Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #4

 

 

Supreme 4 was published in Jul 1993 with a plot by Rob Liefeld; pencils, script and colors by Brian Murray; and lettering by Kurt Hathaway.

After dealing with the terrorists at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, he flies off to go confront Khrome, the alien leader with a grievance against Supreme. 

We get some scenes of infighting with Heavy Mettle, but they're not going to be around much longer, so let's not worry about them. 

As Supreme fights a Khrome clone, the real Khrome transports to Dulles and blows it up, for reasons that are never explained. I think to punish Supreme? 

There's a long pointless fight between Khrome and Heavy Mettle, which goes about how you would expect.

Supreme figures out the clone situation and goes down to fight Khrome. 

We don't really learn anything new about Supreme or anything that will become important in his later, Moore incarnation.

This is kind of what I assumed these early Supremes were like and they're not letting me down!

Next time... more Khrome... yay. 

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #3

Supreme 3 came out in June 1993 and was co-plotted by Rob Liefeld, written and pencilled by Brian Murray, inked by Chris Ivy and lettered by Kurt Hathaway.

This issue starts with Heavy Mettle (the corporate/government group Supreme has joined) looking at film of Supreme in WWII:

Here is one of the first references to the Allies as a super powered group active in WWII and how they helped the Allied powers win the war. But we only get images of Supreme, so we don't know the members of the Allies yet.

We learn a little more about Heavy Mettle before they're dispatched to protect some Pacifica Coexistence Summit. Terrorists show up, as does Bloodstrike, another government op force. They kill the terrorists, including one who Supreme basically microwaves his skull. But then Supreme realizes Khrome, a Katellan alien, is summoning him to fight in space or something.

      

After the first couple of pages, I lost interest for the terrorist subplot, so I decided to look up Brian Murray. Turns out he went on to do a lot of work for DC and Marvel before becoming a Hollywood concept artist, working on stuff like Star Trek: Picard, Mortal Kombat 12, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Ready Player One, and Solo – A Star Wars Story.

Reading pre-Moore Supreme - Supreme #2

Undaunted from having read issue 1, I'm back for more! So let's dig into Supreme #2:

 

 

Supreme #2 came out in February 1993 and was co-plotted by Rob Liefeld, but written and pencilled by Brian Murray. Liefeld, Murray and Danny Miki handled inks and Kurt Hathaway did the lettering.

 

In issue 1, Supreme returned from outer space but we really didn't learn much about his backstory. More of that gets hinted at here:

He mentions that Sentinel, Glory and Superpatriot were his old allies and are now all gone... which doesn't make a whole lot of sense since Sentinel is in Youngblood and Superpatriot is still around. But it does establish a little that Supreme used to operate with other heroes.

 

And then we get this kind of cool double page spread showing us the current Image heroes, who I guess Supreme is acknowledging he just doesn't know:

 

Supreme then sort of randomly decides to go kill a serial killer influenced very heavily by Hannibal Lector named Grizlock. We get a peak at what Grizlock has been up to in Supreme's absence:

 

Here the Superman similarities already start to get very specific. Supreme's version of Jimmy Olson is Billy Nelson, who Grizlock ran over with a newspaper truck. Supreme had a Lois Lane style girlfriend in Louise, who Grizlock abused and killed pretty graphically. There was a Junior Supreme Squad of former sidekicks who were beheaded.

 

I'm sure they thought this was funny and pushing the envelope in 1993, but we're about a year away from the Green Lantern's girlfriend ending up in the refrigerator which is a turning point for this grim and gritty stuff.

 

Anyway, Supreme is about to kill Grizlock when Heavy Mettle (a not very interesting corporate/government team) show up and tell Supreme that Grizlock is being protected. There's a long fight and then they take Supreme in to meet with Mr. Temple, the mysterious shadowy figure in charge (because there's always a mysterious shadowy figure in charge). 

 

For reasons we don't learn, Supreme forgets about killing Grizlock and agrees to join and lead Heavy Mettle.

 

And we get a little tease that aliens are going to come looking for Supreme soon.

 

Anyway, it's interesting to see that the Superman concepts were there, even if Moore didn't keep the names.