The other Awesome comics: Odds and ends

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!

Awesome only existed from 1997 until 2000, so it didn't have the time or the money to put out too many series. Of course there was Supreme and the other Moore-scripted spinoffs (which I'm reviewing issue-by-issue), as well as Fighting American, Coven and Kaboom (which I've already covered in standalone posts). But we also have some random one-shots or titles that lasted at most two issues.

The main reason we never got more series was Awesome's financial crash in early 1998. I'll get into the details of that later, but that meant some series that came out just before this crash or were being prepared during this crash lost all momentum and died short deaths. As Awesome struggled to continue, it would release issues that had been completed or were close to completed (with no way to continue them) or start new series and hope that they caught on fast.

So, what we're left with are the odds and ends, which, for some reason that I thought was good at the time, I have read all of. I'll give you quick snapshots of all of them below:

Chapel vol. 3 #1 (Sept. 1997)

The third volume of Chapel was one of the first Awesome books, though it probably would have made more sense as the last book of the Extreme era. It features the former Youngblood hero-turned-villain Chapel. If you never read Spawn or Youngblood, Chapel probably doesn't mean anything to you. I knew a little, but that was barely any better.

So, Chapel, the guy at left with a skull tattoo on his face and fangs, was a mercenary assassin for a black-ops agency of the U.S. government (seriously, wasn't every early Image character a mercenary working for a black ops agency? No wonder the U.S. debt is so high; all those damn mercs!). He was on Youngblood for a while before fighting against them. He also had a whole plot in Todd McFarlane's Spawn, as Al Simmons' (the man who died and became Spawn) friend-turned-killer. Eventually Chapel killed himself to become a dark lord in hell (yes, this really happened).

That's all in the future, though, as this issue's about a mission he had back in the 1980s.

Written by some guy named Robert Napton (According to a note in the comments below, he wrote an obscure 1990 comic titled "Q-Unit" before writing for Liefeld and Image. Later he wrote some comics for Dynamite Comics.) and drawn by John Stinsman (more on him in a minute), the issue reveals that some terrorist has gotten the secret serum to allow him to have the same powers as Chapel and Chapel goes on a mission to kill him. Blah, blah, people are shot and stabbed and otherwise meaninglessly killed until Chapel gets into a fistfight with the terrorist.

 

Guys, just get a room, already. Anyway, Chapel kills the terrorist. The issue ends with Chapel being assigned the mission to kill Al Simmons! (Twist! Oh wait, we already knew this. Who cares?)

At least the cover was painted well. It's also clear that they hadn't figured out the standard design for the Awesome covers yet.

Yeah, I'm not really mourning for the Extreme days.

Scarlet Crush #1-2 (Jan. and Feb. 1998)

John Stinsman had worked for Extreme for quite a while before Awesome came out, mostly handling Avengelyne. Avengelyne was a fallen angel who had the superpower of doing all kinds of obnoxious poses on covers that for some reason sold comics in the mid-'90s. He finally got the chance to write one with Scarlet Crush! Luck being a two-sided coin, the series came out in early 1998 just as Awesome went through the financial wringer and he only got to write two issues of his life's work. But what issues they were!

A sci-fi story, it's basically a mix of so many more famous sci-fi movies: there's spice mining on Venus (I guess Arrakis must be trademarked); there's our heroine, a lady cop gone outside the law, who happens to use a glowing laser sword. She hires a shady, lovable rogue in a bar and gets his larger, non-understandable partner thrown in as part of the deal. (I guess if you're going to steal from sci-fi classics, one should expect a lot of Star Wars elements).

The heroine is looking for a kidnapped scientist (who happens to be her father) who no one else seems to want recovered.

The second issue wasn't much better as it starts with the lady cop throwing her badge at her superior as she quits. (At least it wasn't a rip off of a sci-fi movie?) She then dons the skimpy outfit from the cover at left (seriously, it has a zipper but not enough fabric to be capable to be zipped up - yeah, I wonder why comics got such a sexist reputation?) and with her hired crew break in to an alien stronghold to rescue her father. Despite shooting nearly everyone and not suffering any injuries, the heroes somehow let the aliens get away with her dad.

I wonder why the aliens wanted her dad so much? I wonder how she kept her softball-sized breasts from falling out of that outfit? I'm left wondering about a lot of things because the series went nowhere, lasting only those two issues.

Stinsman's an okay artist, but the dialog feels recycled and the storyline has zero originality. There are at least a few nice beats between some of the supporting characters, which makes me think he may have had potential. That's about all he had as, after Awesome, he pretty much disappeared from comics.

Six-String Samurai #1 (Aug. 1998)

Having seen an early cut of the minor cult film Six-String Samurai, Rob Liefeld felt that he had to make a comic to go with it. Created by Awesome regulars (written by Matt Hawkins and Liefeld and with art by Dan Fraga and John Stinsman), the story is a continuation rather than an adaptation of the film.

Here's the summary at the beginning:

"In this alternate universe, in 1957 the Russians took the United States by nuclear force. Only one piece of the American frontier remained free, a patch of land known as Lost Vegas. Through this desert wasteland wanders the 'six string samurai,' a latter-day Buddy Holly who handles a guitar or a sword with equal skill. He’s a man on a collision course with destiny: It seems that King Elvis, who ruled over the land of Vegas for forty years, has finally taken his last curtain call and the throne now stands empty. But it’s a rough road to the big city and the body count is likely to be high, as demonstrated in this postapocalyptic future with a beat we can dance to."

Imagine a mashup of the Mariachi movies and Mad Max. Doesn't that sound awesome? We get two little tales that are not nearly crazy enough. One is of an unnamed hero taking out a gang in a diner as they try to install the Duke as the new king.

 

The other is of a hero fighting a death-like villain who wants his guitar.

 

Look, I get that movies are expensive and so they need to do a lot with a little. Indie filmmakers can only afford a diner rather than building giant sets. But comics aren't expensive and you can show the whole, damn, crazy world, rather than just the inside of a diner. Show us this world and make it big and weird and wonderful. Don't make it like something we've seen before and seen better.

Moving on.

Re:Gex #1 (Sept. 1998) and #0 (Dec. 1998)

Wait, so issue #1 came out before issue #0? Okay, I guess comics do that sometimes. But before these issues, there were two back-up previews in issues of The Coven, which if you haven't read them make this series harder to understand?

Oh Awesome, never change.

So Re:Gex, written and drawn by Rob Liefeld, is the story of a superpowered being named Scarab who can identify other superpowered beings. He would find them and kill them for an organization called The Company. However, touched by an angel, he decided to change his ways and save them instead of killing them.

When he sees Genie, a beautiful, scantily-clad blonde with a giant sword and crazy demon boots, fall from the sky, he rescues her and The Company starts chasing after them.

The Company's henchmen are destroyed by Scarab's robot pal Primer, who can turn into any weapon system or vehicle. They're joined by Psidon (an underwater being) and Felix (the fix-it guy). But there's more pages devoted to Genie really enjoying a shower than those guys (four, including a two page spread turned sideways like a Playboy centerfold) so let's not worry about character development, shall we. Here's the pages, after which, you'll need a shower, too.

 

 

As long as we're going down this road, here was one of the variant covers for this issue.

 

Sigh... Okay, so then we get to see the big bad guy in Lord Sharpe, who has captured Avengelyne (more on her in a bit) and put her in the mitts of a looney-looking woman named Tragedy Ann.

So that was all in issue #1. Issue #0 should fill us in on their backgrounds, right? Wrong.

Issue #0 features Scarab, Genie and Primer at some point in the future who have been joined by some guys named Cairo and Beowulf. They fight off The Company's henchmen and make their escape. Two small backups tell us more about Scarab's past (we see him touched by the angel) and Beowulf (he kills a bunch of people). So, um, yeah, that was Re:Gex.

Menace #1 (Nov. 1998)

Written by Jada Pinkett Smith, Menace is a dark urban story about one woman assassin who gets killed but comes back.

This issue shows Menace and her cohorts, Crystal and Taffy, as they snort some coke, march in to a rival gang's boss's office and distract them with their scantily clad... look, from now on I'm going to just point out when a woman isn't scantily clad in one of these issues, as it'll be a shock... and kill them, taking the cocaine and cash and running off.

They're summoned to a payphone (back during the pager days - remember those?) by their boss, Black, who sets them up in an ambush, killing them.


Menace holds on long enough to make it to the E.R., where she sees an angel-like being named Malick, who judges Menace poorly for her evil deeds during life. And she dies.

We see her dig her way out of the grave during a moonlit night and someone (maybe Malick) welcomes her back to life as a dark angel.

 

This is just the beginning!

Except it's not, as it was the only issue. Longtime Liefeld artist Dan Fraga doesn't bring anything more to the proceedings. About the most fun you can have with this issue is reading this great snarky write-up here.

Avengelyne #1 (March 1999)

So last seen in Re:Gex, Avengelyne was in Lord Sharpe's prison. Maybe we'll see her escape, join up with Re:Gex, destroy Lord Sharpe and the world will be a better place?

Created by writer Robert Napton and penciller Dan Fraga, Avengelyne starts with the titular fallen angel hanging out in a garden, trying to come to peace with the world and her place in it. A strange being shows up and tells her that she wasn't a fallen angel, she was actually sent to Earth to foil a plan to destroy humanity.

Fast forward to Avengelyne in Sharpe's bondage who tells her that the Bible was a hoax, that aliens like himself gave the word to Moses to make humanity more controllable and that the end of humanity is coming.

Um, okay.

The strange being finds her in her prison and shows her a vision of her being God's warrior angel and frees her. And then we get a small note at the end that Jesus Christ might have returned. And that's the end of the Re:Gex/Avengelyne thread. Or is it the beginning? No. No, it's certainly the end.

Prophet #1 and Legacy (March 2000)

Prophet was a superpowered being created by Rob Liefeld with swords and big shoulder pads as part of some super secret experiment that created him to be a killer.

Anyway, Liefeld and writer Robert Napton enlisted two newbie artists in the Walker Brothers for this story about a future Prophet clone/daughter who is a kind of cop. In 3025, she gets attacked by some punks, whom she dispatches pretty easily and then returns to headquarters, where she has a vision she is being summoned by the original John Prophet. There's some future speak dialog that's kind of clever.

There's a backup story in 2025 where John Prophet gets brought back to life and immediately attacks everyone around him. Fortunately for them, the scientists who brought him back used clones to do it and communicate through holograms to tell them that he can atone for his past sins by saving the world. I guess he did it, since the world is still around in 3025! So we don't even need a second issue!

Somehow, Awesome convinced Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane to do variant covers for this issue, which is nice that the Image guys could make up. Meanwhile, the Walker brothers did a little more work for Liefeld before leaving for the video game industry.

Brigade vol. 3 #1 (July 2000)

And the last Awesome comic goes down with the ship. Most of these odds and ends series were just random series that were retreading the Extreme era or weird one-offs, such as Six-String Samurai. But Brigade is different, because it's actually following what was going on in the other Awesome comics and trying to follow through on the obvious desire to see them interact.

Sadly, this last series gave us one final hurrah of what the Awesome universe should have looked like.

Written by longtime inker Lary Stucker, this version of Brigade was supposed to be the teenage superhero team for the Awesome universe. Wait, I thought that was Moore's Youngblood. Oh, what the hell, since no one was paying any attention anymore, let's go ahead and say there can be two.

With art by Dietrich Smith (and Stucker's own inks), we get the formation of Brigade as Badrock and the two Kabooms face off against Kid Supreme (a pre-Moore Supreme character), Dash (a superspeedster from NewMen) and a wounded SPICE android. Badrock and the Kabooms want SPICE to answer for blowing up a space station and killing all aboard.

There's an enjoyable fight as one set of heroes takes on another...

 

...before we find out that SPICE was set up as the government tried to replace her with a new, killier version.

We also find out that Fighting American called in all the available heroes, including Youngblood and Supreme to investigate.

 

It's fun to see all the heroes from the various comics turn up (kind of what Moore intended way back when Awesome seemed like it might succeed) and a little sad that this is how it turned out: as one forgotten issue of a comic no one really cared about.

Drat.

Back to our teens, who have started to figure out that they need to work together. Fighting American turns up and throws his shield, knocking them over.

 

(I guess we know the real reason Awesome folded. Marvel followed through on their Fighting American shield-throwing legal threat.) Once he finds out the truth, FA empowers the teen heroes to become a team and find out the truth. But, of course, that wasn't meant to be.

 

Damn it, I totally would have followed this series if it had turned into anything. It had that enjoyable, bouncy spirit that Awesome should have gone for consistently. Instead, this was it.

But, this being Awesome, in the back of this issue, we then got a 9-page look at an upcoming comic called Century. According to my friend Rob, Century was Rob Liefeld's third attempt at a story set in the future (the first two being Extreme 3000 and Extreme Genesis). Youngblood was the world police with the NewMen being underground resistance. Supreme was married to Glory and had superpowers kids. Several pages were drawn, but nothing came of it. Supposedly, some of the advertising for the series included pages from Liefeld's Legion of Superheroes pitch.

And that's the real lesson one should take away from Rob Liefeld and Awesome Entertainment. He always moves ever onward, creating new things and letting new people tell new stories. It's an awesome way to handle his comic characters even if it can also be frustrating, as we'll see in the comics that followed after Awesome.

Steve Skroce, eh?

I had never heard of Steve Skroce before Youngblood, so I guess it's a good idea to talk a little bit about him. He's a Canadian, so he must be nice. (That's a thing, right?)

He broke into comics in 1993 on the Clive Barker series Ectokid for Marvel Comics' Razorline imprint, where he worked with one of the Wachowski Brothers (now sisters). He went to work on the Marvel series Cable and X-Man before moving onto The Amazing Spider-Man in 1996.

After that, Awesome came calling for Youngblood. He'd do two+ issues before Awesome went belly up. Moore approached him about doing Top Ten for his ABC line, but Skroce didn't want to do a monthly comic at the time.

Having worked on Ectokid, Skroce was contacted to create storyboards for The Matrix, which were used by the writing-producing-directing Wachowskis team to help pitch their movie to Warner Bros.

Here's some of his storyboards:

Skroce briefly returned to Marvel in 2000 to write and pencil four issues of Wolverine before drawing storyboards for the rest of the Matrix Trilogy. Here's an interesting interview about his storyboarding work.

Skroce often works on movies with the Wachowskis, and has done storyboards for I, Robot (2004), V for Vendetta (2005), Speed Racer (2008), Ninja Assassin (2009), Cloud Atlas (2012), and Jupiter Ascending (2015).

In 2004, he co-created (along with comicbook artist Geof Darrow) and drew Doc Frankenstein for Burlyman Entertainment, which is written by the Wachowskis.

With Brian K. Vaughan in 2015, Skroce was the co-creator and artist of the Image Comics science fiction series We Stand On Guard.

More recently, it was announced that he's doing an Image comic called Maestros.

Weekly Reading: Youngblood #1

Published by Awesome Entertainment in February 1998

The covers:

Title: Occupations

(Youngblood 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.)

My goodness, that's a lot of variant covers. When you add in the ones with a metallic ink logo, you have 13 different variants! And that's not even counting the weird +1 issue!

So here we are with issue 1. Of course, unless a reader had known to grab the Awesome Holiday Special, they'd have no introduction to Doc Rocket, Big Brother or Johnny Panic, or how Suprema and Twilight joined up. And unless they had a time machine to go forward a month to March, they couldn't get the Judgment Day: Aftermath issue, which would show the team in their first mission and which gets referenced in this issue.

So really, anyone who might have picked up this issue would have no clue who half these characters are or how this all came about. Is it really surprising that most Moore fans have never given Youngblood a shot or if so, have started in the wrong place? Sigh. Well, at least we can try to rectify that.

Moving on, the issue begins with The Veil, the top secret government occult group led by Blake Baron, experimenting on travel to another dimension called the Azure. It's a weird, blue floating place. There's a naked guy with some sort of gray scales being brought back to our dimension by robotic arms.

Bishop, someone who works for Baron, tells us that the transfer is going successfully, bringing something alive back through. The "volunteer" soon wakes up and steals Knight's gun and shoots him. He then touches Bishop before collapsing. Bishop, disobeying Baron's orders, shoots the volunteer before blowing up the connection to Baron.

I like this prologue a lot, setting up The Veil and Baron as government spooks we're not supposed to sympathize with, though I can imagine a lot of Moore fans trying this issue and having no idea what's going on. Bishop heads toward some government flying ship and touches the guard before slumping over himself. The guard blasts Bishop, gets in the ship and flies off. I love the view from the hangar, showing us that The Veil's base, called Threshold, is way up high.

We're now on the ground in Star City with Twilight, reporting back to Shaft, that she's going to check out the crash of some experimental vehicle. Shaft's busy training with a giant wooden robot sparring partner named Custer, but asks Twilight to keep the camera on her motorcycle turned on while she checks out the crash. Steve Skroce, unlike most other artists, seems to love drawing lots of characters, like the panel showing Shaft flipping through the air. He's great at it, too!

Then Waxey shows up and Shaft wonders where Leonard is. Waxey expositions that his foster son (he said he was adopted in the Holiday Special - but maybe Shaft misunderstood the situation) is working on his Big Brother robots. Waxey mentions that "Suprema's off dusting the Sahara." It'll become a running gag to have a character flippantly explaining where Suprema is off to.

Then another Shaft shows up, but it's just Johnny in disguise. Shaft brushes him off as Waxey tries to talk Jeff into using trick arrows like old superheroes. This dialog is hilarious:

"The Black Bow, from the Five Footsoldiers of Freedom, he used boomerang arrows... uh, well, actually, thinking about the way Black Bow met his tragic and ironic end, that's probably not such a good choice. Now, the American Archer, back in the 'fifties, he used nuclear arrows... although again, bad example."

If there was any question I was going to enjoy Youngblood, Waxey was the answer.

Meanwhile, we can see Twilight approaching the crash on the screen behind them. She approaches a police officer who is shooting the guard. Twilight is shocked, asking him why.

"Cleaning last residence. They wake up with ideas," he says.

Twilight asks him who he thinks he is.

"Occupant."

This is our introduction to the Occupant, a being who can take control of another's body.

We're back at the House of Wax where Johnny's expositioning about his suit's abilities while we see the police officer grab Twilight on the video screen behind him. Uh oh.

Rachel (Doc Rocket) shows up and Shaft asks her if she's seen the paper about Stormhead and Coast City (what will have happened in Judgment Day: Aftermath) when she points out that Twilight has grabbed the officer's gun and is about to shoot the officer. And then we just see her hat like in a Speedy Gonzalez cartoon.

Rachel is running at superspeed while changing into her costume. I love this part so much. Is there any superpower that's more fun and interesting in comics than superspeed? Also, let's take a note to appreciate Steve Skroce - he even drew a burger and fries flying through the air on a small highway panel! If ever there was an artist who would bring out all of the background details Moore would write into his script, it was Skroce!

We then see her on the video screen grabbing the cop and getting him out of the way as Twilight fires the gun at point blank range. Shaft and Johnny play back a squeal of audio recording to listen to what Doc Rocket radioed to them. Shaft gets Johnny and Leonard together and they're going to fly Biggest Brother to Star City, though Leonard complains about having to be the chauffeur.

Doc Rocket confronts Twilight, who says that she is cleaning up her tracks. She tries to attack Doc Rocket, but she's not there. "After images. I mean, come on, Linda, my grandpa used that trick in the 'forties!" Yep, Doc is great.

Twilight/Occupant says that she is "free of the Azure. I am in the consequential world." Twilight throws a blackout bomb, but Doc pushes the smoke back at her. When Twilight threatens to kill more people, a voice from above says that she will not. And then Suprema comes sweeping in.

Just a note, it's kind of weird that she has a new uniform for Youngblood but uses her old one in the pages of Supreme. Oh well.

"Did you think I wouldn't overhear you? I was only on Jupiter, for gosh sakes, not in the next galaxy or something!" I'm so glad Suprema is here.

Suprema flies into the smoke and then her conversation suddenly stops. She emerges with an unconscious Twilight.

We cut to inside Big Brother, where Leonard notes a big flash of heat and light from Star City. Uh oh. Blake Baron then cuts into Big Brother's video screens, telling Youngblood to stay away from the Occupant. Shaft refuses and he and Johnny jump out of Big Brother into the rubble of part of Star City. Doc runs up to them holding Twilight, warning of eye beams. And then Suprema turns her eye beams on them!

Shaft whispers, "Nuclear arrows. Waxey suggested nuclear arrows and I just laughed..." I love the way Moore has the characters comment on the action. It adds a level of humor that makes these stories so much fun.

Then Big Brother comes and stomps on Suprema. The rest of the team back away as Suprema and Big Brother have an awesome air battle. (Just a question - what is going on with Suprema's leg here?)

I love this line: "You know, this is weird. Just the other day I was thinking, 'Gee, I hope Suprema gets taken over by an alien or something. Then I could stamp on her head without feeling bad.'"

The antagonistic relationship between Leonard and Sally will be fun to watch, knowing what Moore has planned for them.

Meanwhile, Twilight is starting to come around while Johnny uses his holograms to go into hiding. And then Big Brother comes crashing down. Suprema comes down to finish them off.

Then Supreme shows up, sounding very strange: "Forsooth! Lo! I was watching from my...uh...from my secret place supreme, and I thought I'd come and teach you a lesson! After all, I'm much more powerful and invulnerable and...uh...supremer than you are!"

Shaft tries to warn Supreme about the Occupant, but Supreme just hands him a gun and tells Shaft to shoot him if he doesn't think Supreme is protected. Shaft realizes it's Johnny's gun as Suprema/Occupant grabs Supreme to take him over.

Supreme calls for Shaft to shoot him and as the Occupant takes over Supreme, we see that Supreme was just Johnny in disguise and the drug makes Johnny/Occupant go unconscious.

"God, that was a smart move," Doc says. "Where does a wise-ass slacker like Johnny get his brains from?" Where indeed!

Blake Baron, calling himself auto mechanic Charlie Officer, shows up and with Rook puts the Occupant in a monkey trapped in a box, and then leaves.

Youngblood brushes themselves off and is indignant about Baron. As Doc says: "What a jerk! he gave us no credit for stopping that rampage! I mean, I know it was our rampage, but that's not the point! He's just jealous because he's old and we're the ones with the youth, vitality and energy!"

Um... okay. And that was Youngblood #1. Lots of action, lot of laughs, lots of fun. Granted, it doesn't have the aim of Supreme: Story of the Year, commenting on comics while recreating them, but Moore had clearly found a way to tell modern comic stories that were fun and had a modern sensibility, without feeling trapped by the Image style.

And just as Moore was getting Awesome on its feet, Awesome lost its investor and it would all fall apart.

Drat.

Fortunately, there's a lot more Youngblood for us to get to. As we'll continue next week.

In case you want to read it, here's what Rob Liefeld had to say in the back of this issue:

 

So that's nice.

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.