Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Gladiator/Supreme

Gladiator/Supreme came out in March 1997. Written by Keith Giffen. Penciled be Ed Benes and Carlos Mota. Inked by Wellington Dias, Rene Micheletti, and Joe Pimentel.

Was there anyone dying to read a pre-Moore Supreme versus Gladiator of the Shi'Ar comic? Probably not. But here we are. Despite this coming out the same month as Supreme 47, with Moore fully reworking Supreme, this one shot features Giffen's Bible-spouting murderous space Supreme who pops into the comics every now and again.

The issue starts with Gladiator investigating a destroyed Shi'Ar garrison outside the primitive world of Denuvi-7. Someone with extreme power destroyed this place and Gladiator gets a black box to try to figure it out.

On Denuvi-7, Supreme is hanging out when he realizes the people of the planet are making idols of their god. 

Deciding to check it out, he also spouts some exposition about how he destroyed the garrison because he didn't want them subjugating the innocent. He gets down to the people, who can't understand him, but he sees their idol, and it looks like him.

Meanwhile Gladiator is reviewing the black box and conclude only two beings could have done it: either that alien who came to earth as a baby or Supreme. (A nice little Superman joke for you.) They warn Gladiator that the people on this planet worship a figure like Supreme, so if he's not careful, he could taint the entire planet against the Shi'Ar. They also don't want Gladiator to become a new idol for the population.

Supreme goes to a church and realizes the priests want Supreme to be their new false god, which he's not having. 

So he goes nuts and starts killing the priests and destroying the church when Gladiator shows up. And this being the last pre-Moore Supreme comic, they do what they do and fight for pretty much the rest of the issue. 

As they do, they destroy parts of the planet, so the people turn on the priests who told them to worship Supreme. To give credit where it is due. Giffen tells this without any understandable dialog, which is actually some really clever sequential storytelling.  

 

Back to the fighting, Supreme ends up crushing Gladiator into unconsciousness. He checks Gladiator's pulse and can't find one and assumes Gladiator is dead. So he flies off. Gladiator then wakes up and explains that the Shi'Ar don't have pulses or heartbeats. 

We end the story with the Shi'Ar opening relations with the inhabitants of Denuvi-7 and the population replacing their faith in Supreme with their faith in the Shi'Ar.

There's almost enough there to be an interesting comic, but just not quite. But it doesn't matter because Moore was already well on his way to turning Supreme into something much better, 

So let's end this there. Pre-Moore Supreme was often terribly written, had all kinds of continuity problems, lacked any kind of interesting or consistent backstory or characterization, and never added up even when Jim Valentino tried to retcon the whole thing. People used to ask me if after reading Moore's version, they should read the early issues. I always said I didn't know, as I hadn't read them. Well, the answer is a lot more firm now. But still, it was a fun little trip through the early 1990s Image Comics boom. But I'm also glad to return to much better comics. 

Thanks for coming on this trip through time with me. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop them int he comments. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Lady Supreme 1-2 and Asylum 10

I'm not going to bother with the individual issues for Lady Supreme, either. Lady Supreme is Probe. At the end of Supreme 40, she has decided to stay on Other Earth and become the hero for that planet. Terry Moore of Strangers in Paradise was lured in to write the series while Craig Wagner and Deodato Studios (Mike Deodato Jr. and his father Deodato Borges) handled the pencils. The issues came out from May-August 1996. 

The series opens with Lady Coffin (gee, I wonder if she's going to be a villain), who runs Coffin Industries by shooting her underlings who don't have good performance reviews. 

 

Lady Supreme decides to intervene (after watching Lady C shoot an underling) and give Coffin a warning that she's watching.

She then flies off and violently stops a back alley robbery before Glory shows up and says Lady S is supposed to be making a better example of herself. 

Lady S asks why she cares and Glory reveals that she is Lady Supreme's mother. 

The second issue introduces a mercenary named Ryder tracking Lady S. for Lady C. He figures out Lady S.'s secret identity but refuses to give it to Lady C.

We see a bit of the reporters introduced in Supreme but they don't get a ton to do more than warn of an impending rain storm that drops fire. Out of the storm comes another super powered woman, Manassa, who demands to face Lady Supreme.

By this point, they realized that the other Moore wrote out Probe/Lady Supreme in issue 41. So, much like with Kid Supreme, they ran the last issue in Asylum, this time in issue 10 in December 1996.

The last issue has the reporters see the terrible results of the fire storm and go see the fight between Manassa and Lady Supreme. After another long and pointless fight, Lady Supreme uses Manassa's sword and kills her, but not before she reveals that Lady C. summoned her to kill Lady S. 

And that's where it ended. It wasn't a good story and Terry Moore never got to write any interesting character moments that he's known for. So, I can't say I was sorry to see it go. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Kid Supreme 1-3 and Asylum 9

 

I'm not going to bother with the individual issues for Kid Supreme because frankly, I just don't care that much. Kid Supreme was a mostly empty character in Supreme, having randomly gotten powers from Supreme while on a field trip to Washington, DC, and then the field trip just seemingly continued for the rest of his time in the series. For some reason, he was given his own series, plotted and penciled Dan Fraga and scripted by Eric Stephenson. The issues came out from March-July 1996.

The series follows Danny Fuller, now living with his grandparents, who know about his powers. He is trying to live a normal life, skateboarding and playing football, but falls for rich girl Tiffany, who happens to be the daughter of a crime boss. 

Unsurprisingly, Kid Supreme interferes with the crime boss's business and he decides to have Kid Supreme killed.

 

The series wanted to be a lot like Spider-Man, and since this was an Extreme comic, it lazily just ripped off Spider-Man. There's a scientist teacher take a formula and become a lizard guy called Reptyle. And there's an electricity guy called Kilowatt. 

 

There's a fun 1990s energy to it, even as it is really dumb. 

Fraga and Stephenson thought they were continuing the series and seemed to be caught by surprise when Moore took the character out of circulation by leaving him in the Supremacy in Supreme 41. There was no issue 4, despite the story and art having been completed.

Since December 1995, Maximum Press, one of Liefeld's other comics goup, had been printing an anthology called Asylum. It was just random stuff, often leftover parts from comics that were being stopped. So, in issue 9 in November 1996, Asylum published the story that would have been Kid Supreme 4.

 

The issue begins with the aftereffects of Kid Supreme's fight in issue 3, but then randomly he is abducted from his bed and dragged to the Supremacy. Unlike in issue 41, he doesn't want to stay and escapes through Supreme's Golden Gateway back to Earth. 

I guess Stephenson wasn't too happy with how Moore had written out his character and Stephenson didn't even bother to try to keep continuity.

He seems down about the whole situation until he remembers that he has a party to go to and everything is fine again. He soon runs into a Sandman-like bad guy, so yeah, thank goodness we didn't leave this character in the Supremacy.

Kid Supreme would later turn up Brigade 1 and occasionally in comics after Awesome ended, but he was pretty much pointless from the start.

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #40

Supreme issue 40 came out in July 1996. Jim Valentino did the story and the pencils. Tom and Mary Bierbaum do the script. Sam De Larosa does the inks. Lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Eric Stephenson was the editor and didn't do the co-plotting again.  

Here it is! The last Supreme issue before Moore took over the series and turned it into something good. The story is a mess with Loki and too many different versions of Supreme running around on a couple of different planets. Jim Valentino was a big part of bringing Alan More onto Supreme so he does his best here to clear the deck and give Moore a clean slate to start his run.

So let's get into this. On Other Earth, Louis, the reporter, is covering the aftermath of the Supremes' fight with Loki. As the media pesters them, Probe and Supreme fly off.

 

We see a little of Balthazar being strapped into his wheelchair of death contraption. But this is the last we ever see of them, so this whole subplot was completely pointless. 

We then cut to Enigma in Asgard, talking to Odin about Loki's actions. Loki walks in and says that he has agreed to a trial, where Enigma can present testimony.  

Enigma starts his story in WWII and says that Loki fooled Thor into working for Hitler (something we saw earlier in the series). His ultimate goal was to bring about Ragnarok, the apocalypse. But Supreme rose up and defeated Thor and the Nazis. So Loki swore revenge against Supreme and his heirs.

After the war, Supreme left Earth and was eventually attacked by Loki. To save himself, Supreme went forward in time to get the help of Star Guard. They traveled back in time to fight Loki, but Loki decimated them.

Probe and Supreme talk, with Probe saying that she thinks Supreme is just a force of nature and all the Supreme variants don't matter. Supreme decides to head back to the real Earth but Probe is going to stay on this planet as its new hero.

Back to Enigma's testimony. Enigma saw Star Guard getting killed and told Supreme to go back to Earth and get Thor's hammer as a means to defeat Loki. But as he was heading back to Earth, Loki attacked again and Enigma opened up a time portal, which plopped Supreme down in orbit of Earth but ruined his memory.

"Supreme sensed he'd failed in some epic conflict, against an overwhelming force that still threatened the very survival of Earth." 

Look, I appreciate Valentino trying to retcon Supreme into a story that makes any sense, but this retcon only makes it worse because it doesn't match up to what we've read. In the early issues, Supreme showed no sense of failure or that he feared some threat to Earth. He just flew around and did whatever he wanted. But whatever. Let's just finish this off.

Anyway, Enigma then testifies that he hoped to jog Supreme's memory by setting Thor loose, which led to Supreme taking his hammer. Star Guard showed up to warn Supreme, but that didn't help, since they never bothered to say what they were warning Supreme of.

After Supreme's contest with Thor, Enigma, brought "a superfluous Supreme from an alternate timestrand into this one." I think this might be bearded Supreme from issue 25, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. Anyway, Enigma sent this Spare Supreme off into space for safekeeping.

 

Loki then found Enigma and almost killed him, but he turned into energy and merged with the Spare Supreme. Back on Earth, Supreme was almost dead after Crypt's attack. But Loki wanted to finish off Supreme himself, so he teleported Supreme to Other Earth to die slowly, tormented by his failure. I guess this was Old Bearded Supreme.

Loki discovered Spare Supreme and had him defeated by Torgans, who jettisoned him in a rocket tube to Other Earth. Enigma jumped from Spare Supreme to a scientist before remaking his body. Except that's not how it happened in issue 34. There was an orb that had landed on the planet that affected the scientist. Ugh. This retcon needs a retcon.

Anyway, Enigma finishes off by telling about getting Probe and the fight with Loki. 

Odin has to make a judgment and reveals that he believed Enigma all along and wanted to see if Loki had learned anything about being honest. Odin punishes him to be bug-sized to the land of his people. I'm not sure why this is such a terrible punishment, but again, I'm glad to be done with Loki.

We then see Probe... Lady Supreme, I guess, flying through the city on Other Earth and are encouraged to read her own series, which I'll talk about in a bit.

And we get a splash page of Supreme in orbit around Earth vowing to "find the answers that have eluded me." What questions? This series has never asked any questions nor looked for answers. What a weird way to end. Oh well, we also get a little "In memoriam" to Curt Swan, which is a classy touch. 

So, the main series is all caught up! There are a few stray stories to look at in the coming weeks, but I'm curious to know what you thought. Did you like early Supreme? Did any of it make any sense? Was this all a complete waste of time? 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #39

Supreme issue 39 came out in May 1996. Jim Valentino did the story. Tom and Mary Bierbaum are back for the script. Pencils by Joe Bennett. Inked by Norm Rapmund. Lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Eric Stephenson was the editor and did the co-plotting again. Dan Fraga did the Kirby-inspired cover, which will also serve as the inspiration for Supreme: The Return 6. 

We start the issue with the three Supremes (Old Bearded Supreme in Supreme's Body, Supreme in Old Bearded Supreme's Body, and Lady Supreme/Probe/Probe in Val-En's Body But Turned Into A Woman During Babewatch... it's a little confusing) facing off against Loki. Old Bearded Supreme in Supreme's Body tries to confront Loki physically, but Loki just makes himself intangible.

 

Probe asks Enigma for help. Enigma contacts himself in the future at Star Guard's headquarters. 

Meanwhile Probe tries to attack psychically.  She gets into his memories and fills us in on some stuff we didn't know. We knew Star Guard initially came back to warn Supreme (but then didn't). Apparently they came back to warn him about Loki. In his future, he went into the future to escape Loki, and Star Guard then went back in time with Supreme to fight Loki. Loki is the one that blew up Star Guard's ship, which is when Probe took over Val-En's lifeless body and became Amnesia Supreme. And apparently Future Supreme found some weapon that can harm Loki.

It's nice that they're filling in these gaps in the plot since early in the series and trying to make it seem like there was a big story going on from the beginning. But it doesn't really pass the smell test. Loki was never treated as a major villain until last issue. This flashback doesn't make us feel like all the clues are falling into place. It makes us feel like, hey, this explanation will work if we don't have people think about it too much.

Anyway, Loki shows up in his own mind's flashback and starts fighting Probe. 

We then cut to a hospital where Balthazar is writhing in pain from having been severely injured by Probe last issue. A Doctor D'Prave shows up and offers Balthazar the chance to avenge himself.

Back in the future, the Enigmas decide to erase the memories of Star Guard so they don't know about Probe and Val-En. Ok. I'm not sure anyone was worried about that plot point, but I guess it's fixed now.

Back in Loki's mind, he is imagining Probe all naked and tied up for some S&M action, because this is an Extreme comic with the subtlety of an anvil. 

With Loki occupied in his mind, Old Bearded Supreme in Supreme's Body hits Loki, while Supreme in Old Bearded Supreme's Body shoots him and Enigma does... whatever Enigma does. And that forces Loki to let Probe go. 

Loki then kills Supreme in Old Bearded Supreme's Body. But Old Bearded Supreme in Supreme's Body and Probe keep fighting.

Meanwhile, the doctor gives Balthazar a chair with a whole bunch of weapons on it. Don't worry, this plot goes nowhere. 

The Supremes and Enigma keep attacking Loki until he's all bloody. He teleports away and talks about tormenting Supreme's prodigy. I think this is a clumsy attempt to suggest he's going to teleport into the past or future or whatever and attack Supreme and Star Guard, setting a time loop in motion. If so, it's not done well.

Old Bearded Supreme in Supreme's Body goes to bury Old Bearded Supreme's body when it vanishes. He accuses Enigma, but he says it wasn't him and takes off for more pressing matters.

And there's one issue left to wrap this up! 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #38

 

Supreme issue 38 came out in April 1996. Jim Valentino did the writing and layouts. Pencils by Joe Bennett. Inked by Norm Rapmund. Lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Eric Stephenson was the editor but did not co-plot. And I have to admit, I kind of am enjoying these silly, energetic covers by Dan Fraga. 

The issue starts with Lord Ardath watching the news coverage of the Supremes/Loki fight and tells Balthazar it is time to strike. His plan is to drain Probe's powers the same way he did the other two Supremes' powers so that he's strong enough to fight back against his sister and fix his deformed body or something. 

Really, this whole subplot is a subplot too many. Can't we just deal with the Loki nonsense and move on?

Back at the fight, Loki makes Star Guard (including another Probe and Val-En) appear. Enigma wraps the area in an energy bubble to stop anyone else from getting in and Probe tries to explain to Other Probe but as is to be expected with this series, they start fighting. 

Ardath and Balthazar show up and walk through the energy bubble (really effective, Enigma). They knock out Val-En and Ardath tells Balthazar says that this is his body. That when Probe took over Val-En's body, Val-En's mind was transported to Other Earth by Loki and given his twisted body. Loki then had him drain Supreme's powers.

Ardath goes to merge with Val-En but something goes wrong and burns up in a shock of blue energy. In a rage, Balthazar blames Probe and goes to attack her, but she instinctively attacks back and mortally wounds Balthazar. Well, that subplot was tied up quickly.

The Supremes beat up on Star Guard until it's just them versus Loki, who transforms into a giant. 

Two issues left! And I guess I should touch on the Kid Supreme and Lady Supreme series. Okay, so a little more to go!

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #37

 

 

Supreme issue 37 came out in March  1996. Jim Valentino did the script and layouts. Pencils by Joe Bennett. Inked by Norm Rapmund. Lettered by Kurt Hathaway. Eric Stephenson was the editor and did the co-plot. There were two covers, both by Dan Fraga.

We pick up with Supreme, now in the body of Old Bearded Supreme with the constantly smoking Trenchcoat Constantine. He asks where the other Supreme went and the Wannabe Constantine says he's off doing some good deed with his boy scout mentality, and I can't tell if he's being ironic or just has never read this comic before.

New Supreme in Old Bearded Supreme's Body says he wants to kill Old Bearded Supreme in New Supreme's Body and Trenchcoat Constantine offers to help. Why? Because he is wily and plays by his own rules. And it's really annoyingly dumb.

In outer space, Probe is flying to find Supreme when she's stopped by Enigma, some cosmic mysterious character, that apparently existed before this random cameo. They have a conversation about how Probe knows Enigma from the future before Enigma says that he's going to teach Probe how to use her powers.

On Other Earth, Old Bearded Supreme in New Supreme's Body rescues a runaway commuter train. 

And as he flies off (I guess we've forgotten that Supreme can't fly on this planet) New Supreme in Old Bearded Supreme's Body blasts him with some high-tech weaponry.

Enigma renames Probe as Lady Supreme and teaches her how to use her Supreme powers. Her real Supreme power is keeping her torn-apart costume to remain exactly in place. 

Back on Other Earth, some woman named Mrs. Spencer tells someone named Louis to go get footage of the Supremes fight for their TV channel. And to take Bartholomew. I guess that's someone named Jamie, because he grabs her and takes a flying car to the fight. 

He starts reporting and tells us how the Shepherd and the Keep took this Earth's superpowered beings and the non-powered villains went wild. Then Supreme showed up. But as his beard grew, his powers started to fade. This makes almost no sense, since the Keep stuff happened like two issues ago. Whatever.

In space, Enigma says Probe is ready and teleports them to the Supreme fight. Probe puts a stop to the fighting and they decide to try to figure out who is the real Supreme. 

They call out Wannabe Constantine, but he reveals that he's actually Loki!

 

Three more issues to go!