Joe Casey on Youngblood, WildC.A.T.s and Judgment Day

There's a new podcast called The Alan Moore Cast. It is described as, "Each week on The Alan Moore Cast, your favorite comic book creators and pop culture aficionados join host Nathan Cabaniss to talk about a different Moore project. The comics, the books, the adaptations... We'll be discussing them all to fully explore the work of a writer who changed the comic book landscape, if not all of popular culture, several times over."

 

Several weeks ago, there was a good episode featuring Joe Casey, a writer who followed Moore on both WildC.A.T.s and Youngblood. Casey talks about what he liked about Moore's runs and how they inspired him, but also a great bit about where he thinks Moore went wrong on Judgment Day.

 If you'd like, you can give it a listen, here: https://shows.acast.com/6a1dc6d4626f8869c3a8471c/episodes/6a5e786276f8ee25bb7bc463? 

What was the deal with the last two pages of Supreme: The Return 2!?!

As you may remember, Supreme: The Return issue 2 was kind of a mess. The lettering was off in a number of places, the colors were dark and muddy, and they even forgot to put "The Return" on the cover. But if there's one part that has always bothered me, it's why were the last two pages clearly not Starlin's work and clearly (bad) copies of Sprouse's work?

  

 For years, I've been blaming Rob Liefeld. But it looks like I owe him an apology... sort of.

My friend Doyle ran into Jim Starlin at a convention and asked him about the pages and whether he ever drew his own versions. Here's what he said:

Starlin says that they hadn't paid him for the Supreme pages he did (and maybe they had lost the script, that was unclear) so he scanned in some Sprouse art and turned that in.

 So, it turns out that Starlin was the one who gave us this mess. Thanks, Jim!

The Chad Bowers interview

Chad Bowers's run on Youngblood (2017) was the last to acknowledge Moore's ideas and characters. He was awesome enough to chat with me about his Youngblood run and where he was going with it and how Alan Moore, Tim Seeley and others influenced his run.  

Mike: Hi, I was wondering if I could ask how Alan Moore’s run on Supreme and Youngblood influenced your run on Youngblood?

Bowers: Sure, I’ll answer what I can!

It’s funny, you read interviews with creators where they’re asked “what did you want to do with so-and-so” and oftentimes they can’t remember, and I’m always a little disappointed and think “how can you not remember”… but here I sit, scrambling to remember all the bits and pieces of what was planned.

Let me grab a few of my notebooks and see what I can dig up. I can give you the broad strokes but I’d like to try and give a little more.

Mike: No worries, I appreciate you even willing to talk about it after so long. Yours was definitely my favorite of the Youngblood series that followed Moore’s and I love the way you incorporated Doc Rocket as the OldBlood member

Bowers: Awww thanks. I’m a huge fan of Moore and his Supreme run. Hell, all of his Extreme-related stuff. Badrock/Violater included.

I tried to pepper in all kinds of little references to his work on the characters…

Mike: Right! It felt like you took that ball and ran with it and kept finding new ways to make this a whole fun universe

The ninja magician riding the goat and controlling the birds in my YB #1 is supposed to be the modern age Condor, a bird-themed villain referenced only once in Supreme.

Or maybe referenced a few times. I can’t remember now…

My rule was that everything counted…

I really wanted to get to #100 and do something completely different. But wasn’t in the cards. Anyway, thanks for being interested… I’ll see what I can round up.

The Crime Condor! That was his name.

I didn’t find the outline I was looking for, but I’ll tell you what I remember… but I usually have two or three different resolutions, so who knows what would’ve really happened? Depending on how familiar you are with the original run of Youngblood, Rob’s first big bad of the series was this sort of Darkseid stand-in called Darkthornn. Darkthornn is defeated by Prophet and Youngblood, specifically Psi-Fire. But that story ends with the typical “I’ll be back” threats and some “this is my destiny” promises that, ultimately, don’t amount to much. So I kind of seized on that early on and had it simmering in the background of our book.

But I didn’t want to bog the book down with all that continuity with the relaunch, so I started with a very grounded, superhero crime story about a girl whose friend goes missing. Simple. Easy to understand with the added hook that her friend is also a superhero with a secret identity. But there’s little hints here and there throughout the run, and once we sort of won over the newbies AND the oldheads, I started to unpack the Extreme stuff more…

So effectively what’s happened off panel, in the missing years leading up to our #1, the Extreme Universe has gone through a forced revision. Whereas previous revisions happened “naturally”, this is the first man-made revision. And the man behind it was Darius Dax.

A Dax who escaped limbo and sabotaged the Supremacy out of existence (somehow) before returning to Earth to systematically eliminate all threats to his alternate self’s takeover of our reality… a hidden Dax who had avoided all previous revisions to become the most EXTREME Dax… Darkthornn of D’hkay.

Mike: Ha ha! That’s an awesome synthesis of the most Extreme and the most Supreme thing

Bowers: But before he could destroy the Supremacy, the King Supreme was able to send one sole survivor back to the current reality, a la Jor-El… and that’s Sally.

Which kind of starts this domino effect that begins to unravel Dax’s manmade revision almost immediately.

The way Dax achieves his “revision” is through Psi-Fire, who he has cloned over and over again and turned into a kind of biological magical memory machine in an underground bunker hidden in the Midwest.

 

 

Mike: As a guy who follows a lot of short Youngblood runs, it seemed like trouble when Towe left. I love Seeley’s Bloodstrike run and I liked Casey’s Youngblood run, but I know they both wanted to do a lot more.

Bowers: Yeah, Jim had an awesome opportunity and couldn’t NOT work on Spidey and Deadpool. I get it. But Cory was going to be a phenomenal replacement. It was more the whole rights thing that sort of killed the book.

Mike: That makes sense. It did all blow up right after that.

Bowers: So Seeley’s a pal, and last night I did find an “Extreme Team-Up” pitch I sent him for a Suprema + Twilgiht book.

Mike: Those last couple of issues of Bloodstrike with Suprema and Twilight are absolutely brilliant.

Yeah, Tim gets it.

His and Casey’s (and Moore’s) stuff were kinda my north stars.

Mike: How did you decide Doc Rocket was going to be one of your new Youngblood? I love your characterization of her.

Bowers: Honestly, I just really loved what Moore did with her and wanted to see/read more of her. Jim had a good design, too. But I liked the idea of making her the big sister instead of the rookie.

Wanted to write a speedster. Big Flash fan.

Mike: That was what was so great. You acknowledged her previous exploits and allowed her to grow and age. But she also wasn’t tied to the old Youngblood government stuff, which worked well with Shaft and Die Hard. She was so refreshing.

It felt like nobody knew what to do with her since Moore’s run.

Suprema is another character that has appeared in a lot of books since Moore’s, but maybe her character hasn’t always come through very well

Because of her amnesia, it seemed like you were taking your time to bring her along

Bowers: With Supreme/Suprema…

Yeah, the snap back in #6 and her absence after was supposed to lead into a spotlight issue where she would’ve uncovered everything related to Supreme’s absence…

In her quest she finds a rough draft of Storybook Smith’s book and a page with…

Hold on…

These symbols.

 

“The Extreme Equation”

The Extreme Equation- 3 symbols formed by three pillars; none as meaningful or as powerful without the other two. The triangle = Supreme. Y = Youngblood. III = Prophet (a man from the past, in the present, to save the future, etc…)

The “Jack in the box” texting Vogue in #7 is John Prophet.

Ultimately it was all building to them all returning for this huge battle against Darkthornn in what would’ve been a fallback to the originally numbering for Youngblood #100.

Youngblood with both Supremes and a reborn Prophet…

#101 would’ve been a temporary but complete revamp of the book for about six months… the solicit text for 101 below: Vol. 5 - Reset #101 In a world revised and now ruled by Darkthorn, a man named Youngblood rises from the ashes and begins an impossible quest across the wasteland that was America in search of a fabled magic book that just might change everything.

This is probably way more than you wanted. But I loved working on the book and it was my first solo series and who knew if I’d ever do anything else, so I went for broke. It’s a dude from South Carolina trying to refine/find his voice and not doing a very good job of hiding his idolization of Moore and Morrison, I guess.

Since we were the only Extreme book on shelves at the time, I felt a real obligation to deliver for every kind of Rob fan while telling a banger of a story that hopefully raised the critical bar on what people expected from Youngblood.

I wish I could tell you there was some secret code or that I had a bigger plan that piggy backed off Blue Rose, but any reference is mostly there to let readers know some element of those previous stories remains. And that I’ve read it, I loved it, and they were in good hands with me at the wheel.

Mike: This was wonderful. I really appreciate you giving me this kind of insight.

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!