 3 robots of different sizes and they're all called Big Brother. He sits inside the robots, which have a variety of functions; the Big Brother bots act as Youngblood's vehicle and in some cases their headquarters, since some of the robots are so big that they actually have living quarters inside them.

And Johnny Panic, well... "he's kind of like a rave party on legs. He mainly relies on a kind of light show that he's worked into his costume, that gives him the potential to create hologram images and stuff like that. He also has a gun which fires a variety of different sorts of pharmaceutics. So it's like a Chemical Generation superhero, sort of, with his own light show. There's other stuff in his background that we're playing our cards close to our chest, to start with," Moore said.

Moore intends to tell single-issue stories for at least the first six issues of the new Youngblood.
"What I want to do is recapture the kind of very simple and complicated clean energy that those books had. But that is not saying those awful words, 'Let's make this a fun comic!' Which generally means, 'let's do something that would have been lame even if it had appeared in the 1970's,' you know. What we're trying to do is to come up with a superhero team that works, that has many elements of classic superhero teams, but is re-invented in a 90's context."


"The first issue, we've got -- it's a 30-pager, the first issue -- and we've got an entity, an alien entity, called the Occupant. That's the main storyline, with the new team going into action against this bodiless alien entity.

"And eventually they go up against an evil version of themselves. When I say eventually, I mean issue #2 actually. So that's what I'm working through at the moment, actually. "Badblood." We've got -- I've got ideas for the first six issues, they're not exactly what order.

"There'll probably be a 1990s, much older, and more evil and decayed version of the Professor Night villain, Jack-A-Dandy, who we showed in the Supreme with the Professor Night. We have this guy that looks like the label of the Johnny Walker bottle. He's been in the asylum a bit since then. He's probably picked up all sorts of new bad habits. I just like the idea of an evil dandy. That might be issue #3."

"Issue #4 would probably be a story where you get -- and Christ knows why or how this should happen -- but for some reason, I haven't figured it out yet, you're going to get Youngblood back in the old west, while a team of western characters is displaced to the present day. So you have to have both teams solving each other's problems. So you'll have Youngblood in the old west while you'll have a group of the western characters that I created in Judgment Day, as a kind of wild west Youngblood in the present day, for an issue. That sounds pretty stupid -- but so are most of the plots that I've come up with. But I think that will be fun."

"Then we've got an outer space drama for the next one. And we've come up with this creature. No, it's not even a creature -- this sort of, this problem, this menace that's just called the Space Goat. The Goat. And it's sort of, it's like, the idea of Galactus "eating planets" is pretty tame compared to this Space Goat idea that we've come up with. It's not actually a goat, but it's called a goat because it'll eat anything. And it just sort of, it's eating its way through the universe, one solar system at a time. Very patiently and very implacably. I've got good scientific stuff to back this all up with."

"Then the sixth issue, we've got planned a crossover -- might be a fight, might be an alliance, who knows? -- between Youngblood and the League of Infinity. Probably including all of the new League of Infinity members that I've just introduced in Supreme #61. I've just introduced a bunch of new ones, including Mata Hari, Wilhelm Reich, who's called Orgone Lad, and also a teen-age Siegfried. So, they'll probably be in the League of Infinity by the time we get to the crossover in number 6.

"After that, your guess is as good as mine."

Youngblood #7 script

Here's the full script for Youngblood #7.

Weekly Reading: Youngblood #7

Never published by Awesome Entertainment

The cover:

Title: Boys' Own Stories

(Later issues of Youngblood were never in print. The only way to read them is through scripts and fan-made art found online. Obvious pseudo-lawyer language: If anyone who owns the rights to these issues/scripts has a problem with me linking to them or posting pages from them, let me know and I'll remove them.)

Alright, this is it. The last Alan Moore Youngblood. As we'll see, he clearly meant this to be one half of a two parter focusing on individual stories about each character, so it doesn't act as a very good conclusion, either. But it is funny and a good read, so I guess let's just enjoy it.

Let's start with the cover. I didn't just like the A-Team when I was a kid. I LOVED the A-Team as a kid. I can imagine little Johnny and little Leonard watching the A-Team and dreaming of being them when they grew up. And this concept works so well with the boys' personalities, too. Jeff as the older, wiser, Hannibal-like leader. Johnny, crazy as Murdock. Big Brother, strong like B.A. The one I find interesting is Leonard as lady's man, Face. But considering the story inside, of him on a date, I think it works. Great job, fan-creators!

Part 1: "...And I Don't Have A Wooden Heart"

Moore loves to create structure for his comics, and he does that again here, dividing the 24 pages into three 8-page chunks. The first tells Shaft's story. Shaft is out in Washington, DC, trying to take down a supercharged Custer training robot. Leonard radios him and expositions that he's going out tonight and that Johnny's working in the lab. Twilight's out on patrol and Rachel's at the hospital.

While Shaft is trying to find some way to take down Custer with his new trick arrows, we get his inner monologue through captions. This is a device Moore doesn't use very often, as he prefers to let his dialog do most of the heavy lifting. But since Shaft doesn't have anyone to talk to here, I guess it makes sense.

Jeff, of course, is stuck on his infatuation with Twilight. There's the problem of their ages: who is older than who, considering Twilight's suspended animation. I like that Moore has his character stop and think about this, as it makes the characters feel more real.

Then Custer breaks into a movie theater showing Badrock's Youngblood movie, which has been a sort of running gag suggestion since the Holiday Special. The movie is awful, getting the story all wrong and minimizing Shaft's leadership role in Youngblood. This is a nice bit of commentary, as of course, Moore hates what Hollywood has done to his stories when adapting them to film.

Shaft can't help getting distracted: "Hey, this is crap! Crypy wasn't anything to do with the trial, and Badrock wasn't team leader, I was! Also, I personally wouldn't have cast Will Smith as Sentinel," he shouts at the screen. Ha.

The distraction lets Custer get in a good hit and then they're back out fighting on the street. But then he's distracted by thinking of Twilight from the licensed Professor Night TV show he watched as a kid and the crush he had on the actress.

But then he's on Custer's head, jamming explosive arrows into the robot's neck. Just as Custer's about to grab him, he accidentally fires off a whistle arrow. I can't figure out if the whistle arrow set off the explosives or if the timers went off in time, but Custer's head gets blown apart, toppling the robot.

Shaft thinks that rebuilding Custer will give Leonard something to do, because if there's anyone who has it worse off than Shaft, it's Leonard.

Part 2: "The Girl of His Dreams"

 

Then we're in Leonard's workshop. Again, we get captions with his thoughts, but just for this first page (since he has someone to talk to). It's a nice gag with Leonard talking about sprucing himself up for his date, but what he's really doing is sprucing up his Big Brother robot. There's also a nice moment of Waxey giving Leonard some fatherly advice: "Say her hair's nice. Don't scratch your privates."

And then he meets Suprema on the moon. (Just a note, I like how the title and font of this part is a call back to Supreme #46, where we first met Suprema.)

They head out to Rigelian Rykk's Restaurant of Recollection for their date. Clients feed their nervous systems with memories of notable meals. What a cool concept. They decide to share something from the Earth menu, but find themselves naked in the garden of Eden. Embarrassment leads them to a drive-in movie that's actually projected on the side of a planet (but they only show tentacle-boxing epics).

There's a nice joke about Leonard putting Big Brother's gigantic arm around Suprema, so she enters his cabin. And then they're making out.

After the movie they fly back to the Citadel and start sneaking up to Suprema's room when they get caught by Supreme (whose face we never see, making him more ominous).

Suprema: "Big Brother, this is my, uh, my big brother." Ha.

Leonard, scared of Supreme takes off quickly. He lands at the House of Wax just as Shaft is returning with what's left of Custer.  They find the mansion on fire and wonder what Johnny did.

Shaft: "This team has a drug problem. Unfortunately, we left him minding the house."

Part 3: "Better Living Through Chemistry"

 

The captions seem to be Johnny's experiment log as he tests two new drugs... on himself. The first makes him feel fast and capable. So capable that he unwisely takes the second drug that is supposed to make him smarter. So smarter that he realizes that by combining the drugs, he might get an unintended side effect.

But his imaginary sidekick, Sparky the Boy Hallucination, tells him not to worry about it. Sparky is obviously designed on Robin, which is funny.

Johnny's can't remember where Sparky came from, but Sparky helpfully reminds him that Johnny took him in when his parents died in a booby-trapped TV quiz show. Ha ha.

Then Waxey approaches Johnny, seeing the reality of Johnny talking to himself. With Johnny saying that he might go crazy without Sparky. In Johnny's delusion, Sparky tells Johnny not to worry. "It's not like I'm going to die tragically and unexpectedly or anything! ... Also, I'm handy to talk to, for plot exposition."

Why is it not a surprise that Moore would really let loose in the drug-fueled story?

Anyway, Waxey comes up and tells Johnny that he's expecting his new limo to be delivered tonight. But Johnny, in his haze, sees Waxey as his arch villain, Baron Tallow, and starts shooting his darts at Waxey. Waxey takes off with Johnny chasing after him, grabbing a blowtorch as they run through Leonard's workshop.

Sparky chases after Waxey as Johnny falls behind (what with being out of shape and smoking, I guess). In his vision, Johnny sees Baron Tallow grab Sparkey and take off in an experimental fighter craft. In reality, Waxey is getting in his new limo to get away. Johnny uses his blow torch in the limo, setting it on fire. Sparky tells him that Tallow has released the break. In reality, the limo starts rolling toward the mansion.

Johnny calls for Sparky to jump, but Sparky says that he has to defuse a bomb inside. The limo crashes into the mansion, setting it ablaze. Johnny digs through the rubble, looking for Sparky.

Just then, Leonard and Shaft show up. Waxey is beside himself, wanting to throw Johnny in jail or rehab, but Leonard talks him down. Johnny is too busy mourning Sparky, in a callback to the death of Robin. "H-He was always ready with a cheerful pun. He was a hero. He was a martyr. But more than that... he was my kid side-effect."

It's a bad pun to end on, but who cares when the rest of the story is so clever and funny.

I even like how this is one more bit that fits in the broader Awesome universe concept, with something that was just an idea to one of the character becoming real to that character. But I won't belabor the concept.

I guess, if you want, you can see this as an ending. Moore's Youngblood ends with silliness and humor. You know, Bugs Bunny never got an ending, nor did Bullwinkle or any of the other loony cartoons. Maybe Youngblood didn't need an ending because all it ever tried to be was fun. They keep going on, having adventures and destroying the House of Wax.

I sort of remember a quote from W. Somerset Maugham who talked about why he always tried to give his characters happy endings. He said that it wasn't so much about them being happy, as it was that the reader wanted to leave the characters knowing that the characters they had come to care about would be okay after the reader left.

I'm not saying that every story needs to end that way, but by leaving Youngblood here, we feel that they're going to be okay. Shaft will still pine for Linda and she'll still ignore him. Rachel was fine to begin with. Suprema and Leonard, if we're to believe in Wiseblood of 2030 from last issue, will end up a great couple. And Johnny, well, he'll still be the lovable druggie mess we see here.

That's one way to think about it. Next week we'll consider another. As the last page of this issue says, "Next: True Girls' Adventures."

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.