After Awesome Part 4: All-Star Superman and the Fortress of Solidarity

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe.)

Something a little different this time. This doesn't have as much to do with Moore or the characters from the Awesome Universe. Instead, we get a different look at what inspired Moore from the beginning.

In the long gap between Supreme: The Return #6 and Supreme #63, a new retro-inspired Superman story was published to great fanfare. If Supreme was how DC Comics should be doing Superman stories in the late 1990s, DC Comics figured out how they should be doing Superman in the mid-2000s with Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman. Existing outside the established continuity (does DC have such a thing?), Morrison used elements of the golden-age, silver-age and modern Superman. As he said, he planned to "strip down the Man of Steel to his timeless, essential elements."

For 12 issues, released sporadically between 2005 and 2008, Morrison's Superman confronted his mortality as Lex Luther successfully used the sun to overcharge Superman to the point that his body can't handle it. However, in the meantime, Superman has various standalone adventures with characters from different points in Superman's publishing history. But they pay no allegiance to previous continuity.

Ultimately (spoilers) Superman defeats Luthor and flies into the sun to work on repairing it from within from the damage Luthor did to it, becoming a true all-star Superman (end spoilers).

Since it was published, fans have compared it to Moore's timeless take on Superman in Supreme. Then they get into the tangled relationship between Moore and Morrison, debate who had the idea first, who stole what from whom and basically pick sides. And that's a shame because they both have different strengths.

You already know that I think Supreme is one of Moore's best works and deserves to be held in higher esteem, so let's take a look at Morrison's take here.

I haven't read enough of Morrison's other works to know if his storytelling style in All-Star Superman is significantly different from all of his stories, but here it is very stylized with an overdose of whimsy. It almost feels like the comic version of a Wes Anderson movie. Too often, that style gets in the way of standard storytelling, making it hard for me to follow exactly what's happening.

For example, in issue 9, Superman is fighting Bar-El and Lilo, two of the last survivors of Krypton, who have come to the Earth in Superman's prolonged absence and strive to remake the Earth in Krypton's image. They're smug and aggravating, perfect foils for the modest Superman.

 

 

After more fighting, as things look at their worst for Superman, completely randomly, without any setup, the Kryptonians' powers fade:

 

   

Morrison creates a random Deus Ex Machina to let Superman win. It's so cheap and unearned. It's weird because this is storytelling 101 that Morrison is getting wrong. It almost seems as though there's a panel or a page missing that makes everything click into place. And that's a shame because Morrison gets so many little details so wonderfully right. 

Perhaps the best detail is how Morrison and his artist, Frank Quietly, present Clark Kent so perfectly. Quietly shifts Superman's posture to create a lumpy Kent, a large midwestern boy too big for the little boxes of Metropolis.

 

And if Kent is awkward and shuffling, it's all a wonderful act that allows Kent to save the day without anyone knowing:

 

I could have read 12 issues of just Kent saving people with no one noticing, it's so good.

There's also Superman's "pal" Jimmy Olsen. He's smart and capable, nerdy but cool. It's another amazing bit of characterization, getting a character so easy to get wrong so right. One of the more fun issues is following Olsen as he does his "I was a XXXX" columns, basically willing to do anything for a story.

For one column, he becomes director of P.R.O.J.E.C.T., a scientific community on the moon designed to pioneering research. When Superman gets infected by black kryptonite, it's up to Olsen to save the world.

 

  

 

 

It's wonderful the way Morrison uses the idea of Doomsday without the aggravating history that goes with it, but the storytelling is problematic again. So did Superman just wear out? Did the black Kryptonite just fade away? Did I miss a page? Seriously, how hard is it to write so that readers can put together for themselves what is happening and why?   

Even as Morrison gets these characters right, his Lois Lane is pretty bland and doesn't stand out and his Lex Luthor is too quirky to take seriously. 

 

And when Superman, as Clark Kent, has to rescue Luthor during a prison riot, it just diminishes the character further:

 

By undermining the character's basic intelligence and common sense, he makes Luthor too ineffectual. Luthor never feels like a threat. He never feels like a menace that Superman should fear.

But the bigger problem is how Morrison treats Luthor's worldview, especially when it comes to Superman.

 

The basic idea of Luthor is complicated. At his most compelling, he should have a sympathetic view that Superman's genius and abilities are preventing humanity from developing further. He should be an Ayn Rand style persona, furthering humanity even as he doesn't care about the individuals within humanity. But Morrison has no interest in that. The most we ever get is the page above with some lukewarm bit of dialog saying that Lex should have been working for humanity all along. 

But was that really ever a question? Wouldn't it have been more interesting if we could have seen how Lex thought he was saving the planet and maybe there was a core of truth there? Not in Morrison's take, which makes Lex too one-note. (Note, not that Darius Dax is any better. Neither series establishes very compelling villains, but Moore doesn't even try. At least Dax comes across as menacing, especially when his Judy Jordan trap springs shut.)

I could go on, but you get the point. All-Star Superman is a wonderful, flawed, beautiful, aggravating take on Superman.

So how does it compare to Supreme? Obviously I'm biased, but while both series pick and choose what bits of Superman lore to use, Moore grounds his in history, having the past interact with the present, educating the reader on Superman and comics history even as it advances the Supreme plot. That's something well beyond All-Star Superman's reach. All-Star Superman has no greater aspirations than to be a great Superman story. 

But Moore, in Supreme, even gets the basic storytelling right. Think about how well Moore handled the complicated time-travel bits building up and through issue #52B. It was easy to understand and allowed readers to put together what was happening without being confusing.

Compare that to how Morrison wrapped up his series. In his, Superman died, went to a Krypton that was no more and then came back from the dead with no explanation. It makes no sense whatsoever, but as it's pretty to look at, who cares.

The art is certainly better in All-Star Superman, though it's not as one-sided an argument as it seems at first, considering the amazing art Rick Veitch provided throughout the series. Veitch has the harder task of imitating art from various points in comic history and to make it all work together. And while the modern art is problematic, J. Morrigan and Chris Sprouse provided some short but beautiful bursts of art that can stand alongside Moore's writing.

But maybe comparing All-Star Superman to Supreme is the wrong idea. All-Star Superman is mainly concerned with the impending death of Superman. So maybe Supreme is the wrong Alan Moore Superman story to compare it to. Maybe the better comparison is to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

As I said a long time back, I truly think Whatever Happened was a tremendous misfire. It was cynical and gory. Wouldn't it be better to wrap up Superman with a story of wonder and whimsy? Shouldn't Superman's end feel heroic? In that comparison, I'd take All-Star Superman any day of the week.

So even though I obviously think Supreme is the far better series, I enjoyed All-Star Superman and am glad I read it. It's far and away better than most other takes on Superman and something more Superman writers should strive to aspire to. If DC would allow more writers to take on Superman with the same sense of joy and wonder and whimsy, wouldn't comics be better off?

Here's another interesting piece from Superman that may have been more directly inspired from Supreme, the Fortress of Solidarity (I learned of this from Greg Williams's amazing The Ivory Icon Informer website). In Superman 708, J. Michael Straczynski wrote the following:

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I hope that was homage because otherwise that was a major swipe! It looks like the Fortress of Solidarity wasn't ever mentioned again, which might be for the best.

Speaking of making things for the best, would Youngblood comics be better off with a return to Image? We'll find out next time.

After Awesome Part 3: Arcade

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe.)


The last Awesome comic, Brigade, came out in July 2000. That same year, Rob Liefeld began soliciting for a new Youngblood series (even though he was still sitting on several Alan Moore Youngblood scripts) written by Kurt Busiek and called Youngblood Genesis. It was essentially to be Youngblood Year One.

That comic never came out in 2000 and it turns out that Busiek never wrote the script for the issue #1 that finally came out in 2003 under a new company, called Arcade. Busiek and Liefeld had an online war of words as Busiek demanded that he not be credited with writing the series, as he only provided plots. Liefeld, however, solicited the series as by Busiek, which led to Busiek asking his fans to avoid the series. I haven't read the issue, so I can't comment on it, but as it deals with Liefeld's original version of Youngblood and not Moore's (which is the purpose of this blog), I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

That same year, Mark Millar started writing Youngblood: Bloodsport, the worst version of Youngblood that actually made it to print. While a number of versions over the years were bad or just mediocre, Bloodsport is downright repugnant. And it revels in it.

The series deals with a situation where there are too many superheroes and not enough job opportunities. When a new version of Youngblood is being put together, all of the various members show up to audition. The problem is this will be a group put together from superteams from alternate dimensions, so there can be only one Youngblood member from this dimension. In order to decide who it'll be, the Youngblood members have to fight each other to the death to decide who it will be.

Remember all the jokes Moore made through Suprema and the Dazzle Comics about how bad comic writing had gotten, this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. Everything is a bad drug or sex joke, designed to offend. Here's an early page so you can enjoy it yourself:

 

Fortunately, the series only lasted a single issue in 2003. A bootleg version of issue #2 came out, but it's so hard to find that I haven't read it. But here's the description:

Shaft vs. Battlestone! Cougar vs. Doc Rocket! Sentinel vs. Die Hard! Suprema vs. Twilight! There can be only one as the fight for ultimate survival spills into the streets of Los Angeles! Who will reign supreme and lead the inter-dimensional squadron into the next era!

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to read a comic where Suprema kills Twilight. So you'll have to forgive me for not trying too hard to find that.

In 2004, Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame) started writing a new Youngblood series called Youngblood: Imperial. In this version, there are more than 1,000 Youngblood members in the expanding United States (it just swallowed up Canada).

Great Britain is next, but it has some heroes of its own who look like they have something to say about it. It wasn't a particularly interesting issue, but it doesn't matter because Kirkman left, claiming to be too busy, and it was just another version of Youngblood that lasted a single issue.

There was this nice little aside, though, about Waxey refusing to give up the licensing for Youngblood:

 

But, that just makes me miss Moore's version.

Speaking of Waxey, he made an appearance in another Arcade series called Nitrogen, which was published in 2005. Nitrogen were a bunch of young superpowered beings who decide they don't want to be heroes and so join with a now-evil Tang (the formerly good guy from Kaboom!, which I talked about here) to kill lots of people. It actually makes almost no sense, but it's definitely tied to whatever's left of the Awesome universe.

In the first issue, we see that the Nitros are led by Superion, who might be Kid Supreme or another of the Supremes from the Supremacy, and they decide to steal something from the House of Wax. Waxey tries to stop them:

Yeah, this is an awful comic. There was never a Nitrogen #2, but almost a year later in 2006, a comic called Nitrogen: Extreme Forces came out. Half of it was some sort of continuation from the Awesome version of Prophet (not Alan Moore's version) that I talked about here. The other half is a fight with the League of Infinity, which for some reason, now seems to feature the same characters with new names:

 

Anyway, it doesn't matter because there was never any more of Nitrogen.

The last issue to come out from Arcade was for a series called Supreme Sacrifice in 2006. It's basically two little pieces put together in a single issue.

The first is from Kirkman again, this time writing about Supreme dealing with a weird cult that absorbs people to become a singular entity from the bodies. Supreme never had to deal with anything so awful and, at a loss, he heads back to the Citadel. But when he gets back, Radar's room is different and he knows something is wrong. The story ends with the merging of two worlds as we saw at the start of Moore's Supreme run:

 

  

 

The second is about Suprema and was written and drawn by Liefeld. Suprema (maybe our version, but it's hard to tell as she's wearing the same costume from Youngblood Bloodsport) is flying along when she is confronted by several of the Supremes and Supremas from the Supremacy. She's surprised by the encounter, as her brother never told her about the Supremacy. The alternate versions tell her that the Supremacy is no more and that they've overthrown '60s Supreme. They're out to conquer, but a sacrifice has to be made. Does Suprema stand with them or against them?

 

  

  

Of course we never find out, as there was no part 3. But the one nice thing, if you choose to see it this way, is that Supreme Sacrifice separates everything that comes after Moore's version. Liefeld later said that he took this to be the placing of Moore's Supreme (and by my own interpretation, the entire Awesome Universe) in the Supremacy. That's a nice thought, except the next time we saw Supreme, it was back to Moore's version for issue #63. Oh well.

The Arcade comics were Liefeld trying to get his act back together. They tried releasing the issues at conventions to prove there was an audience for them before publishing more. From the limited output, unsurprisingly, it didn't work. His most productive time had been at Image, so maybe a return to Image would help?

We'll see. But first, DC decides to offer a new take on it's all-time star.

After Awesome Part 2: Promethea

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe, as well as how Moore transitioned to the ABC line.)

The common wisdom has been that it doesn't matter that Glory only lasted two+ issues because Glory became Promethea, which lasted 32+ issues and is widely respected as one of Moore's most personal stories, detailing his beliefs in magic and imagination.

There's a lot to back up this argument, too. Both are about demigods who come from a realm of imagination tied to a kabbalistic structure to the universe, overseen by gods and other mythical beings. Those realms can only be accessed by submerging oneself in the imagination. Both deal with the demigods entering the tangible world as women warriors/superheroines. Both have seen those heroines interact in the tangible world in past eras through different incarnations.

Promethea is much more successful at it, too, mostly owing to it getting a full run. In Promethea, Sophie, a college student in a dark, yet wonderfully detailed futuristic New York City (Is there anyone who doesn't like the Weeping Gorilla signs throughout?) stumbles onto the Promethea being and becomes the latest incarnation. She fights some dark magic people and a cabal of old people who want her dead to prevent the apocalypse.

But the series really takes a left-hand turn when Sophie journeys into the imagination to take a long, multi-issue tour of the kabbalistic realms that underpin the structure of the universe. It's Moore explaining his magic beliefs, and you need to decide for yourself whether it's interesting or unbearably boring. While there's a nice running subplot about an evil villain called the Painted Doll fighting the science hero team, the Five Swell Guys, it's too little to drive the narrative through this arc.

The series hits its stride in the last third when Sophie returns to bring the apocalypse to the world. Even though Sophie herself is trying to prevent it from happening, the universe (and the F.B.I.) won't let it not happen, even using Tom Strong himself to prod her. But once the apocalypse occurs, it's different from what anyone expected.

Instead of doom and gloom, it's a one-on-one meeting with the imagination, a coming to terms that we don't need to be scared of our imaginations as we have in the past. Instead, our imaginations can lead us to live fuller lives, experiencing the company of those who have already died, and to not be afraid to try new things and love more. It's a beautiful result, even if I'm not sure I completely understand it.


So Promethea was successful, and since Glory seemed to be Moore's first attempt at it, it doesn't matter that Glory just disappeared. They were just the same thing, right?

Look, I could easily write up a whole thing about how Glory, from Moore's proposal, seemed to be developing exactly as Promethea was going to, but everyone already assumes that. So instead, let's look at how they're different, because in truth, Glory is not Promethea. And it's worthwhile looking at how they are different to know what we lost when Awesome went under.

Let's start where they are most similar: the realm of the imagination. In Promethea, it is known as the Immateria. In Glory it's known as Yggdrasil, the world tree, which exists in the Idea Space already explored in Supreme. The world tree was handled literally in Glory, with a gigantic tree growing above Demeter's realm of the material. Promethea's metaphor to explain the structure was one of a path of roads with a road map leading to the higher realms.

Ultimately each realm probably would have looked similar in the world tree as it was depicted in Promethea, considering what we saw of Selene's realm of the moon in Judgment Day: Aftermath. But I imagine the Greek gods would have played much larger roles, as suggested by seeing Helios and others in Glory #2 and Hermes in the wonderful Judgment Day Sourcebook. Of course, nothing in Glory suggested the beauty of J.H.Williams III's artwork that we got in the pages of Promethea.

I can only assume we would have seen the various realms in the world tree in Glory eventually, as Glory talked about how she had climbed the world tree when she was younger. The visual interpretation of the pathways to get from realm to realm would have been different, as we saw a bit of the paths through the tree in Judgment Day: Aftermath. And who knows what the plot would have been for why Glory would have been climbing the tree.

And if that's where the two series are most alike, the two climbers are where the series diverge. Promethea is the union of the artist or muse with the demigoddess, who is the literal incarnation of the imagination. Sophie, a college student, is the current Promethea. But before her there have been other artists and writers: painters working on covers in genre fiction, comic writers, poets' muses, children's cartoonists, etc. Each brings their unique traits to Promethea, creating unique incarnations of Promethea--some at the same time as another incarnation of Promethea also exists in the material world.

Glory, instead, is a single entity who has existed since before the dawn of time. She is the daughter of Demeter and a demon who came to the world of man during a war, stayed on as a superhero, became a schoolmistress, and ultimately returned to being a superhero. Just recently she asked to share the life of a mortal, Gloria West, who is a schizophrenic waitress who thinks she's imagining Glory. Her life is sad and small and a little scary.

Gloria is never given the opportunity to assert herself as a character, so we don't know exactly what she thinks of this world, but we know she feels comfortable in her apartment and that she is happy when the poet is attracted to her. She comes across a little like Rain Man, smart and with incredible powers, but very vulnerable, too. I wish we had known her better before the poet betrayed her by slipping Lilith's "medicine" in her drink to know what that betrayal meant, but it's very likely we would have found out in future issues.

Glory's nemesis in Lilith is particularly interesting, too. She represents the evils of the physical world in a way that we never saw in Promethea. There wasn't really a villain entity in the Immateria who battled Promethea. Lilith is an interesting villain and I wanted to see more of how the conflict between the two of them would develop.

Glory is much more of a recreation of Wonder Woman than Promethea. Whereas Promethea is seen as a warrior woman across a number of genres and mediums, Glory is seen solely as a comicbook heroine from the time periods Wonder Woman existed in. Her origins are similar and, as we saw in the misdrawn flashback in Glory #2, she even had similar relations with a group of schoolgirls as Wonder Woman had with the sorority sisters in her comic.

Moore stated in his proposal that he wanted to structure Glory as he had with Supreme, with flashback pastiches to Wonder Woman comics, looking at the strange, yet enjoyable history of the most famous superheroine. In Supreme, it felt as though Moore was guiding us through an education of comic's weird and wonderful history. It felt like he was continuing that with what we saw in Glory. I didn't know much about the origins of Wonder Woman until reading Glory, but Moore's amusement at the weird, S&M-yet-feminist threads that went into her creation were contagious and I found myself reading more about her early history than I ever expected.

By the time Moore got to Promethea, he had written out most of the pastiches. The only one that stood out in Promethea was the fight in the Immateria with Grace against the hack writer. But because it wasn't really about comics, it didn't feel specific enough to have the weight that Glory and Supreme's flashbacks had.

And I think it's that element that I missed the most transferring from Glory to Promethea in the same way that something felt missing in the transition from Supreme to Tom Strong. The flashbacks in Supreme created a unique feeling that made clear that Moore wasn't just writing about Superman's history but actually writing about all of Superman comics' history. The medium was as important as the character. I didn't feel that with Strong or Promethea. And although it wasn't always handled well, I wanted more of it in Glory.

Finally, and this is just my personal opinion, even though I liked some of the ABC series better than the Awesome series, I liked the Awesome universe better than I liked the ABC universe. Glory worked with other heroes in ways that Promethea didn't. The Awesome universe was structured around superheroes and so the superheroes all fit together very well. You can mix Glory with Youngblood or the New Men. The idea of science heroes interacting sounds good until you have Tom Strong interacting with Promethea interacting with Jack B. Quick and Splash Branigan. Ultimately, they don't feel like they can coexist in the same universe.

So while I have a fondness for Promethea and especially for the way Moore and Williams III explored Moore's kabbalistic universe of magic, something got lost from Moore's first attempt with Glory. That something was Glory herself.

If we're lucky, maybe one day we'll get the last two Glory scripts and see if there's any more to her.

In case you're curious, here's what Moore said about the distinctions between the two:

"Glory was sort of a Wonder Woman knock-off I tried to make into something with a bit of depth. With Glory, I was mixing in some of the magical ideas I've expounded upon more fully in Promethea, and there are touches of Kahbalah in there, sure, but at the end of the day, it's a very different story.

"Glory was more or less a straight super-hero comic with magical elements in the background. I didn't finish it by any means, but it was basically a love story, amongst other things. It was about a waitress with what she perceives as some sort of mental problems, which are in fact strongly related to her being a demigoddess. The thrust of the story was how she - through the maneuverings of Hell - is brought low, and more or less dragged down into the world of matter.

"It certainly wasn't the exploration of magic that Promethea is, but I did put real magic into the story, only expressed in comic book form. I always bring in elements of real magic, and my own experience with magic, just to make the story feel more credible. With Promethea, the magic is the main point of the title. Whereas in Glory, I got a semi-mythical character handed to me, so in the background, I tried to use elements of mythology and magic to give it a genuine depth."

Next time: Arcade closes the Awesome book.