Weekly Reading: Supreme: The Return #1

Supreme: The Return #1

Published by Awesome Entertainment in May 1999

The covers:

Title: Through a Glass Darkly...

(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.)

With your permission, I'm going to handle this Weekly Reading a little differently. Normally, I talk about the cover, when the issue came out and finally get to the content of the story. In this case, there's so much to deal with that will just get in the way of dealing with the second part of our story, that it's just easier if I deal with that other stuff at the end. Deal?

We start off with a prologue that gets it's own title: Mr. Korgo Goes to Washington, which is hilarious. We're back in the Bill Clinton White House with an on-fire Secret Service agent waking the first family. Clinton, written like the Saturday Night Live version of him, goes out to deal with Korgo, wondering what his administration's policy is. "I think the vice president covers parallel-universe topsoil erosion in his book, sir," an aide tells him.

Look, your amusement on this will vary, but at this late date, it leaves me nostalgic for a time when all one had to worry about was the president's hokeyness.

Anyway, Korgo challenges "Clint's-son, legendary gray-maned wolf of the Americas" to one-on-one battle. Clinton's not having it until Korgo and Vor-Em basically call Clinton a sissy, at which point he hits Korgo. Korgo pounds Clinton back and takes Hillary and the White House as his own.

Meanwhile Supreme is fighting Shadow Supreme through downtown Omegapolis. Supreme pounds the Shadow Supreme down past a subway (that looks like Washington DC's Metro) to the Earth's center of gravity, which Supreme hopes will hold the monster.

In a suburb, the Slaver Ant is turning husband against wife through her propaganda chemical while stealing their children. She walks away with two babies while their parents are at each others' throats.

Suprema is at the rock concert where Optilux is converting the Bon Jovi audience into photons and depositing them in Amalynth, as part of his messiah complex. There's little Suprema can do, as Optilux is just a being of light.

"At least if he's firing at me he's not concentrating on this audience of rather badly-dressed young people!" Suprema thinks. What a great character!

She uses her super breath to spread the adhesive glitter (I had no idea that was a thing) from the crowd and to mess up the projectors making Optilux solid. Suprema's able to grab his photo-plasmic converter from him and shoot Optilux, sending him to Amalynth.

That was a quick way of dealing with a villain that took Supreme, The Allies and a messload of other heroes to deal with over the course of two issues before! She tells Supreme what happened and about the few hundred Bon Jovi fans that joined him in the prism world.

Supreme's response: "Oh well. Can't be helped." Ha ha!

The Tellevillain, not wanting to face Suprema and Supreme, starts jumping from aerial to aerial again, but Supreme jolts him with static electricity. He's dazed long enough for a band of angry Friends viewers to find him and start beating on him.

I really enjoy Moore's writing when he lets loose like this and just has fun. This is exactly the kind of story DC should have been putting out for Superman for years.

Then the Shadow Supreme pops back up from underground. Just as he's about to attack our heroes, a familiar voice appears: "When a dog is mad, mistress, you must pay no attention to its bark. You must be merciful... and put it to sleep!" Radar is back (and has his own logo)!

Apparently Shadow Supreme killed a suprematon (those Radar suprematons get destroyed all the time!) and said it was the real pooch. Radar goes after the fake Supreme, breaking the skin and ripping his arm off. I love letter Todd Klein's small font for Supreme's protests trying to get Radar to heel.

Radar chases after Shadow Supreme leading him to Washington, which we see on a conveniently-timed newscast. Apparently Hillary "Rodham Space-Tyrant" has taken a liking to Korgo's policies on healthcare.

But before that, the heroes get a lead on Slaver Ant and find her trying to make a hive for her kidnapped "family." They take her to Washington, where Shadow Supreme is arguing with Vice President Vor-Em over who's more important. Supreme drops Slaver Ant on the villains, spreading her chemicals on the brutes. They proceed to fight each other unconscious.

Korgo appears to challenge Supreme, but secretly asks him to put him back in the Hell of Mirrors. "Put me back in the mirror... anywhere away from that woman! Gods, I thought I was ruthless!" he whispers. Supreme pretends to knock Korgo out and then tells Hillary, "Pretending to play along with Korgo was wise, Mrs. Clinton, but now you can rejoin the real president now!"

Hillary: "Huh? Oh, him. Yeah, sure. Whatever."

Nothing funnier than an ambitious woman, right? Groan.

As I said, your sense of humor will determine how much you like this ending, as the issue concludes with Radar flying the villains back to the Citadel to meet Suprema. But it's a fun, light story, filled with humor and inventive action. This is exactly what Moore planned as the Awesome template.

And that's it. Except, it wasn't supposed to be. According to Chris Sprouse in his Modern Masters book, there was a page 24, which he pencilled, but Awesome never published:

 

I had it inked...

 

 and colored and can be seen below:

 

Somewhere there's a script for this page that will, hopefully, one day surface. I asked Sprouse when I saw him at a convention about it, but it doesn't sound like he has the script handy.

Drat.

Okay, so, first things second. It took over a year for this issue to be published. That's because in February or March of 1998, the primary investor in Awesome Entertainment (whom I believe to be Scott Rosenberg -- chairman of Platinum Studios) backed out abruptly.

Many people believed that was it for Awesome. Someone called Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse and told them Awesome was done. The news spread and other publishers called Moore to see if he'd come work for them, which he quickly did with Jim Lee's Wildstorm. But we'll talk about that later.

Ultimately Awesome came back, though never as well organized as it did before. Here's Liefeld talking about how he decided to bring Supreme and Awesome back:

"When Awesome went on hiatus, I put all of Alan's work away, and figured that

we'd eventually work through all the financial issues, and develop a timeline

to release all his stuff. Originally, I was going to hold onto Alan's material

because I had been told that America's Best Comics was going to launch in

November of '98 through February of '99. Then, they told me that they were

going to postpone it indefinitely as the deal with DC came to light."

"Through all of this I was talking with Alex Ross who is my conscience of

sorts on Supreme. He's been very helpful in guiding creative decisions in

marketing what we have, because he is really passionate about the character

and has been very generous about helping us garner more attention for the

series. Alex told me that we should get Alan's material out before the ABC

books hit. Originally, I wanted to wait until after the ABC debut and follow

his newer stuff, but with the majority of these books done, it didn't make

sense to sit on them any longer."

"Now, as the solicitations come out, we're getting most of the Awesome

material started up before the bulk of the ABC line starts, but I don't think

they'll compete against each other at all. The Alan Moore fan would love a new

Alan Moore book every day of the week, so we're betting they're going to drink

all this stuff up."

Anyway, Awesome decided to bring Supreme back, launching a newly-titled and numbered series in the middle of a two-part story. It used (most of) Sprouse's artwork. Awesome also used a variant cover from a sketch by Alex Ross that has little to do with this series (more on that in a later post this week) as well as a jumbled mishmash with all three other covers poorly stretched to fit, which Dynamic Forces sold.

And on that positive note, I'll see you for more Supreme next week!

This is where I say, "As always, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for all of the details and references that I completely missed." As I've pointed out, I've run out of the Supreme annotations by Aaron Severson and am now doing them myself. Please help me by letting me know anything I missed that can be added to the annotations. Thanks!

The other Awesome comics: Coven

Welcome back to the ongoing feature where I read the other comics published by Awesome that ran alongside Supreme. I read them so you don't have to! (You don't have to thank me, but you should.)

After working with writer Jeph Loeb on Cable for Marvel, penciller Ian Churchill came to Awesome with the idea for a series. While the rest of the Awesome Universe focused on the super side of comics, the Coven would explore the mystic underworld of this universe.

Christina Baker, a young, plump African-American woman is our entry person point of view for the series. She's your average college student who happens to get headaches when supernatural occurrences are close by (I always assumed my headaches in college were from different causes, but maybe I just missed my chance to go on some poorly-plotted supernatural archeology adventures. Drat.)

She soon discovers two very supernatural people stealing from the university's museum: Scratch (a possessed priest) and Fantom (a French vampire). Both are members of the Coven. Soon, the evil Pentad show up and they sit down and talk reasonably about their differences. Oh, wait, no, they battle.

The leader of the Coven, Blackmass, soon arrives and recruits Christina to the world of magic and mysticism and explains how the Coven are trying to defend the world. He also explains that the Pentad are their evil counterparts.

There's another character, Spellcaster, who is a California surf girl who is also a white witch. When she sees her mother killed by a member of the Pentad, she vows revenge and works with the Coven to get it.

We follow the two groups as they collect artifacts that will allow the Pentad to resurrect Cain (of Cain and Abel) who will become the new king of men (just because).

(There must have been something in the water at the Awesome offices... perhaps holy water?... that so many series have to do with biblical references and angels and demons.)

Fortunately, Christina rejects the Pentad's offer to become a more powerful person and helps save the day. But before it ends, the leader of the Pentad mortally injures another member of the Pentad, who was secretly a spy and lover of Blackmass, even though we never knew about her or cared about their relationship.

Um...right.

Look, it's not a particularly good series. It's a bunch of characters who should be interesting, but aren't. We're not given a lot to care about them, we don't get to delve into their pasts any more than superficially and the most important thing is that we understand their powers.

The weird part is that they could have been interesting. Take Scratch. He's a priest who is partially possessed by a demon. That has potential. Instead, he's only shown to be a lecherous, wise-cracking, red-skinned devil. Who cares? We don't see any of the inner conflict. He's just another jokey miscreant in an artform littered with them. If he didn't have red skin, he could be Gambit. Meh.

One thing that struck me as I was reading this is that Jeph Loeb is a frustrating writer because he's so hit or miss. This is the same guy who found a way to make Fighting American distinct from Captain America. But he can't make this anything interesting?

I imagine that a lot of it has to do with his collaborators. My theory is that if Loeb got overpowered by his artist's ideas, the story just disappeared into mush. But if he had a good collaborator, as on the Rules of the Game miniseries or the first Kaboom series, the art and the story work together. (Way to go out on a limb Mike: When the artist and writer work well, the series work. Brilliant deduction!)

It's also hard to escape the problem of Churchill's art. He's clearly a gifted artist, but he can't help but draw his women mostly unclothed and they all start to look alike. That his main character is a plump African-American woman with blonde hair is about the most refreshing aspect, but just highlights his lack of discipline to draw any other woman as anything other than a nearly-naked supermodel.

It's exactly this base instinct that Alan Moore pushed so hard against in creating Suprema. By being a modest-looking, conservatively dressed young woman, she stood out from all the other Awesome characters, and most of the other women in comics in the 1990s. Just as Moore planned.

As long as we're talking production, I also can't decide about the garish pastel coloring with bright pinks, yellows and baby blues. It's clearly from the mid-90s and is kind of great for that, but man it's also too much.

Okay, back to the story. To be honest, once it got rid of the main Cain arc, the Coven got a little better, as the next arc was about a goblin infestation at a brothel. It's treated with humor and doesn't take itself too seriously. But as we still don't particularly care for the characters, this arc doesn't matter any more than the first.

There's also a recurring subplot about someone tracking down Christina, who on the last page of the first series, discovers some weird black cat woman we never see or gets mentioned again in any of the Awesome series.

The creators must have recognized that they were having characterization problems because they put out a one shot called Black and White (which seems to be the uninked pages from the later sort-of completed Dark Origins one-shot and a backup from one of the Lionheart issues... because it's Awesome, of course) in which we got short stories about three of the characters.

We got to see Christina care for the lost soul of a suicide victim. We got the origin of Scratch, which explained that the priest absorbed the demon within him so it couldn't get loose and do damage to the broader world (see, was that so hard?). And we got a dark story about the vampire, Fantom, herded into a Nazi concentration camp to be gassed, only to exact her revenge on the Nazis.

This last story was a little too similar to Magneto's origin form X-Men, but somehow that's only kind of a minor issue. Check out the page at right where he shows the starved, abused Jewish and other unwanted women herded into the gas shower stalls. They're all healthy, hot, beautiful women. Um... But at least they were trying to give us some reason to care for these character, which I guess is something.

A second series began in 1999 and crossed over with Supreme quite a bit, but I plan to save this for when we talk about Supreme: The Return. It's, for my money, the only interesting thing in the series that you might even want to consider trying to find.

From these nine or so issues, we got a spinoff called Lionheart, also by Churchill and Loeb, about a powerful heroine whose superpower must be keeping on one of the most ridiculously skimpy costumes! It's a bra with cutout pantyhose and arm-length gloves!

The short summary of Lionheart is that an archeologist comes across an artifact that lets her tap into half of the power God granted to humanity through the tree of knowledge (again, not what the Bible meant, but whatever). The other half is in the villain Blackheart, who immediately tries to kill Lionheart to get it all. The Coven get involved to help Lionheart, as does the archeologist's twin sister and Earnest Hemingway-inspired grandfather. There's no use getting too involved as the series lasted two issues and ended on a cliffhanger.

After Awesome collapsed for the final time, several of the characters were licensed out, including Coven, which then came out as a few miniseries by Avatar. (More on this when we get to Glory.)

Neither Loeb nor Churchill would work on these issues. Judging by their covers, I really don't want to even go through the motions of tracking them down, much less reading them. (Please don't make me.)

Churchill would go on to work for DC and Marvel after Awesome's collapse, drawing the "Code Red" story in Hulk and a spin-off of the Teen Titans. In 2010, he launched his creator-owned "Marineman," which received an Eisner nomination. So good for him.

Superman's Hell of Mirrors: The Phantom Zone

Aaron Severson, in an offhand comment in his excellent annotations (which are the basis for this site's Annotations page), mentioned how harsh the imprisonment of Supreme's rogues in the Hell of Mirrors is. There's no chance of parole. They're there for good.

Of course the Hell of Mirrors is based on the idea of the Phantom Zone from Superman. According to Wikipedia:

The Phantom Zone was discovered by Superman's father, Jor-El, and used on the planet Krypton as a method of imprisoning criminals. Previously, criminals were punished by being sealed into capsules and rocketed into orbit in suspended animation with crystals attached to their foreheads to slowly erase their criminal tendencies; Klax-Ar was one criminal who received this punishment but escaped. Gra-Mo was the last to suffer the punishment, for it was then abolished in favor of the Zone.

The inmates of the Phantom Zone reside in a ghost-like state of existence from which they can observe, but cannot interact with, the regular universe. Inmates do not age or require sustenance in the Phantom Zone; furthermore, they are telepathic and mutually insubstantial. As such, they were able to survive the destruction of Krypton and focus their attention on Earth, as most of the surviving Kryptonians now reside there. Most have a particular grudge against Superman because his father created the method of their damnation, and was often the prosecutor at their trials. When they manage to escape, they usually engage in random destruction, particularly easy for them since, on Earth, each has the same powers of Superman. Nevertheless, Superman periodically released Phantom Zone prisoners whose original sentences had been completed, and most of these went to live in the bottle city of Kandor.

The sole inmate of the Phantom Zone who was not placed there as punishment for a crime is Mon-El, a Daxamite who fell victim to lead poisoning. Superboy was forced to cast him into the Phantom Zone to keep him alive, where he remained until the time of the Legion of Super-Heroes when Brainiac 5 created a medication that allowed him to leave safely.

Superman developed communications equipment for the Phantom Zone, like the Zone-o-Phone, and refinements to the projector. In addition, the city of Kandor uses the Phantom Zone regularly, with parole hearings sometimes chaired by Superman. However, since the departure of Kandor, that is, outside of Mon-El, most of the inhabitants were confined to lifers and generally not inclined to making conversation with their jailer. As for Superman himself, as much as he appreciates how the Zone is necessary to contain its Kryptonian inmates and shelter Mon-El, he apparently privately harbors concerns about the justness of its penal use.

Interestingly, Moore briefly examined the idea of the Phantom Zone being too harsh of a punishment in his For the Man Who Has Everything story in Superman Annual #11. Widely regarded as the best Superman story ever written, Superman is tricked into thinking he lives on a fully-realized Krypton. Political forces are clashing between the more progressive younger generation and the more conservative older generation of his father. The younger generation have taken up Phantom Zone imprisonment as an issue, to the point of violence, which can be seen in these panels:

  

 

Of course Moore doesn't get into the moral ramifications of it in the pages of Supreme (unless he did so on the mysteriously disappearing page 24 of the first issue of Supreme: The Return). Then again, it didn't really seem like the inmates in his Hell of Mirrors had reformed, either.