Supreme 3 came out in June 1993 and was co-plotted by Rob Liefeld, written and pencilled by Brian Murray, inked by Chris Ivy and lettered by Kurt Hathaway.
This issue starts with Heavy Mettle (the corporate/government group Supreme has joined) looking at film of Supreme in WWII:
Here is one of the first references to the Allies as a super powered group active in WWII and how they helped the Allied powers win the war. But we only get images of Supreme, so we don't know the members of the Allies yet.
We learn a little more about Heavy Mettle before they're dispatched to protect some Pacifica Coexistence Summit. Terrorists show up, as does Bloodstrike, another government op force. They kill the terrorists, including one who Supreme basically microwaves his skull. But then Supreme realizes Khrome, a Katellan alien, is summoning him to fight in space or something.
After the first couple of pages, I lost interest for the terrorist subplot, so I decided to look up Brian Murray. Turns out he went on to do a lot of work for DC and Marvel before becoming a Hollywood concept artist, working on stuff like Star Trek: Picard, Mortal Kombat 12, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Ready Player One, and Solo – A Star Wars Story.
I think one of the biggest weaknesses of early extreme was Heavy Mettle. Nobody cared about them. People wanted a book about a psychotic Superman, but then they we're pushed this impressively generic superteam. In fact the number one, biggest complaint about this series is that it goes out of its way to avoid capitalising on its core premise.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I think maybe they were going for a sort of Cable and X-Force thing, with Supreme and Heavy Mettle, but by Supreme's very nature he made them all completely useless.
DeleteHeavy Mettle is so bland, it's amazing that the concept was to combine Supreme and Heavy Mettle from the start.
DeleteAnd you're both right, the potential with Supreme was there from the start, but the "writers" didn't really know what they wanted to do with him. So they set him up with people to fight with, which got boring really fast.