After Awesome Part 11: Warren Ellis's Supreme Blue Rose

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe.)

In January of 2013, at the end of Erik Larsen's Supreme run, he promised us that Supreme would return with a new creative team and direction (but he didn't know who or what they would be). In 2014 Image teasingly announced that the British team of writer Warren Ellis and artist Tula Lotay would be doing a Supreme miniseries. With that team, we knew it was going to be something different.

And different it was.

The story basically follows a Diana Dane (certainly not Moore's, nor Larsen's), a journalist who has had some kind of episode and now finds herself unemployed and on some kind of medication. She's also having strange dreams, which is how we first see her.

In her dreams, she's in a version of the Supremacy talking to the residents, but they aren't like the residents we've met in previous iterations, nor is this Supremacy like the one we've seen before. There's a boy in a wheelchair and a man with no face called Enigma (gee, I wonder if he's Supreme?).

Enigma remembers all his past lives, but mostly remembers the red-headed woman from the future, who is obviously a version of Future Girl from the League of Infinity. She was surveying the Enigma's last world before it changed again. She is there to rescue as much of the world as she can, because who could bear to have no more world (who indeed?).

Before waking, the boy in the wheelchair tells Diana to not trust Darius Dax. Then she wakes in New York City. And goes for a job interview with Darius Dax.

Dax, now an elegant black man, wants to hire her to discover a secret. He's not interested in journalism, he wants the secrets to sell to people in power. And the best secrets are "blue rose cases." Blue roses do not occur in nature, and so are something different, unnatural and interesting. (It's a reference to David Lynch's Twin peaks, which is a clear inspiration for this series.)

In Dax's office is the remains of a golden arch that says "Supreme." It fell onto the town of Littlehaven, in a reported plane crash (which happens to be the same incident that set Diana on her own breakdown). In the center of the incident was an Ethan Crane, who seemed to fall apart when something emerged from inside of him.

Dax sends her out to investigate, protected by a Reuben Tube (previously the Televillain) with a shifting face, and driven by Linda (who goes by the nickname Twilight Girl Marvel). Linda formerly worked in Dax's "versioning" department, which considered alternative-history scenarios.

So, let me point out this one scene because it bothers me a lot and I'll refer to it later. As Diana is deciding whether to take Dax's job offer or not, she discusses it with her friend Noor, a 27-year old fashion model who tells Diana, "I'm 27. I've had at least eight great adventures, while you trained and wrote." She convinces Diana to take the job.

Anyway, interwoven through Diana's story are serials in the ongoing TV/streaming video/Facebook series Professor Night. This Professor Night is some kind of weird impressionistic thing about a detective and his nemesis/love interest Evening Primrose. It makes no sense, and yet all the characters in Diana's story talk about how much they love it. It's kind of like those friends of yours who tell you how great David Lynch is and when you ask why, they say you just don't understand.

In a scene that goes on way longer than necessary, we see Future Girl take an old/drunk author version of Storybook Smith into the future.

Then we meet Dr. Chelsea Henry, this universe's version of Lady Supreme/Probe (a character Moore wrote out of his first issue). She has discovered something moving backward and forward in time from the 30th century to about four months ago. And there's a bloom of blue radiation that seems to mess everything up coming up in the near future.

Dr. Henry starts hearing messages from the future. They send her a red triangle energy flash and tell her to protect the timeframe.

There's a nice bit in Diana's dream where Ellis uses the League of Infinity's Time Tower to consider mankind's trudge of progress through history. What he seems to be suggesting (or I'm just reading into it) is that the future isn't a time so much as a development. The 30th century isn't important because it's the future, it's important because mankind has furthered itself through understanding and progress.

He also seems to be suggesting that that future doesn't change through the revisions. While our present changes, the path toward progress is the same and when we ultimately attain it, it's the same no matter how we got there. It's a great idea (assuming that's what he was saying) and one I wish the series had explored more.

That said, the boy in the wheelchair tells us that this version of reality is flawed. "The revision started way too far back." Diana needs to find Ethan to defend this revision.

Meanwhile, Dax meets Future Girl in a bar (there's a lot of meetings in bars in this, which I'll talk about later). He wants to know why he wasn't taken to the future and she won't tell him. That confounds him, and Dax is not a man who likes to feel confounded.

Diana wakes in Omegapolis and has a vision of Ethan, lost in this new world. She decides the answers are in Littlehaven and to walk there on foot, so her limo won't disturb the people who live there. As she does, she finds a car wreck (that was foreshadowed in the Professor Night serial) and a black African Albert Einstein-looking man who calls himself Doc Rocket. He runs off at superspeed and ends up in the bar with Future Girl.

She explains that he's come from another version of history. She tells him and us (yet again) that this new revision didn't take right and that Ethan Crane has been "incorrectly instanced." Because of that, there could be a dark ages of centuries. Future Girl is trying to rescue her friends and take them to the future where they'll be safe.

Dr. Chelsea Henry has a disturbing vision of the future circa 2100, which seems to confirm the dark age fears. She knows she has to find Ethan to prevent that and Doc Rocket shows up to help her.


Diana proceeds to Littlehaven, which is a decaying middle American town. She interviews townspeople about the golden structures that fell from the sky. As one tells her, "I want you to think about what it does to a man to see bits of the Kingdom of Heaven itself raining down on your town and killing your friends and neighbors." This is another great idea that is never really explored.

Another survivor, a priest, turns into a floating person with a head of fire (this revision's version of Jack O'Lantern) who wants to stop Diana from finding Crane, since she works for Dax.

In the Professor Night serials, Night is trying to brake out of the fictional world he lives in and enter Diana's. Evening Primrose, at first satisfied to have a world to herself, ultimately decides to follow.

Dr. Henry uses her newfound Probe powers to transport herself and Doc Rocket to Littlehaven but they accidentally end up in the Supremacy instead. Talking to the boy in the wheelchair, who turns out to be a version of Kid Supreme (another character Moore wrote out in his first issue of Supreme), they find out about the idea of revisions.

Dax has decided to take measures into his own hands and heads to Littlehaven, too.

Meanwhile, Diana ends up at Judith Jordan's memorial museum to Littlehaven in the middle of the woods next to a lake that Diana has seen in her dreams. Judy's an elderly, ghost-like figure, refusing to give any answers, but Diana's had it. She threatens Judy until Judy explains that she was the only one who recognized Ethan. She points Diana toward Ethan by the lake.

Ethan is aware of the revisions. His last version was at war with Darius and Darius learned about the nature of the universe and revisions. Dax set off the explosion in the Supremacy, which is what crashed over Littlehaven. The detonation triggered the flawed revision that they're living in now, most likely installing the revision too soon.

Ethan is hiding out because he feels weary and useless. He just doesn't want to do it anymore. He's seen too much. The Supreme being in him wants out, wants to set things right, but he's been holding it back because it didn't seem to save Littlehaven when the Supremacy fell.

Basically, he is the figure that Future Girl talked about to the Enigma (or the Enigma is Ethan) who doesn't want to see any more worlds.

Reuben Tube shows up to shoot Ethan but a bloodied Professor Night attempts to stop him. When Reuben shoots Professor Night, Evening Primrose kills him.

Then Doc Rocket and Probe show up. Followed by Linda and Dax. And finally Future Girl shows up and starts rescuing people into the future until there's only Dax, Diana and Ethan left.

Dax tells Ethan that he sent Diana to find Ethan because he knew she was important to him in other versions of the universe. Dax knows that things aren't right and wants to trigger the revision, but Ethan refuses because he doesn't want to let Supreme out. So Dax shoots him with a ray gun, releasing Supreme.

The story ends with Diana working at Dazzle News with a Linda and a Judy. She's just about to break news that something happened in a town called Littlehaven.

 

So was this a new revision? Was this the same revision, but it's taken root the right way? Or is it a timeloop and they're starting the same story over again? There's a few different ways you can see it. But one point that I read in another review points out that Tula Lotay's art up until this page has had scratches and color marks all over it, suggesting the flawed nature of the revision. But this last page is clean and vibrant, suggesting it is unflawed. That is until Diana hears about Littlehaven.

It wouldn't be right for Ellis to give us a firm ending when he could leave it elliptical. But at least he got an ending and I appreciate Ellis realizing he had a limited time to work on this series, which can't be said of so many who work on these After Awesome books. They're filled with ambition and want to take issue after issue setting things up, but then run out of issues to finish their stories. Better something like this that knows what it wants to do and then completes it.

Speaking of Lotay's art, which, like a lot of other parts of this comic, I'm conflicted about. I appreciate that it's new and different and doesn't feel like an American-style superhero comic. I often love the look of art that is outside the norm, but I don't like this. It feels sketchy and underdeveloped, like fashion designs that never become reality. Maybe that's on purpose or maybe it's just her style. I'm also not a big admirer of the new use of digital art, which leaves the backgrounds looking ill-formed and messy and seems to have stunted the development of traditional linework. The character designs are okay, but the people never feel real. Look at Future Girl. Every time she shows up, she's in an old fashioned dress and standing in a particular lounging fashion. She and most of the other characters look like fashion models pretending to do the things that real people do, but in ways that don't look authentic.

I'm also conflicted about Ellis's story. There's so little plot, which is fine, except it goes on way too long to fill the seven issues. The characters have almost no depth to themselves whatsoever. Ellis gives them tics and witty dialog in lieu of depth. Instead of filling it with characters grappling with the realization that they are in an alternate universe that is crumbling apart (seriously, the characters are told this over and over again and none of them seem to have any reaction), Ellis fills it with too many flourishes that don't fell like they add anything.

Take the conversation with the fashion model I mentioned earlier. It doesn't really add anything. Noor isn't a character we ever see again so what does their friendship matter? Diana never really mentions her again until she's in a new reality. So what is it for other than a pretentious conversation with a fashion model for pretention's sake?

And I'm going to say this, though it probably reflects more poorly on me than it does the work, but there seems to be an added level of hipster New York coolness to this story that is really off putting. They're always hanging out in a hipster bar. Future Girl also has a very retro look to her '40s-era dresses. Ultimately, your appreciation of this aesthetic might be different from mine, so maybe you'll like this series more than I did.

And then there are the impressionistic David Lynch-styled strokes, such as the Professor Night serials which are intentionally vague. I'm fine with Prof. Night and Evening Primrose moving from the fictional to the seemingly real, because that's part of the DNA Moore added to Supreme. But Ellis does it in a way that's meant to invoke poetry rather than explain how or why the characters do it. You're not supposed to question the how of it, you're supposed to appreciate its absurdity and audacity.

It's a frustrating series because it's filled with such wonderful ideas that are so little explored. It's got such colorful characters that have no depth. It's got such unique art that isn't really all that pleasant to look at. And yet, it's the series of After Awesome (the ABC books notwithstanding) that seems the most successful and that has me lingering over what it said.

Ultimately, I'm glad it exists and I'm glad that it is taking the Supreme ideas to a new place rather than continuing to revisit the well that Larsen had probably poisoned. I just wish I liked it more.

Up next: Oh God! Another Youngblood!?!