After Awesome Part 1: ABC and Tom Strong

As I've now finished all of Moore's Awesome issues that came out, I'm going to start dealing with what came next in a series I'm calling After Awesome. I'll take a look at all the Supreme, Youngblood and Glory series that came out since (I might ignore Prophet since we never saw Moore's proposal and I have no idea how different his series would have been). I'll also take a look at the ABC line with a view to how they were a direct offshoot of Awesome. If there's anything else you'd like me to add to this group, just shoot me an email or put it in the comments.

So let's start with America's Best Comics. When news started to get around that Awesome had died, Alan Moore's phone started ringing, offering him work. Having some respect for Jim Lee, he decided to take Jim Lee's offer and set up a whole line of comics under the imprint: America's Best Comics. (He had already set up League of Extraordinary Gentlemen there, which was why it was creator owned when the others weren't.)

Part of his plan was to set up the comics with his Awesome artists. He set up Tom Strong for his Supreme artist Chris Sprouse. He set up Top Ten for Youngblood artist Steve Skroce, though Skroce turned the series down. He set up Promethea for Glory artist Brandon Peterson, though Peterson turned him down, too. Alex Ross helped Moore find new artists for those two series. Tomorrow Stories featured some of his favorite artists in Melinda Gebbie, Rick Veitch and Jim Baikie (all three who had worked on Supreme).

I'm not going to get into all of the ABC series because there's not a ton of overlap with the Awesome work, but I do want to talk about Tom Strong now and Promethea in a separate post.

Rob Liefeld, when talking about the ABC line, said:

"...much of the ABC line is made up of poorly masked Awesome characters and story outlines he prepared for us. If I was as sue-happy and litigation driven as some suggest I be, I believe I could draw direct connections to many of the ABC characters and their origins coming from pages of Awesome work we commissioned from him. In short order, Tom Strong is Supreme mixed with his Prophet proposal."

Without being able to see the Prophet proposal, it's impossible to know if this is true. But let's look at how Moore handled Prophet in Judgment Day. He first appeared in the prologue in the Judgment Day Sourcebook:

 

Maybe it's just that he's drawn by Chris Sprouse, who would go with Moore to create Tom Strong, but it's hard not to see the physical similarities. There was also this page from Judgment Day Omega where Prophet tangles with the Tarzan-like character, Zantar:

 

Moore based both Prophet and Tom Strong on the Doc Savage and Doc Strange style adventurers (Moore wrote that Prophet was "The Man of Marble" while later he wrote Tom "Doc" Strange into the pages of Tom Strong as an alternate version of Strong):

 

So, at least on their surface, whatever Moore had planned for Prophet and what he ultimately wrote as Tom Strong were probably similar. But how does the comparison to Supreme come in? Well, there's actually a lot of overlap.

Supreme, in The Story of the Year, did more than tell a story, it told the history of Superman (and broader) comics from the '30s until the '90s. Tom Strong tried to do something similar, but less obviously, using the covers. As Todd Klein, who handled the design of the covers, said on his blog:

"Tom Strong is a character with a decidedly pulp background, combining elements of Tarzan, Doc Savage, Tom Swift and other pulpish characters, but of course with plenty of modern touches. When Alan and I first discussed the cover possibilities, he suggested we look at old pulp covers, as well as action-adventure and science fiction covers from all eras. With that in mind, we tried to give each issue a completely different style, while staying in those parameters. This was not a new idea in comics: Will Eisner's Spirit, and early issues of Mad Magazine come to mind as other examples, but it definitely added to the design challenge. Instead of just having one familiar logo and layout, with different art and colors each time, we were trying for a new look each issue (though there were some repeats)."

Here are a few examples:

 

"We're firmly back in the pulp era for issue 6, with this great art by Dave Gibbons, which he began on paper and finished and colored on the computer. I gave him the title for the playing card, which he placed into his art. The logo and design were inspired by The Shadow, another great pulp era icon."

  

"Issue 13 was one of many direct comics pastiches we did, this one inspired by MARVEL FAMILY #1 from 1945. I had fun recreating Tom's logo and all the cover type in the style of the original, seen below. Artist Chris Sprouse did a great job of capturing the feel of the original while remaining true to his own vision of the characters."

 

"Another fun comics pastiche of FANTASTIC FOUR #26's cover by Jack Kirby, one of artist Chris Sprouse's favorites, and the second of three Kirbyesque covers on the series. Hey, if you're going to steal, you might as well steal from the best. As usual I had too much fun recreating the cover lettering, probably by Artie Simek, as seen in the original below."

Another stylistic choice Moore made was to split his Tom Strong stories into three-act features, just as he had done with his Supreme stories.

The content of the issues had a number of similarities to Supreme, too.

Supreme is a character who has been alive since the 1920s, with Tom Strong pre-dating him some, and surviving an extraordinary long time through the use of the Goloka root. He's an accomplished scientist, just as Supreme is, and he's very defensive of his family. Both families have talking pets with Radar and Soloman.

 

Supreme, through the Supremacy device, featured countless different versions of Supreme and his supporting cast. Moore also created alternative versions of the Strong Family, through the use of alternate dimensions. Do you need me to draw the parallels between Squeak the Mouse Supreme and Warren Strong the cartoon bunny version of Tom Strong?



In the pages of Supreme, a whole universe of silver-age heroes are abducted by the villain Hulver Ramik and put in suspended animation until they can be rescued decades later. In the pages of Tom Strong, Strong and Tom Strange rescue a whole universe of silver-age heroes who have been put into suspended animation for decades around the world of Terra Obscura.

 

Finally (appropriately enough), here is Moore's final page of Tom Strong when he ended the series with issue #36:

And here's how he ended The Story of the Year in Supreme, when he might not have been sure he was going to do a second year on the series:

 

I can certainly see Liefeld's point, even if I doubt Moore would have purposefully stolen any ideas from the Prophet proposal. Then again, without seeing the Prophet proposal, we'll never really know.

And this isn't to say there aren't plenty of ways that Supreme and Tom Strong were different. As Moore answered that question himself:

"As far as I know, the only similarities between Tom Strong and Supreme are that it's me and Chris Sprouse doing them. With Supreme, when I was handed the character, he was pretty much a straightforward Superman knock-off. I was trying to make into a good Superman knock-off."

The ones that stand out are Supreme's Superman-like superpowers vs. Tom's upbringing and tribal medicine being one. Tom's family and kids vs. Supreme's bachelor. Tom Strong is more interested in pulp-style adventures vs. Supreme's more superhero-based stories. But there are similarities that are hard to ignore.

Anyway, next time I'll take the other argument when Liefeld said, "Promethea is Glory."

The Rick Veitch commission

I talked before about how lucky I was to get to meet Chris Sprouse and get a commission of the Family Supreme from him. Well, I had one other commission I wanted to get and it was from the artist who was there from (nearly) the beginning to (nearly) the ending and best represents what Supreme was about: Rick Veitch.

I knew what I wanted for a commission, and there was only one artist who would be perfect. While Sprouse probably is better known for Supreme, as it really launched his career, Veitch made Supreme into something special, capturing the heart of Superman comics as they evolved over the decades.

He sometimes takes commissions at his website. So I bugged him and bugged him and bugged him for more than a year before he finally said that he'd do it. This is what I asked for:

I was wondering if you would have any interest in doing a cover for an imaginary Supreme #64? A cover for how the series should have ended.

Considering that Supreme was a homage to the silver age of Superman comics and about the incredible power of the imagination, I thought maybe something similar to Curt Swan’s cover of Superman #423. After all, this would be a cover for a true “imaginary story!”

It could suggest that it was going to tie up all the loose threads: the attack by the Daxes, the return of Radar and Talos, the secret of supremium, the marriage of Supreme and Diana Dane, the final battle with The End, or whatever else you might like to do.

He said sure and I worked out a rough layout for what I was looking for.

My art skills are sick!

I mentioned about how I had heard Alan Moore had planned for Radar's planet as well as Judy and Talos's planets to come help battle the Daxes, so that's why I wanted it on there. I also mentioned that I had heard Moore planned to do a third year exploring inside the supremium meteor, to which he replied: 

About the rumor concerning Superme going into the Supremium.  I can confirm that Alan had planned a new story arc with that very plot. Supreme would have met all the Superman knock-offs in there.  Whole thing went up in smoke when Leifeld went bust.

He asked me to send reference images, because he didn't remember all the characters. He even asked me for images of The End's face, which of course, there never were any. Eventually he settled on a Darkseid-like face, which is awesome since I had heard Moore planned for The End to be a version of Darkseid.

I also asked him a number of questions, to which he was nice enough to answer for me: 

Q: Did you ever read the New Men, Prophet or Allies proposals? There’s been so much speculation about those. 

A: Didn’t read them.  But I did work up about 20 character sketches for the Awesome Universe that Alan was building. [Ed -- You can see them here] 

Q: Why did you stick around for the back-up story in Supreme The Return 3 and the amazing Kirby story in 6 when both Moore and Sprouse left after Awesome went under (the first time)? 

A: Alan and I knew Rob was poison but we loved working the Silver Age stuff so much we kept doing it even with the late checks etc. 

Q: How did you come on the series? There were quite a few mentions that Swan was going to do some of the flashbacks? 

A: Alan originally envisioned Swan but his health had taken a bad turn.  So he asked me. 

Q: Did you reach out to the other artists who had worked on Superman and Supergirl comics to help you on the flashbacks or did Moore (I assume it wasn’t Eric Stephenson)? Like Jim Mooney for the Suprema flashback and Bill Wray for the Mad Magazine homage? 

A: Eric Stephenson brought in Jim and Bill.

He then sent me this rough:

Then a tighter sketch:

The only change I had was Judy Jordan's costume didn't have two Js.

I couldn't get Todd to do a commission (he's much too busy), so Rick connected me with Steve Conley to handle the Klein-like lettering. I told him that I wanted it to be from Image and be #64 but to otherwise feel as much like Superman #423 as it could. He did a great job:

It then went back to Rick who did the inking over the lettering, making it feel all of a piece. And here's the result:

Just for fun, I had it colored in a flat style much like Superman #423:

 
It's been a dream of mine to get something like this for a long time. It's beautiful and will be hanging in my office very soon. I'm also thinking of using it for a little project I'll talk about later.

Here's what Rick said about the final piece:

It was a blast doing. I like the idea of printing the lettering too. Makes for a lovely final piece!

I couldn't agree more!

Wizard: The last Alan Moore Supreme interview

Let's go down the League of Infinity's Time Tower stairs a little way and come out in May 1998. Awesome has pretty much closed up, though they weren't really telling anyone yet, and another issue of Supreme wouldn't show up on the stands for an entire year!

However, in Wizard Magazine, Awesome was fully promoting their comics, including this half of a two-page ad:

 

This trade paperback would never come out. This Alex Ross painting would eventually be used as a Wizard giveaway. And Supreme with Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse would only come out for one more issue, and certainly not monthly!

Tucked away in the issue was a two page spread on Supreme, featuring a wonderful pin-up by Chris Sprouse:

 

Most of the "article" is devoted to what Moore had already done with Supreme, but they interviewed Moore (presumably before he found out Awesome was toast and bailed). This was just as he was finishing up his scripts on what would become Supreme: The Return #3-6 and Supreme #63. He even talked about his plans for #64 and what might be beyond:

SUPREME'S ROMANCE with Diana Dane takes a step forward in April's issue #59, when Supreme takes Diana on a tour of worlds. "He takes her to Prisimworld, which is made entirely of light," Supreme writer Alan Moore says. "Then they go to the year 2150, where they meet the female Fighting American IV. And then to the Supremacy, where all the other-continuity versions of Supreme and Diana exist. All the Dianas get together and have a little coffee morning to compare notes, something which makes Supreme slightly nervous.

All of Supreme's affection for Diane doesn't sit too well with his best friend, however. "In issue #60, Radar, who's been feeling left out, basically reaches dog puberty, and goes out to find his own love life," Moore says. "Those two issues will be a little lightness before #61, which is a fairly mind-bending encounter with the alien Supremium Man."

After that, Supreme will find a new civilization deep in the Himalayas with extremely familiar overtones in #62, which will serve as a break before stuff starts to hit the fan with issue #63. "Supreme #63 will be called 'Revelations,'" Moore says. "It will feature the return of a major villain, an interlude and dark clouds gathering for #64, which will be at least double-sized and features a massive war between two different cultures that has been building for a little time now."

And after that? "Right now, #64 may be my last issue," Moore notes. "It all depends on whether or not I can find a new line of stories I feel is interesting and worth developing. There's one possibility that [Moore's friend, writer/artist] Rick Veitch and I are talking about, so we'll see where that goes."

The rumors I've heard suggest that Moore planned to have the Supremacy and Daxia fight in issue #64 with Talos's world and Radar's world eventually joining the battle and shifting the balance to help the Supremes to win.

Rick Veitch and others have talked about Moore's plans for a third year, with the idea of Supreme exploring inside the supremium meteor. One rumor I heard, which Veitch confirmed, suggested that Supreme would have run into other superman figures from comicdom, perhaps like Moore's own version of Marvelman, etc.

A fun little comicstrip found at Alan Moore World

One final fun little nugget from the Wizard article: they asked Moore about issue #50, Sprouse's first issue:

SUPREME #50-The beginnings of the Supreme/Diana Dane relationship, featuring Supreme recounting some of his more colorful relationships. "One of the better balanced issues so far," says Moore, "and [penciler] Chris Sprouse's first issue, which I thought looked wonderful."

It's hard to read this and not get nostalgic for what an amazing run it was and get wistful for how it all ended so badly.