As I've been going through these After Awesome series, it's become more and more clear to me that I'm not really looking for a continuation of the characters from the Moore series as much as I am looking for an ending. I'm looking for a place to let go. If I had that, I wonder if I would have started this website in the first place.
Fortunately, the fan-creators came along and not only completed Moore's Youngblood scripts, but they even gave us a proper ending for the series, and much of the Awesome universe, too. We never got Moore's Prophet or much of the Allies or the New Men, so I'm not sure they matter. And though we never got a conclusion to Glory, it feels like we'll get those last two scripts one day.
But the ending, or non-ending to Supreme leaves a big hole.
If you like, you can see Supreme Blue Rose as an ending to his saga. But while that seems to close the door on his universe, it didn't deal with the threads of Ethan Crane's individual story. What happened with the Darius Daxes? What happened to Supreme and Diana? There are too many answers that I still want wrapped up.
But, maybe if the professionals won't do it, it's up to the fans to create their own stories. As you've seen from this site, I like fanfiction, from the stories by the Awesome Army Online to Youngblood 8-12.
Moore believed that all of our imaginations are connected through stories. He's been sharing his imagination through these characters to us for so long, it seems only fair that the imaginary worlds he has created could and should continue to exist in the imaginations of the fans. And if they do, who is to say that their imagined stories are any worse than the ones that got and continue to get professionally published? I mean, did you see Youngblood 2012?
So, though I'm clearly not as good as some of those other fanfiction writers, I present my attempt at a fan-edit of Supreme #64. I took Erik Larsen's (and some others') art and rejiggered it. Through it all, I attempted to answer the questions I wanted answered. Maybe I should have started from scratch and written the whole thing from the beginning, but this is the best end I could come up with using what I had available. I hope it gives you the closure it gives me.
Let me know what you think or any critiques you have in the comments. You can download the whole thing here or read it below.
So, the fan-edit starts with a page I'm adding to the end of Supreme: The Return #1. Chris Sprouse drew this page as the last page for that issue, but it was never used and Moore's dialogue for the page has never become public. So I felt it was fair game for this fan-edit:
And here is the fan-edit of Supreme #64:
So, I owe a lot of people thanks for helping me complete this issue:
- Clearly Erik Larsen and Cory Hamscher did the lion share with their Supreme #64 (and a few pieces from later in their run). They get a lot of crap, but without them there wouldn't be this opportunity for closure.
- I used the unpublished Sprouse page and one of his commissions for the cover (and a sketch on the Alan Moore quote page).
- Rick Veitch gave me that tremendous commission which became the imaginary #64 cover (and was edited for use on the credits page). I also stole the Abyss image from his work in Supreme #49.
- I commissioned Allan Whincup (from the AAO) to do the other two pages in the Supremacy sequence. His work in the AAO is totally worth checking out. You can also find him on DeviantArt.
- Sebastian Sala did the fill in pieces for The End and the girl from Judgment Day. You can see more of his work on DeviantArt.
- The new pieces were colored by Rohvel Yumul. And I did the lettering.
- Derek Mont-Ros helped with some great editing suggestions.
- The Alan Moore quote came from George Khoury's wonderful The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore.
- The end piece is the Alex Ross painting that should have been the cover for the first Supreme collection, had Awesome not gone out of business.
- And I probably should thank Alan Moore for creating characters and comics that have only grown in my estimation (and imagination) since reading them 20 years ago.
Thanks all! I hope you're not offended by how I used your work.
Updated: Wow! The good people at Bleeding Cool have said some nice things about the fan-edit. Thanks for the notice!
Updated: Wow! The good people at Bleeding Cool have said some nice things about the fan-edit. Thanks for the notice!
