Weekly Reading: Supreme #42

Supreme #42

Published by Image Comics in September 1996

The cover:

Title: Secret Origins

(As always: Supreme is currently out of print. There are a number of ways to read it, which can be found on the How do I read Supreme page.)

Welcome back! And with the second issue we get our first understanding of what this book is going to be like going forward. There's a central, modern story interlaced with a flashback(s) in the form of homages or pastiches of prior eras of comic books.

So, the modern story starts with Ethan's journal. This is a concept Moore and other authors use regularly to put you into the mind of the hero. Moore swore off thought bubbles in modern comics a long time ago and has to find other ways to give you the protagonist's thoughts.

In this first bit we learn more about Ethan Crane's job as the artist on a Superman-like comic, working with Billy Friday and meeting Diana Dane, who is working on the Wonder Woman knock off Warrior Woman.

There's a nice action shot of Supreme saving a jet (hmm... where have we seen that before?) and a great joke about how it takes Ethan four minutes to pencil and ink the issue (comic pencillers and inkers everywhere share a knowing look).

Then it's on to Littlehaven, the stand-in for Smallville, Superman's boyhood home. Ethan wanders into the woods and starts having memories. As he says, this Ethan doesn't have memories until they're filled in by the flashbacks he's about to experience.

He then makes a remark that I think is important: "The memories were yellowed fragments from an illustrated children's story."


It's important because on the next page is the recreation of a yellowed fragment of an illustrated children's story. We've gotten our first flashback by the Ridiculous Rick Veitch!

While Moore rightly gets most of the credit for Supreme, Rick Veitch deserves to be billed above the title, too. It's his work, recreating the past eras that will give this story its form, its sense of joy and wonder, that make it the story it is.

As Moore said in the introduction to Veitch's Greyshirt: Indigo Sunset, "If the comic industry is ever on fire, someone please make sure to save Rick Veitch...because in some eerie and unfathomable way, every comic book panel ever committed to pulp has imprinted itself upon this man's more-than-usually-twisted DNA. ... Curt Swan silverings or Kirby krackle-fests, gunslingers or G.I.s, furry funsters or fashion floozies, there remains no obscure corner or cobwebbed and discarded genre of comic book history that this creator has not poked, prodded or pitched his tent in for a while." And he'd get a chance to show it all in Moore's Supreme and the Awesome universe.

Sorry, got distracted there. So, here we learn Supreme's secret origin of being adopted, coming across the Supremium meteorite, and being rescued by his dog Radar. We meet his parents and his friend, Professor Wells. Soon enough he's flying, along with his now-superdog, and rescuing people.

At left is one of my favorite pages from this flashback, as not only do we see the first appearances of Kid Supreme, but we get a look at his secret hideout. We see the secret trap door, the hidden tunnel, the workshop and the robot suprematon decoys. Even as an adult, how can you not look at that panel and start imagining how it looks and works? (The answer is, you can't.)

Also, I love the joke, "Look up there in the sky! Is it an eagle? Is it an auto-gyro? No! It's Kid Supreme, the lad of laurels."

We meet Ethan's love interest in Judy Jordan and his nemesis in Darius Dax. Of course Kid Supreme grows up to become just Supreme, working on K-Zam! radio with Judy, still battling Dax and going to war for truth, justice and the American Way!

One note about this. The dialog through this section is hokey. The bombast at the end is ridiculous. If these were modern comics, the audience wouldn't stand for it. But because it evokes a period, it's not only accepted, it makes it more real.

Let's take care of one piece now, as it's the subject of a lot of online arguments and it's going to be important as we go on: does Ethan Crane recognize that the flashbacks are comic books? The line before the flashback starts can be read either way. Erik Larsen, who would take over the writing on Supreme after Moore, claims that Moore's scripts make it clear that Ethan doesn't see these as comics, he experiences them as memories. Only the audience knows that they're comics. We know Ethan is a comic book character, but he doesn't. That's the joke. So, if you prefer to read it as though he does know, go ahead, just know that I'm going with the idea that he doesn't.

Back in the present, Ethan meets up with the aged Judy Jordan, who runs the Kid Supreme museum. Moore loves superhero lairs with trophies from prior adventures, and we get the first of many here.

We find out that Darius Dax died. Which leads us into the second!! flashback.

Here we see the way many of the Superman stories of the era started, in the midst of the action, before going back to the start of the story to see how we got here. This one is about Darius Dax, who has kidnapped Judy Jordan and is calling out Kid Supreme. Kid Supreme shows up, but so does Ethan Crane! How is this possible? It's not a robot decoy, a dream, or an "impossible" story!

Well, it turns out the other Kid Supreme is the work of the League of Infinity.

Moore gave himself a lot of gifts to play with in Supreme, and one of my favorites is the League of Infinity. Led by Futuregirl, the League has "historical" teenage figures, including Bill Hickok, a witch, a caveman and Achilles, who travel through time. They've come to prevent Kid Supreme from being exposed to Dax's stolen Supremium and to recruit Kid Supreme to join them in their Time Tower. Of course he joins as he can already see our current/"husky" version higher up the tower in the future.

No one does time travel stories as well as Alan Moore (who views time as a fourth dimension, probably from taking too much LSD, but hey, he makes it work). And the Time Tower and teenaged superheroes from various eras are such a joy.

The League defeats Dax and depart, knowing Kid Supreme has become a member.

Back to the present. We meet Judy's granddaughter Hilda and then they all head to the cemetery. Judy tends to Ethan's parents' graves, as well as Darius Dax's, who died in prison, but not before sending a religious book to Judy as a farewell present.

Hilda gives Ethan a picture to take to Supreme in Omegapolis. And that leads him to think about some of his missing details, like Radar and Supreme's floating fortress hideout, the Citadel.

We'll have to wait until issue #43 to find out more!

Before I end this, I want to talk about one more idea. It's been said in a lot of places that Supreme is one of the best Superman stories ever told, that it's a love letter to Superman and his history, that it's how Superman stories should be told. And while I agree with all of those things, I think a lot of readers are missing a crucial element. Supreme isn't just a love letter to Superman; they're a love letter to Superman comics.

Moore talks a lot about how when he writes comics he writes them to take advantage of the form. They aren't just stories that can be easily adapted to tv or movies or whatever. No matter how often Warner Bros. tries, Watchmen can't be adapted to a movie or tv show because Watchmen is about comics. The ads. The grid. The panels. The archetypal characters. The humor. It can only exist as a comic.

In the same way, Supreme can only exist as a comic. How would you show these flashbacks in a movie? How would you show a panel that reveals Kid Supreme's hidden lair? You can't. Nor would it be a good movie if it did.

That's why the work of Todd Klein was so important to this run. The feel of the old comics is important because this story is an homage to the stories and how they were told, not just the characters in them.

Anyway, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for all of the details that I completely missed.

Come back next week, when we take it to the Maximum!

Letterer Supreme Todd Klein

Most comic fans don't think about who is lettering the comics they read very much, but Supreme was so lovingly created and rendered in detail down to its lettering that I wanted to bring the man responsible to your attention. Todd Klein has lettered just about everything and is an acknowledged master. He also has a wonderful, readable blog about lettering that is top notch!

I'll reference him again as we go on, but here are some of his contributions to Supreme #41 and how he helped capture the exact retro feel that made the book such a loving homage.

As I mentioned in my weekly reading, the credits page helped set the tone for the issue that followed. Klein created it, as he explained on his blog:

 

"Hand-lettered rather large in the style of Ira Schnapp, this appeared on the inside front covers of SUPREME #41-52 and served as the ongoing story title for those Alan Moore-written issues. I no longer recall who suggested going this route, but it was probably Alan. I think I was the one who found appropriate old DC Comics house ads to imitate, pulling ideas from several of them. Scanned from the original lettering in my files. Lots of other Ira Schnapp and Gaspar Saladino lettering homages appeared in the issues."

It makes sense that Klein was modeling the design on Ira Schnapp (who created logos and lettering for DC Comics from about 1940 to the late 1960s) as Moore and company were creating a love letter to the comics they grew up with.

Some more pieces of lettering from this issue, from another blog post:

"When I was lettering the Alan Moore issues of SUPREME, whenever I did some hand-lettering I thought I might want to use again, or at least refer to, I made a photocopy. My copier wasn’t the best, and sometimes, as above, the copies were dodgy, but good enough for reference."

"This one I copied in case I had further use for this style for Squeak the Supremouse. The sound effect was a bonus. Leave it to Alan to sum up what I loved about super-animals like Mighty Mouse as a kid in one choice panel!"

Joe Bennett interview

Joe Bennett was interviewed by the Brazilian Facebook page dedicated to Alan Moore, which you can find here. It was translated on the always great Alan Moore World Blog here. I repost the relevant questions below:

AMBr: Joe, you drew the first Supreme stories that Alan Moore wrote. How do you appraise the work you did back then?
Joe Bennett: I wish I could go back in time and redo it all. [But] the ‘Image Era’ limited my style. I could have done something much better like for instance the issue I did recently for SUPERMAN; that should have been my draughtsmanship for SUPREME.

But Extreme - the Liefeld's studio inside Image (then Maximum Press and then Awesome Comics) - was known to impose a specific art mould, the "Liefeld school", correct?
JB: Yes, back then it was like that, only those who kept to that prevailing style could draw for Image and I never liked that, but I needed to work. I have always been a fan of the classic in comics: Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, John Buscema, Garcia Lopez. It was a pain for me to draw in that Image style because I have always had a good narrative, but there was no room for good storytelling, it had to be just the visual and the thrashing. It was hard, but I adapted fast and soon enough I went back to my original style.

And how was it, to work with Alan Moore scripts? Was his level of detailing very high?
JB: Yes, it was enormous. And I always say that I feared changing anything, because if he asks you that a dog crosses the road in the background, you get scared not to draw it… Who knows if that dog is going to become a cosmic entity in the future of the script? [laughs] But it was very good, it was a lesson on how to do scripts.

You were already on it before Alan Moore got on board. How was this change of scriptwriter?
JB: I even thought I would be out… But no, I stayed. And it caused me diarrhoea for three days, seriously… I was nervous.

Did drawing for Alan Moore demand more time? How long did it take you to make a single issue?
JB: No, what took me time was to read the script. There were four sheets for each page, or even more. But as usual, I finished an issue in twenty days.

You were one of the few Brazilian artists to have worked with Alan Moore. How important is it to your career, in your opinion?
JB: I think I was the only one to have done a script directly from him, because if I remember well, Avatar launched something, but it was a text adapted to script and the illustrator was Brazilian.
It was very good for my career, gave me an enviable CV, and for the fan in me, it’s a dream that came true, imagine a guitar player that plays at the local bar, playing alongside John Lennon? It was more or less like that.

Joe also made the art below (I believe for Alan Moore World) that shows what his Supreme #41  cover could have looked like.