Weekly Reading: Supreme: The Return #3

Supreme: The Return #3

Published by Awesome Entertainment in November 1999

The covers:

Title: The Three Worlds of Diana Dane!

(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.)

Five months after issue #2 appeared, issue #3 finally came out. I vaguely recall collecting these issues at the time and was always surprised when I'd get an issue. At this point, I'd long since given up on any hope they'd come out in a timely fashion. I just knew Moore was still doing the issues, and as long as he was, I'd buy the issues whenever they came out.

This being the downward slope of Supreme and Awesome, we need to welcome a couple of new artists: Matt Smith (who mostly goes by Matthew Dow Smith now) and Jim Baikie. Baikie is probably the better known to this audience, having worked on Moore's first long-form story in Skizz for 2000AD, and having co-created and done the art on First American with Moore in the Tomorrow Stories anthology.

Smith is mostly known for some Hellboy stories, and his style is very reminiscent of Mike Mignola. I've heard from more than a few Supreme fans that they didn't think Smith's art style worked on Supreme, but personally, I really like it. I think Smith's style pointed toward the more cartoony/stylized artwork that would become popular in comics in the years to come.

Also, I have this theory that since Supreme was supposed to be a stand-in for Superman--a symbol if you will--as you see him through the lens of different artists, you find out what is the core of that symbol. Symbols work no matter who is drawing them because there is a core essence that is universal. I think that's what we're seeing with Supreme. Even with artists as different as Matt Smith and Alex Ross, there is a core that says "this is Supreme."

Or I could just be bullshitting because I love Supreme. Anyway, let's get in this issue, shall we?

Supreme has invited Diana Dane to the Citadel and is showing her his telescope (not like that) so she can see the Backwards Zone and Emerpus, the Reverse Supreme, as he reassembles a comet and sends it flying backwards into space. He then takes her on a tour of the Citadel, where she sees his robot duplicates.

Diana: "Is that a robot duplicate of Ethan?"

Supreme: "Uh... yes. I'm planning suprematon duplicates of all my friends. I just never seem to get round to the others." Ha.

This is a nice callback to issue 43 when Judy Jordan asked almost the same question.

Supreme shows her his garden, where the telepathy roses cause some embarrassment for Diana. So they don helmets and visit Amalynth, the prism world. They become creatures of light, able to move at that speed, and can explore the world under guises named after Professor Night and Twilight.

They talk to a resident, who mentions Billy Friday's and Optilux's journeys to Amalynth before telling them of the problem of beam bandits. Beam bandits, Supreme tells Diana after they make a hasty exit, steal information, which is the native currency. Supreme transforms them into Dr. Dark and Duskwing, his superhero identity on Amalynth.

Diana: "I look like one of those tragic girls you see at conventions!" Ha. I wonder if Moore's feelings on cosplay have changed as it's become much more accepted in the last 20 years?

They confront the beam bandits and plop them in the photo-penitentiary, where the bandits can reside next to Optilux and "those frightening Bon Jovi cultists."

They return to the Citadel and decide to go to the Time Tower in part two of the story. Diana asks about Suprema and Radar, but Supreme says Suprema is after Slaver Ant (so soon after she was just caught?) and Radar was moody when Supreme mentioned that Diana was visiting. They decide to fly up in the Time Tower to 2150 and are soon in a Jack Kirby-inspired future, drawn by Rick Veitch.

I asked Chris Sprouse why Rick Veitch stuck with Awesome after the financial collapse, and he mentioned that because it took so long for the ABC books to get off the ground, Veitch may have needed the work Awesome provided. And according to Veitch, he made sure he got paid for his work.

In 2150, Supreme and Diana come across the female duo of Fighting American IV and Speedgirl fighting some "fezbollah" terrorists. Soon, the future Supreme, Supremax, comes in to lend a hand. Moore, with his usual knack for twisting the language, has fun with the mixed-up future. Although it's cleary all references to our times: "the disneyest thing" is the most amazing thing, "tysoned" the villains is to knock them out, etc.

Supreme and Diana find out that Supremax is Supreme's grandson just as the villain Baxter Frunnt (back to front) captures them to sell them to Damien Dax. But Diana convinces Frunnt to tell them his (their?) plan and then kicks him in the double crotch. Supremax drops some hints that Diana is his grandmother, but Supreme quickly makes them exit the Time Tower and they head to the lab.

(For some reason, Diana's shirt has now gone from white to red.)

Now Jim Baikie is drawing as Supreme leads Diana through a new golden gate to the Supremacy. They meet up with '50s Supreme and his Diana Dane. The Supremes head off while the Dianas head to the Supremall to hang out with the girls.

Original Diana Dane explain that some Supremes have Dianas and some have Judies, and some have both. At the mall, they meet up with blaxploitation Sister Supreme, Queen Diana from the '60s, traumatized grim '80s Diana and Diana Duck.

This is basically one long joke about how women are treated in comics. The '50s version tells our Diana to be, "independent and plucky, but often do things that are moronic or out of character!" The '60s version tells her to "be snoopy and pry into his secret identity!" Whereas, '80s version tells her, "H-He'll pay more attention once you're raped, crucified and hooked on heroin..." She says they had a phone-in to determine whether she should be killed or just tortured (in a reference to the death of Robin, which I'll talk about later). Diana Duck's advice is simple: "Wear a big hairbow and no pants!"

This section falls into Moore doing his Mad Magazine routine, with Baikie a good fit for the material, as Moore explained in a tribute to Baikie after his death:

"Several years later we found ourselves working together again, this time for Image Comics and its various splinter-companies, most memorably on Supreme, where I remember Jim contributing to a riotous comedic short piece that played with the most ludicrous and fondly-remembered tropes of early 1960s superhero comics, and gave Jim a chance to indulge his extreme fondness for Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s anarchic and demented Mad extravaganzas."

The Dianas meet back up with the Supremes and the characters from our continuity make their exit. Supreme offers to show her more, but Diana corners him, asking him if he likes her, which he says he does. "When you like a girl, do you always take her to a string of different worlds, times and dimensions to get her attention," she asks. Yes, he does. So she kisses him.

We see Radar listening to them as we end the issue. I wonder what it means. Obviously we'll find out next week in "...And Every Dog its Day!"

While this issue is sort of hit or miss for me, I like that we've finally gotten a view of Emerpus and Amalynth, after so many references to them in earlier issues. Moore and Veitch's Kirby tribute is okay, but there's a much better one coming up. And I mostly dislike Moore's use of the Supremacy here. Even if his criticism of how women are treated in comics is well intentioned, it's so obvious and not particularly funny, that I think it drags the issue down toward the end.

In the back of the issue, we get a preview for Lary Stucker's Brigade, which I was surprised to find is better than I thought, but I'll talk about that and a lot of Awesome odds and ends in a later post.

As always, please check out the Supreme Annotations Page, for more details and references and please help me by letting me know anything I missed that can be added. Thanks!

The Allies (or are they?)

While Moore was working for Awesome, he wrote a proposal for an Allies series, which never saw the light of day. It was going to feature Supreme, Glory, Professor Night, Roman, Die Hard, Spacehunter and The Fisherman. I can only assume the stories would have been similar to the one that appeared in Judgment Day: Aftermath.

Strangely, in 1999, long after Moore had left, Awesome announced an Allies series written by Eric Stephenson based on Moore's story ideas. They even had an ad for it in the back of Supreme: The Return #1:

 

Of course, those weren't the characters from Moore's suggestions. Here's what Stephenson said about working on it:

"The Allies is going to be a lot of fun. I'm trying to stay true to what Alan laid down for these characters as far as the groundwork goes, but at the same time, I'm not slavishly imitating his style or approach. I don't even know if it's possible to do that! At any rate, the line up for the new team is Die Hard, Supreme, Glory, Badrock, Spellcaster, Thor and Fighting American and the first issue deals more or less with how this new team is assembled and how they deal with their first threat. An important thing to note about the team is that it's essentially a group of seven heavy hitters. These guys will be handling huge, larger than life crises in a way that teams like Youngblood just plain couldn't."

And here's what Rob Liefeld had to say about it in November 1998 in Newsarama:

"While the majority of titles that Awesome has published have catered to the

fantasy/sci-fi audience we want to get back into the super-hero business in a

big way and THE ALLIES is our ticket," said Liefeld. "Alan has created a great

batch of new super-villains in Dr. Drang, The Killer Mist, The Basilisk, and

Florax The Dominator! This team boasts what I believe to be the most powerful

line up in comics history. It's not often you get the Thunder God of Myth

standing next to the most powerful man in the universe. The stories will be on

a grand scale with epic confrontations, but we know that the characterization

is what will bring the readers back. Eric and I collaborated on what many

agree to be the best work of my career in YOUNGBLOOD #6-10 and a few TEAM

YOUNGBLOODs, and this work will easily top those efforts. I'll be doing the

first four issues of THE ALLIES and then I'll begin work on the RE:GEX movie

and begin working on a new RE:GEX mini-series. THE ALLIES will be a big book

for Awesome and will open up a whole new field of opportunities for us."

Newsarama later asked More about the Allies:

"Allies comes from a bunch of very, very short, very brief synopses that

I did for Awesome a couple of years ago," Moore says. "The ad that ran in

Previews is actually completely out of date and has noting to do with the

comic that is going to be coming out. As Rob explained it to me that was the

art they had, on hand. The team I wrote was made up of completely different

characters."

Also, the creator credit will be slightly different than originally reported.

"I've got no objection to Rob using any stuff of mine that he paid for," Moore

says. "However, I told him that I'd prefer if he downplayed the "stories by

Alan Moore" aspect because my input if anything was very skeletal outlines.

But Rob assures me that nevertheless, they are bigger, stronger outlines than

anyone else in the business, but by my standards, these are three or four

line, vague ideas for possible stories. As far as I am concerned, The Allies

is a Rob Liefeld/Eric Stephenson production, and any resemblance to my stories

will probably be coincidental. There wasn't much there to begin with."

Rob Liefeld however, politely disagrees with Moore. "As you can imagine with

the stories that have circulated about how detailed Alan's scripts are (We

have his scripts for a four-issue Warchild miniseries that he wrote for us,

and literally, Alan wrote four pages describing the first page of the issue.

The first panel is an entire page!), his synopses and outlines much more than

the standard length and content."

"Alan wrote very thorough synopses for The Allies that have true beginnings,

middles and ends," Liefeld says. "What he calls 'synopses' are more complete

than what some creators call 'scripts.' But in accordance with Alan's wishes,

The Allies will now read, "from stories by Alan Moore." But everything else

that will be coming from Awesome is fully written by him, and I think people

are going to be very excited to see it."

Moore need not have worried, as none of the issues from The Allies ever made it to print. Maybe one day we'll get to read the proposal so we at least know what his ideas for the series were.

The revisions of Lex Luthor

Darius Dax has always been the Awesome analog for Lex Luthor, Superman's longtime foe. As hinted at in Supreme: The Return #2, Luthor's character has changed over the years, evolving as Superman has evolved. Here's a look at Luthor's revisions (from Wikipedia):

In his first appearance, Action Comics #23 (April 1940), Luthor is depicted as a diabolical genius and is referred to only by his surname. He resides in a flying city suspended by a dirigible and plots to provoke a war between two European nations. Lois Lane and Clark Kent investigate, which results in Lois being kidnapped. Luthor battles Superman with a green ray but Luthor is ultimately defeated by him, and Lois is rescued. Superman destroys Luthor's dirigible with him still on it, implying Luthor may have died, although stories ending with Luthor's apparent death are common in his earliest appearances.

Luthor from Superman #4

Luthor returns in Superman #4 and steals a weapon from the U.S. Army that is capable of causing earthquakes. Superman battles and defeats Luthor, and the earthquake device is destroyed by Superman. The scientist who made the device commits suicide to prevent its reinvention. In a story in the same issue, Luthor is also shown to have created a city on the sunken Lost Continent of Pacifo and to have recreated prehistoric monsters, which he plans to unleash upon the world. Superman thwarts his plans, and Luthor appears to have been killed by the dinosaurs he created. Luthor returns in Superman #5 with a plan to place hypnotic gas in the offices of influential people. He intends to throw the nation into a depression with the help of corrupt financier Moseley, but the story ends with Superman defeating him.

In these early stories, Luthor's schemes are centered around financial gain or megalomaniacal ambitions; unlike most later incarnations, he demonstrates no strong animosity toward Superman beyond inevitable resentment of Superman's constant interference with his plans. Luthor's obsessive hatred of Superman came later in the character's development.

In Luthor's earliest appearances, he is shown as a middle-aged man with a full head of red hair. Less than a year later, however, an artistic mistake resulted in Luthor being depicted as completely bald in a newspaper strip. The original error is attributed to Leo Nowak, a studio artist who illustrated for the Superman dailies during this period. One hypothesis is that Nowak mistook Luthor for the Ultra-Humanite, a frequent foe of Superman who, in his Golden Age incarnation, resembled a balding, elderly man. Other evidence suggests Luthor's design was confused with that of a stockier, bald henchman in Superman #4 (Spring 1940); Luthor's next appearance occurs in Superman #10 (May 1941), in which Nowak depicted him as significantly heavier, with visible jowls. The character's abrupt hair loss has been made reference to several times over the course of his history. When the concept of the DC multiverse began to take hold, Luthor's red-haired incarnation was rewritten as Alexei Luthor, Lex's counterpart from the Earth-Two parallel universe. In 1960, writer Jerry Siegel altered Luthor's backstory to incorporate his hair loss into his origin.

In 1944 Lex Luthor was the first character in a comic book (and one of the first in fiction) to use an atomic bomb in Superman #38. The United States Department of War asked this story line be delayed from publication, which it was until 1946, to protect the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. The War Department later asked for dailies of the Superman comic strip to be pulled in April 1945 which depicted Lex Luthor bombarding Superman with the radiation from a cyclotron.

Luthor vanished for a long time, coming back in Superboy #59 (Sept 1957), in a story called "Superboy meets Amazing Man". A flying costumed bald man probably in his forties appears in Smallville and starts helping people using his fantastic inventions. He later moves his operations to the nearby town of Hadley. Superboy finds he is using his inventions to set the town up so he can rob their bank, and stops him. In the last panel, Amazing Man is in jail and he tells Superboy he will regret it as sure as his name is Luthor and Superboy thinks that he will be Superman by the time he gets out and that Luthor's talents might make him an arch enemy.

In the origin story printed in Adventure Comics #271 (April 1960), young Lex Luthor is shown as an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy. The teenage Luthor saves Superboy from a chance encounter with kryptonite. In gratitude Superboy builds Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later he manages to create an artificial life-form, which Luthor loved as if it were his own child. Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor creates an antidote for kryptonite poisoning. However, an accidental fire breaks out in Luthor's lab. Superboy uses his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which cause Luthor to go bald; in the process, he also destroys Luthor's artificial life form. Believing Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributes his actions to jealousy and vows revenge. Luthor's revenge first came in the form of grandiose engineering projects in Smallville to prove his superiority over the superhero. However, the gesture proves a failure on multiple levels; for one, Superboy does not feel belittled, but instead is gladly supportive of Luthor pursuing his vindictive goal constructively. Furthermore, those projects also each go disastrously out of control and require Superboy's intervention, which Luthor rationalized as being sabotaged by the superhero. These mounting embarrassments further deepen Lex's hate for Superboy for supposedly further humiliating him, and he unsuccessfully attempts to murder the superhero. This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one, and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have been a more noble person.

These elements were played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novel Last Son of Krypton. This revenge causes Luthor's family to disown him and change their names to Thorul. It also leads to years of Superman, Luthor, and Supergirl concealing the truth from Luthor's sister, Lena Thorul. She was told her brother died in a rock-climbing accident. She has ESP powers due to touching one of Luthor's inventions. Once she found out about Luthor being her brother and briefly lost her memory. However Luthor broke out of prison and gave her flowers he had developed that removed the bad memory from her mind.

In the 1986 limited series The Man of Steel, John Byrne redesigned Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s would recognize: an evil corporate executive. Initially brutish and overweight, the character later evolved into a sleeker, more athletic version of his old self. Luthor is no longer recounted as having lost his hair in a chemical fire; rather, his hairline is shown to be receding naturally over time. Marv Wolfman, a writer on Action Comics who had one conversation with Byrne prior to Luthor's reboot recalled:

"I never believed the original Luthor. Every story would begin with him breaking out of prison, finding some giant robot in an old lab he hid somewhere, and then he'd be defeated. My view was if he could afford all those labs and giant robots he wouldn't need to rob banks. I also thought later that Luthor should not have super powers. Every other villain had super powers. Luthor's power was his mind. He needed to be smarter than Superman. Superman's powers had to be useless against him because they couldn't physically fight each other and Superman was simply not as smart as Luthor."

The Modern Age Lex Luthor is a product of child abuse and early poverty. Born in the Suicide Slum district of Metropolis, he is instilled with a desire to become a self-made man. As a teenager, he takes out a large insurance policy on his parents without their knowledge, then sabotages their car's brakes, causing their deaths. Upon graduating from MIT, Luthor founds his own business, LexCorp, which grows to dominate much of Metropolis.

Luthor does not physically appear in The Man of Steel until the fourth issue, which takes place over a year after Superman's arrival in Metropolis. When Lois Lane and Clark Kent are invited to a society gala aboard Luthor's yacht, terrorists seize the ship without warning, forcing Superman to intervene. Luthor observes Superman in action, and once the gunmen are dispatched, hands the hero a personal cheque in an attempt to hire him. When Luthor admits that he had not only anticipated the attack, but had arranged for it to occur in order to lure Superman out, the Mayor deputizes Superman to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. This, coupled with the indignation that Superman is the only person he could not buy off, threaten, or otherwise control, results in Luthor's pledge to destroy Superman at any cost. As such, he is more than willing to help other businessmen destroy other superbeings. He was instrumental in the apparent death of Swamp Thing, which jeopardized many lives as the Parliament of Trees attempted to replace him.

Despite general acceptance of Byrne's characterization, as evidenced by subsequent adaptations in other media, some writers have called for a return to Luthor's original status as a mad scientist. Regarding the character's effectiveness as a corrupt billionaire, author Neil Gaiman commented:

"It's a pity Lex Luthor has become a multinationalist; I liked him better as a bald scientist. He was in prison, but they couldn't put his mind in prison. Now he's just a skinny Kingpin."

Luthor's romantic aspirations toward Lois Lane, established early on in the series, become a focal point of the stories immediately following it. He is shown making repeated attempts to court her during The Man of Steel, though Lois plainly does not return his feelings.

In the Superman Adventures comic line based on the TV series of the same name, Luthor's backstory is identical to that of the Modern Age origin with slight changes. Luthor is shown originating in Suicide Slum, but at an early age already aware of how his brilliance outshone other children and his plans to have all Metropolis look up to him one day. Luthor's baldness is never explained, save for a brief depiction of him with blond hair in childhood, it is assumed the hair loss was natural. Luthor's parents die during his teenage years, however their deaths were indeed accidental and with no foul play by Lex. As in the usual story, Lex uses the insurance payouts to kick-start his future by paying for his tuition to MIT and eventually starting LexCorp. His hatred of Superman is explained as the citizens of Metropolis have had more admiration for the Man of Steel than for Lex.

More recently, DC has even had Lex Luthor win the U.S. presidency in 2000!

Alan Moore, in writing Darius Dax, has touched upon many of these elements, but ultimately decided to just have Dax be motivated by evil. Really, what more does Supreme's ultimate viallain need?