The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1880: Judgment Day Aftermath, March 1998

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It's hard to gauge when particular issues from Awesome came out, as the cover dates aren't always the dates upon which, or even near to the dates, they were published. For example, today's comic seems to have come out 8 months after the previous issue in the series, but whether either of them came out when they are purported to have is difficult to answer. The reason I'm ruminating on this is that, aside from this issue, most of the characters represented here never make any other appearances in the Awesome U. Spacehunter has this one story, as do the Allies and the new Conquerors/New Men. Youngblood and Glory get a bit more, but only 2 or 3 issues. And Maximage, whose story is very intriguing, vanishes after this. It's a pity, as this gives us, more than many of the other comic published by Awesome, a clear idea of Moore's vision for the universe. From the bare evidence here, I'd guess that the stories Moore had planned around Glory and Maximage became Promethea. There's just too much evidence otherwise. Everything else? I'd be unsurprised to find that most of those story ideas went into Tom Strong. Except maybe the Spacehunter one. That one kind of stands on its own.

Much as I like the idea of metatextual comics, this one is a bit on the nose. Artist Gil Kane actually appears as "Kane, the Imagineer" in the story, and the characters are referred to as characters by Kane in the comic. Moore establishes here a precursor to the Immateria of Promethea, though rather than that realm of dream and fantasy, this imaginary realm is manipulated to influence the material realm of the Awesome Universe. Given his final Supreme story, I wonder if Moore had plans to expand this concept had the Awesome U not imploded.

That finishes off Judgment Day. Today's Youngblood story takes place directly after the prologue story in the Awesome Holiday Special, and then we dive right into the series proper. Well, sort of. We've got one premium comic with a tiny bit more prologue in it, and then we get to the series. If one can call 2.5 issues a series. (I'll explain when we get there.)

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I've read a bit more Gil Kane for the project. I think I like his older stuff better.