Weekly Reading: Youngblood #6

Never published by Awesome Entertainment

The cover:

Title: The Many Worlds Theory

(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.)

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid growing up in the '80s and '90s. I'd read it through once and then go back and see how if I had made a different choice, there would be a different result. One path, you become king. Another path, you end up dragon food.

And Alan Moore, being the genius he is, used that concept as a way to illustrate the theory of alternate dimensions and histories. It's so obvious and wonderful it makes me smile just thinking of it.

When I read the unpublished scripts, this is the one I was most excited about and seeing it lovingly rendered by our fan-creators just makes me very happy. I just wish they had made up a cover for it like this:

Man, does that take me back.

Okay, let's jump in!

We start off in the League of Infinity's Time Tower with tons of alternate timeline League members walking around. On one side, an Orgone Lad (who had by this point been introduced in Supreme), Future Girl and Bill Hickok are talking about the Schrodinger's Cat theory that says if a cat in a box could be alive or dead, until you open the box, it's actually both. This is meant to illustrate particles, but anyway.

On the other side, another Bill Hickok is ticked off about Suprema attacking them because, "she'd heard we planned to alter time, preventing Youngblood from existing."

Back with the first group, Future Girl is explaining that every time someone has to make a yes/no decision, a new universe branches off. The layout's a little confusing, but I think intentionally so. And then we get our first little box that says to go to page 2.

Now we're in Omega City in 1965 (before it became Omegapolis). A young Suprema and Twilight are talking after being abandoned by Supreme and Professor Night to go to their Allies meeting. Suprema has the idea to form her own group of teenage heroes. They could enlist Skipper and Lamprey (I'm a little confused about Lamprey's age because in the Holiday Special he was shown to be a little kid in 1997, so maybe he got captured by Hulver Ramik, too?), Fighting American's sidekick Speedboy, and maybe Glory's teenage self (I guess more than one form of Glory can exist at the same time?). Twilight's not so sure, but Suprema wants a yes or no answer. If she says yes, we turn to page 18. If no, we go to page 3.

Page 3 (Twilight having said no) finds Twilight and Suprema hanging out in the House of Wax in September 1998. (Suprema is toasting marshmallows with her Sight Supreme! Ha.) Twilight is reminding Suprema of the conversation from 1965, but Suprema barely remembers. Twilight says she decided not to join because she saw a smartly-dressed independent woman and decided she wanted to not be part of a team.

Suprema isn't so enamored with superteams right now, admitting to having few friends beyond Twilight and now Leonard. Twilight is curious where that's going, but Suprema suggests it's not romantic, though her look suggests maybe otherwise. Twilight hears a noise downstairs and they come across a robot looking like Suprema.

"Big Sister" is trying to radio "Ironblood" in 2005, but it isn't working. She also mentions that this doesn't look like the 1998 she remembers from the "Great War." Big Sister attacks our Suprema to help the League of Infinity prevent Youngblood from forming but our Suprema and Twilight make short work of Big Sister. She tells them of her shoddy Hell-world.

Now we're in the Ironblood stronghold in 2005. Big Brother is telling a robo-Johnny Panic about the Great War that killed lots of people and stripped superheroes of their powers. But they didn't let Shaft join to prevent that from happening. Instead, Leonard built Youngblood robosuits, hence the name Ironblood, I guess.

Doc Rocket runs up with Big Sister in tow, back from her League of Infinity duties. Big Sister tells them about what she overheard about the League wanting to stop Youngblood from forming and Ironblood thinks it's a pretty good idea. Lots of superheroes, including Supreme and Twilight, would still be alive. So Big Sister tried to go back in time to help the League.

Back to 1998. Big Sister and Twilight get into a disagreement about Hulver Ramik. Twilight says they didn't defeat Hulver Ramik until 1997, but Big Sister says they beat him in 1970. Then Shaft and Leonard show up, with Big Sister angry about Shaft being there, what with him being a villain. She says that the Great War started because Shaft and the other heroes of the '80s became villains when they couldn't join the superteams.

And then we jump to 1985, but clearly not our 1985. It's a war zone hell hole with a cracked apart Badrock dying calling out to his compatriot Shaft. Dark Maximage just destroyed Supreme's Citadel. Sentinel released bio-plagues that killed or de-powered all the heroes. Shaft says that they've ruined everything. Badrock disagrees, blaming the heroes for not making room for the new generation.

Shaft decides to go help the heroes rebuild. Twilight spots him approach and warns the others. A young Big Brother and Johnny capture Shaft and bring him into their base while they decide what to do with him. A young Doc Rocket suggests that he could help cure Suprema, who is hurt and losing her powers, but the others aren't so sure. Will they let him join: yes or no?

Yes leads to page 15 (which we haven't seen yet). No leads to page 6, which was the Ironblood 2005 pages. So I guess we know which way not to choose. But if we skip to 15, we miss all the pages in between, so let's keep reading this like normal, shall we?

Back in 1998, there's a nice moment when Doc shows up and asks what's going on and our Suprema replies, "Well, see, it's... oh, forget it. I'll fill you in later." Ha.

Big Sister then tells them that her Youngblood started in the '60s when Twilight and Suprema formed their team. Twilight had seen a smartly-dressed woman trip after a car backfired and all the people rushed to help her and decided a team would be a good idea.

And then the League shows up, looking for trouble. They're ticked that Suprema attacked them while they were talking about Schrodinger's Cat. That Suprema accused them of having a fight in September 1998. So then they fight. In September 1998.

Can I just say how much I love these fight scenes. It's great to finally see the League in action and some of the bits are hilarious, like Suprema getting stunned into ecstasy (ha ha) and Johnny responding with the drug Ecstasy.

Our Twilight then notices two observers: young Suprema from a 1970 Youngblood and a female Professor Night from "Wiseblood" 2030. They've come to stop the League from preventing Youngblood being formed. Young Suprema admits to firing at the League in the Time Tower. And then Professor Night tells us of how she used to be Twilight, but became part of a utopia in 2030.

2030. So this is where the story leads if Youngblood let Shaft join after the Great War. Big Brother has created a robotic Brotherhood, that is helping elevate humanity (with a Zip drive in his brain--does anyone else remember Zip drives--ugh). It's so perfect that they changed their name from Youngblood to Wiseblood (and because they're all old now).

Then an older Suprema named Supremaiden joins them, warning of the League's plot to prevent Youngblood. (I like that in this future Supremaiden and Leonard are clearly together.) Professor Night volunteers to go back and stop the League so this utopia will exist. On her way she ran into Young Suprema.

Man, this is confusing trying to explain.

Back to 1998. They're all fighting now, but our Twilight says that the stories don't add up. She thinks they might all have different pasts, but Young Suprema disagrees.  She explains that back in 1965 after Twilight agreed to form Youngblood (because they would be the new blood) Skipper and the others joined up, too. They fought Bubble Bandit, Hepcat and her father, Pop Art. (I'm not the only one who wants to see these adventures in full stories, am I?)

Then more heroes joined, including Darkfinger, the son of Black Hand, and Dandini, the niece of Jack-A-Dandy. Together, they defeated Hulver Ramik and his plot to kidnap and sell to Optilux all the heroes (which succeeded in our timeline). That's why Young Suprema was shocked to find out about the League's plot.

Thankfully, Moore shows us the panel from page 1, where we now see Young Suprema, Big Sister and Supremaiden overhear Bill Hickok complain about their fight in 1998 to prevent Youngblood from forming. And we find out that Young Suprema attacked the League (though it probably wasn't the ones who were just talking about the attack).

Our Twilight, starting to understand, puts a stop to the fighting. She explains that diverging timelines explains what's going on and Future Girl agrees.

It all depends on if Twilight and Suprema formed Youngblood. If they did, it led to the Great War in 1985. If Youngblood lets Shaft join, it leads to Wiseblood in 2030. If not, it leads to Ironblood in 2005. So Future Girl leads our Twilight, Professor Night, Young Suprema and Big Sister to the Time Tower. She then takes our Twilight down to the 1965 door and disguises her for the time period. Our Twilight will have to go back to 1965 and set time straight. If she succeeds, we go to page 24. If not, we go to page 23.

Well, we start on page 23 with her not succeeding. We find out that she is disguised as the smartly-dressed woman and when she falls after the car backfiring, we see that Youngblood did form in 1965. When she exits that time door, we see that she's actually Professor Night from Wiseblood. When she returns to Wiseblood, she says, "...so obviously, my attempt worked. The past stayed as it was."

On page 24 we see the same thing unfold but there's no car backfiring and Youngblood didn't form then. She returns to 1995 and is our Twilight. She says the exact same thing as Professor Night.

Then we see that all four timelines are still going on, all experiencing almost the same thing. "I guess things just had to turn out like this," they all said. Because timelines can't end. They just keep going on. That's the theory.

Finally we end where we began, back in the Time Tower. Future Girl knew that they would all end up pacified back in their timelines. Everyone except Bill Hickok, who is ticked off at our Suprema for singeing his trigger finger. Future Girl tries to calm him, saying "Be fair, the Suprema of September 1998 attacked because she'd heard we planned to alter time, preventing Youngblood from existing!" And we see Young Suprema, Big Sister and Supremaiden listening. All of this for a misunderstanding and a time loop that makes it keep happening over and over again.

Brilliant! Nobody does time travel stories better than Moore and you can always trust that if the League of Infinity is involved, it's going to be awesome.

Clearly it wasn't really a choose your own adventure story in the traditional sense, but I still enjoyed the use of the "yes/no go to page X" device as a means to explain diverging timelines. It also showed Moore experimenting with the form, having fun and letting all the bits of his Awesome Universe interact.

Sadly, we have only one more Moore-scripted issue yet. But on the other hand, we still have another never-before-seen Moore-scripted issue! We'll get to it next week.

Also, a note about our fan-creators, excellent work with all the different characters and the designs for the alternate timeline characters. This couldn't have been an easy issue to draw, but man does it look wonderful.

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