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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, September 22, 2023

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 7: The dark age

When we last saw the book of destiny, it had been stolen from Storybook Smith. So what became of it?

We find out that it was stolen by the man who would become Sentinel:






In the ensuing fight, the book gets thrown over the edge of Supreme's Citadel and lands among a homeless girl:

The book of fate was a great device for telling this story of heroes and adventurers throughout history. But it also allowed Moore to play with time travel, the inability to escape the hands of fate, and the power of language. 

Before I end this, let me throw out one more random theory. What if the difference between our universe and the Awesome one was the changes Troll, Magnar, Merlin and the others made to the book? What if the book of fate foretold our ordinary destiny but with those small changes, time changed and changed until superheroes started showing up?

It's just a silly thought, but I enjoyed Judgment Day's exploration of comics' history and wish more had been done to interact with the various heroes and genres.

What'd you think?

9 comments:

  1. I never really understood how our lawyer knew about this? If I remember right we never see explained how or why he was aware of the book and constructed the case around it?

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    1. Yeah, that's never addressed and never made any sense to me whatsoever. How did Toby stumble on this theory. Most legal dramas show us the lawyer and staff doing some investigating, but Moore shows us very little of that. So I don't know that even Moore knows.

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  3. The part I wonder about is the big reveal concerning Sentinel. I mean, did A.M. base this on any actions or displays of attitude by Sentinel in prior Youngblood stories, a la Warren Ellis and Stormwatch's Westherman?

    I've no emotional investment in these characters, but still it feels like the Avengers' Crossing arc, where out of nowhere Iron Man was "revealed" to be a sleeper agent for Kang.

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    1. I've never heard of anything from previous continuity that suggested Sentinel was a bad guy, but the writing on Youngblood didn't tend to get too deep into the characters. So, I think Moore just kind of took Sentinel at random and decided to make him the villain. It doesn't really work with previous or future continuity and is problematic in many ways, and works best when taken as a thinly-veiled criticism of Image-era comic writing.

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  4. Has the team that finished Moore's books ( the fan edits ) ever thought about continuing the story? I saw a guy on deviant doing "Supreme the animated series" art and referencing different bruce timm and bruce timm inspired art , seem people would love a new trip to the supremacy and I am afraid Rev wont get us there

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    1. So, I did the fan edit on Supreme 64. I never really thought about doing more, as it was hard enough just to do the one from the various artwork that was out there! lol

      I too have seen the Supreme animated series stuff on Deviant Art. I should see if they'll let me interview them for the blog.

      Thanks,
      Mike

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    2. Hi Mike, this is a bit of off topic, but could you check my comment on this post? https://forgottenawesome.blogspot.com/2017/12/more-supreme-tales-from-aao.html

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