A universe of characters - part 1

As Moore's ideas for the expanded Awesome Universe started to take shape, he knew he was going to need a lot more characters. As many of them were to be frozen in suspended animation for 30 years, they needed to have a retro look. Fortunately, Moore had the best retro artist on speed dial (did they have speed dial in 1996?) in Rick Veitch.

On his wonderful blog, Veitch talked about creating these characters for Supreme 48-49 and the Judgment Day miniseries. (Note: I'm only going to post the ones who appeared in the pages of Supreme here and save the Judgment Day ones for a later post.)

"The way Alan Moore and I worked, when we created these characters for his Awesome Universe reboot, was via the phone. He’d have a bunch of ideas; some well thought out and others still in a raw state, which he’d describe to me. I’d start sketching as we spoke, throwing in ideas as they came to me. Since almost all the characters were knock-offs of existing golden and silver age icons, the trick was to catch the flavor of the original while adding some new and interesting angle; be it a different costume or power or hairstyle or whatever."

 

 

"For this guy, Alan didn’t have anything solid in mind except that he wanted a PLASTIC MAN type. I suggested that, since these characters were supposed to have originated in the early 1960’s, we could base his stretching powers on the polymer industry, which during that era was mixing up new molecular structures to create exotic plastics and 'space-age' materials. POLYMAN was the natural name and his costume design was based on a molecular grid."

 

"Don’t remember much about this time-traveling hero Alan Moore and I came up with for the Awesome Universe except that it brought a phone call from Jean-Marc Lofficier at Starwatcher, pointing out that he looked a bit too much like Moebius’ MAJOR GRUBERT. I think we agreed to remove the spike on his helmet and white out the infinity symbol on his chest, but not sure if we ever did anything more with him."

Note: Mark Time (now called Mark Tyme) showed up in Supreme #49, helping to send Optilux back to the real world.

 

"Would you believe this is the last of the Alan Moore character designs I drew for Awesome? ... This guy is the archetypal psychic detective with a buttoned down sixties look. I have no idea if he ever saw print in any actual stories."

Note: Blake Barron was used in the Judgment Day miniseries and later appeared in Moore's Youngblood #1.

It's interesting to note that Moore must have liked the idea of waking up a bunch of superheroes from 30 years of suspended animation because he did it again in the pages of Tom Strong with the heroes on Terra Obscura.

The psychedelic existentialism of Jim Starlin

During the 1970s there was a run of wonderful existential-inspired cosmic stories, and few did them better than Jim Starlin. While I missed out on his Warlock days, I was a big fan of Dreadstar and the nihilistic anti-organized religion story he had to tell. But it's impossible to tell the story of comics without touching on his run on Warlock.

Starlin took a secondary superhero who had adventures like this:

And turned him into a cosmic hero battling an evil future self and grappling with the ramifications like this:

 

To stop himself from becoming the villain he hates, he confronts a future self and convinces himself to kill himself.

To the modern reader, it's overwritten and overwrought, but it was new and different and spoke to the times in a way that comics hadn't yet. This would all grow into the Thanos/Infinity War stories that swallowed the Marvel Universe and is now swallowing the Marvel movies. If you want more on the weird Warlock story and Starlin's writing, check out this great blog.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to show off some of Starlin's incredible artwork that obviously helped inspire Rick Veitch for the flashback in Supreme #49. Enjoy!

 

 

 

As we've seen, some of the great artists of yesteryear turn up to work on Supreme, and Starlin is no exception. He'll do the art of an entire issue later in Moore's Supreme run.

Weekly Reading: Supreme #49

Supreme #49

Published by Awesome Entertainment in May 1997

The cover:

Title: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out...

(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 Moore's Awesome works page.)

At long last, welcome to the Awesome Universe. In the speculation-crazy days of the mid-1990s, Rob Liefeld set out to build another comics company, this time without other comic creator partners. He hired Jeph Loeb to be the publisher (as Loeb wrote several series for Awesome). He also got financial backing from both John Hyde (Film Roman CEO) and Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, who had run Malibu when they lured Liefeld from Marvel and now ran Platinum Studios (home of Cowboys & Aliens).

As you can see from the image above, the Awesome line had a unique look with the Awesome logo running along the side. It's always appealed to my graphic designer side as it was distinctive and fun. Beyond the cover (and notice they've scrapped the "New Adventures" subhead), not much had changed on the inside. For the first time in a while we have the same art team working on the issue, with Mark Pajarillo handling the modern story and Rick Veitch handling the flashback.

So, following up from the last issue, The Allies were facing off with Supreme villain Optilux in a part of Idea Space. As this issue starts, Optilux explains that he faked his suicide in 1969 and instead became a form of spiritual light. He hired Hulver Ramik to kidnap the other heroes' souls to put them in special glass prisons that will act as a batteries that will allow Optilux to turn the whole universe into the same sort of spiritual light.

The Allies decide to attack, but as Roman asks, "How can you fight something that's made of light?" To which Supreme replies that they have to find a way to "snuff" him. It's the start of several bad puns which make me wonder if Moore didn't realize that what worked in the flashback stories doesn't always work in the modern story. Personally, I don't mind it too much, but your mileage may vary.

Optilux makes short work of The Allies. Supreme and Glory awake in a bed looking at a chandelier, wondering where they are, if they are in fact anywhere.

 

I want to pause for a second and point out the really weird art on this page (seen above). We have these three small panels pulling back to reveal the chandelier and then the large panel has huge swaths of space for the ceiling and covers up the only detail on the chandelier. There's something really wrong here that I don't think was intentional, and I can't decide whether it's that we've hit the artistic limitations of Pajarillo, which I doubt, as some of the work he did on issue 48 was lovely, or more likely, this issue was rushed so much that there wasn't adequate time to get it right.

Anyway, moving on, Supreme explains to Glory that Optilux can make solid material out of his astral light, especially here in this realm of Idea Space. And that means that here light can attack like an animal, which we soon see in the form of light-based manta rays (get it?!?). The heroes beat them back, with Supreme pointing out that Glory's godly lineage giving her great power in this area of Idea Space. Here is where gods and goddesses are at their most real, and hence, most powerful (as Moore noted was a powerful idea he came away with from writing From Hell). As Supreme and Glory look for a way out of this mind maze, Supreme flashes back to his "Space Years."

And we have our Rick Veitch flashback, this time most likely inspired by Jim Starlin's cosmic psychedelic existential works of the 1970s. Supreme has left the Earth to "find himself" and the answer to the riddles of God, death and existence. "A reason for us and our universe to be!" he thinks.

He soon comes across Jack of Lanterns, the keeper of the Living Lantern, who warns him to turn back for he has reached the gateway of reality. Jack is the Awsome Universe's version of The Spectre, a one-time hero who became a cosmic being. Jack takes Supreme into the borderlands of being, "reason's furthest reaches" where they battle for a bit through some wonderful Veitch visuals before Supreme tears down the gauze of reality. Unfortunately, it's too much for Supreme's mind to bear and he loses his mind.

I've always felt that Moore was trying to say something here about whether Supreme came to realize that he wasn't part of our reality. That he's a bit of imagination and nothing more. But it also may have been meant as nothing more than an homage to a period of comics that Moore referenced several times in scripts and proposals he was writing around this time. You can decide for yourself.

Anyway, back in the modern story, Supreme explains that he wandered around with amnesia and journeyed to fake Earths until he recently returned at the start of Supreme #41. Through a trick of shadows, Supreme realizes Optilux is nearby and he manages to shock the villain, letting the heroes out of their mind mazes. Supreme then uses his shout supreme to crack the prisons of all the other heroes, finally letting us meet Professor Night and the other imprisoned heroes.

Again, the layout, inking and even the color are off on this page. Look at how none of the characters on the sides are detailed, inked or colored correctly. It's a shame because this could have been a really nice page.

The heroes decide to attack Optilux's light, which doesn't do much good, but Supreme comes up with a plan to trick Optilux into a prison made of the same special glass he had imprisoned the other heroes in. Mark Tyme's dimensional powers transports Optilux's prison to the real world and the heroes awaken from their extended slumber. The Allies remove their helmets and they're back in the real world, too.

Back at the Citadel, we see Radar and Suprema (who is wearing a costume that looks nothing like what we've seen before), who tells them that there is a time distortion in mind space and that Ethan is missing an appointment to work with Diana. He quickly takes off and Radar and Suprema have a feeling they know why: "He's fallen in heat," says Radar.

There's a lot to like from this issue, with the great villain in Optilux and the interesting setting of Idea Space. Moore set himself up with some wonderful heroes freed from Hulver Ramik. But ultimately, the art is dragging the book down. Fortunately next time, Chris Sprouse arrives to save the day in "A Love Supreme."

From the continuing misadventures in promotion, we get this, explaining that Supreme #52 will be spread over two issues (with the same issue number):

Why they decided to promote this months ahead of time in issue #49 (with a piece of art that appears in issue #50), but not in the actual issue just before it (#51) is bizarre. And why would you say Alan Moore's 2nd year on Supreme begins today, when it's not going to start for three to four issues?

More confusion: according to the letters page, Judgment Day Alpha was now available at comic shops. I'm not going to take it up until after Supreme #52 a & b, as that's where it's referenced in the Supreme series. Even from the start, the scheduling of Awesome books was off.

Drat.

As always, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for all of the details and references that I completely missed.