The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1071: Supreme #10, February 1994

What to say about the origin of Supreme?

Not much, really. He has a fairly standard "experimented on by scientists" back story. What's actually kind of cool about it is that it's revealed that Supreme was only around for about 5 or 6 years before he left Earth. Right after the Second World War, he leaves to pursue his destiny in space. Is it any wonder that no one would remember him 50 years later?

I've decided to break the reading of Supreme up a bit, because, honestly, this stuff is hard to take in such large doses. We're heading into the last few issues for this go around, all of them culled from across the Extreme universe in their first big crossover, "Extreme Prejudice." I don't have the whole crossover, but I'm sure I have enough that we can follow the action. So get ready for some comics that have people fighting other people, and not much else.

Though there's still that nagging future context. *sigh* Do I like these comics or not?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1070: Supreme #9, January 1994

The other day I was talking about the drawn-out manner in which these stories seem to play out. I've realized that the difference between what I see in these comics and what Ellis was attempting in Transmet is that nothing is added to the narrative of Supreme by drawing out these sequences. There's absolutely no reason that the battles with Thor and Khrome needed to take so much time. But what about the idea of story arcs, you may ask. Here's the thing: there's no arc to these multi-issue stories. In fact, there's very little story. Khrome comes to Earth and they fight. Thor comes to Earth and they fight. There are glimpses of back story happening in each issue, but that's basically background to a superpowered fight. The fight should come at the end of the arc, after the hero has discovered the villain's plan, or there has been some kind of development leading up to the confrontation. Instead, we get confrontation without build up. As I mentioned a few days back, Supreme lacks the weight of history that his inspiration has. Both Thor and Khrome have histories with Supreme that appear to warrant this level of violence, but we, the readers, aren't aware of that history. Or we are, but only slightly. Which is not enough to justify a 3-issue slugfest. One thing that more expert comics do is offer very clear context for violence - Supreme does not.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1066: Supreme #6, October 1993

Bill Clinton's guest appearance in this comic is quite a rarity. Usually we either have shadowed silhouettes who might be the Commander in Chief, or we have fictitious (but no less white male) Presidents interacting with the characters. How his decision about Supreme plays out will be interesting.

The rest of the comic is Supreme and Khrome beating the hell out of one another, much like yesterday's comic. Which is not so bad. I remember reading Transmetropolitan, and there was a particular story arc where a mega-storm was approaching the city, and Warren Ellis noted in an interview that he had wanted to take this event and stretch it out, allowing the reader to catch every nuance of what was happening in the run up to this cataclysmic event. He suggested that it's a technique that is used in manga fairly often. I try to notice things like this now. While I can't say for sure that this is what Brian Murray was doing over the last three issues, they have basically been one extended fight sequence. Advance, retreat, advance, retreat. And in between those things, we see at least a few reactions to the situation, both from those involved and those outside.

You may have guessed that Supreme wins, eventually. He very basically microwaves Khrome, and it's as gross as you might imagine. And then his daughter from the future shows up.

??

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1065: Supreme #5, August 1993

Hey! There's those teeth I was talking about. Now compare that to the closed mouth from yesterday's cover, and explain.

Retractable, perhaps?

Yesterday I talked about the lack of history that contributes to the difficulties I'm having with Supreme. There is some attempt here to fill out that history, but it really raises more questions than it answers. Khrome is a former ally of Supreme who becomes a dictator on a planet that the two of them liberate. And then Supreme and his allies come back and try to depose Khrome in what is known as "The Battle of Maxia." In today's comic, Khrome accuses Supreme of doing this to increase the glory he desires, and that puts the character of Supreme into a much more clear focus. Don't think about the collateral damage, only the songs that will be sung about you after the battle is done. I'm not sure that this strategy is working for him too well at the moment.

And then there's the matter of that tear at the end of the first issue. If he's only interested in glory, why be mournful about the state of his native world? I'm really hoping this will be addressed, somehow.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1064: Supreme #4, July 1993

(Just got out the handy dandy calculator, and I'm actually only 30 days away from completing Year Three! That's pretty neat.)

Is it weird that I'm actually quite enjoying Supreme? I think it's because I have no fucking clue what's going to happen next. This is a world of complete chaos, and Supreme is a chaotic god. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to anything he does. But we are getting a bit of back story, through the appearance of Khrome, an enemy from Supreme's time in space. You can't tell from the picture on the cover, but he has 3-inch long spiky teeth top and bottom. I can't imagine how he closes his mouth.

I think there's something to be said for Supreme as an avatar of sorts for chaos. We know his story attains some sort of semblance of order when Moore takes over, then back to chaos with Larsen, and then even more with Ellis and Lotay, and then a final kind of order in Prophet. It's a given that he's a Superman proxy, but he's a Superman proxy that gets handed from creator to creator at lightning speed - of course his life is chaotic. Or is it that without the depth of history Superman has, a hero of this strength will be an agent of chaos? Wasn't Superman, in some ways, in his early days?

And yet more, there's a lovely kind of simplicity to the comics. They're comics by fans of superheroes for fans of superheroes, trading on the shared series of symbols we all understand. But these symbols, too, have a history in their respective universes. Early Image comics try to put forth a superhero universe with a deep history, but then don't fill it out. The actions of the characters in the comics are the actions of hollow shells. The other option is to go the New Universe route and have an event that changes things, building a history from the ground up. Neither approach is better than the other.

Feel like I was rambling a bit today. Supreme is provoking some thoughts.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1063: Supreme #3, June 1993

I've come to realize one of the things that early Image, and Extreme Studios stuff in particular, does that I find off-putting. It's almost like there's this explicit drive to have page and panel layouts that are...bigger, somehow. And not necessarily in a good way. I do, to a certain extent, appreciate the use of a double-page spread that one has to tilt the comic to read. There's something very cool about having movement woven into the fabric of the reading process. However, the other pages look like they're about half a page blown-up to fill a full page. Which leads to the feeling that, having read three issues of Supreme by now, I feel like I've only really received about one comic's worth of story. It could just be Brian Murray's style, and I'll have to keep an eye as the series progresses through other artists.

Can we just step back from the story for a moment and look at that cover. Supreme's body is nightmarish. I couldn't help but try to imagine a body like that without the supersuit, and it was terrifying. How is he not pulling everything around him into his orbit with a density like that?

And back into the narrative - Supreme kills, quite brutally, a whole lot of people in today's issue, and just as he's being called to account for it, he flies off into space, ostensibly having detected an enemy vessel inbound. I think the problem I'm having with the character thus far is that his motivation is completely absent. There was that moment of emotion at the end of the first issue, and since then it's been about killing people who he thinks are bad and ignoring everyone else. I'm trying to figure out why he would have returned to a planet that he really seems to care nothing for. As I noted above, it seems like I've only read about one comic worth of story, so I'll try to be patient, but if you've got a character this extreme (Oohhh...I get it now), it might be nice for us to understand this extremity. Or did people in the 90s who were reading comics just want blood?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1062: Supreme #2, February 1993

I forgot to mention that I'd already read the first appearance of Supreme not too long ago, in Youngblood #3, a short tale that basically sets up the events of today's comic. Supreme decides to kill one of his old enemies, Grizlock, who, from the single page chronicling his crimes, seems to be an actual monster. Supreme's had enough, spent enough time away from human mores, and decides that the world would be better off without this person in it. And then Heavy Mettle (a terrible, terrible superteam name) poke their noses in and try to stop him.

Then they stop, talk to him, and their corporate backer offers him a job.

Something I have noticed about early Image comics thus far: inevitably, the heroes will fight one another and then, for no apparent reason, one hero will decide they should talk instead, and then everyone gets on board. This is a tried and true superhero comic moment, the battle of the heroes, but usually there's more reasoning behind the cessation of hostilities. Here, however, it seems to be deployed simply because that's what one does. I think that phrase actually sums up many of the problems I see with these early issues. Things seem to be done because that's what one does. I wonder if it comes from artists who worked with writers seeing this sort of thing being used repeatedly and simply thinking it was how superheroes meet. Not that I want to take away from the creativity and effort being put into these comics, but just because you can draw superheroes doesn't mean you're automatically a writer.

I feel like I'm retreading things here. I didn't hate this comic, and I was fully expecting to. It's not great, but it's certainly not the worst I've read. I am curious to see where this predilection for killing his old foes goes with Supreme. I'm also curious about his back story, which I think we'll get in the main series and in a couple of minis I'll be reading interspersed throughout. I hadn't thought about the back story that was getting displaced when Alan Moore's revision wave sweeps the continuity. This liitle tidbit with Grizlock hints that it might be very, very dark.

But we're not surprised, are we?

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1061: Supreme #1, November 1992

Sorry, I just wasn't feeling the adult comics anymore. How about we read some more old Image stuff? Or rather, one old Image title in particular:

If I'd just returned to Earth after 50 years, I'm not sure what kind of a welcome I'd expect/like, but it's certainly nothing like the one that Supreme gets. No wonder he spends so much of his time being really angry in this series. A Youngblood team is sent into orbit to intercept him, and one of them attacks him. Why, superheroes? Why do you always do this when you meet? *sigh*

I told the proprietor of my favourite comic store in Calgary that I was trying to read my way through this stuff, and he said he looked forward to seeing my brains dribbling out of my ears next weekend. We'll see. It's not great, I'll say that. But there's a moment at the very end that seems to point to some interesting character development in the character. I'll go ahead and assume that that gets forgotten. Even going through my database and seeing the numerous hands this title is passed through on an alarmingly regular basis quashes any hope I had of a coherent story. But, perhaps, that's why Alan Moore's run is so good. Not only does it read well itself, but it gives us a lens through which to view the older stories of Supreme. I'm finding this these days with all of the old Extreme Studios titles, in that they've all had remarkably successful and critically brilliant reboots that somehow elevate the admittedly sub-par early issues. We read Graham and Roy's Prophet, and we can find some value in the early Liefeld Prophets. Same with Supreme and Alan Moore's run. And Warren Ellis's, for that matter. Perhaps we can read this initial run of issues as another perspective on a revision gone wrong. The universe simply can't decide what to do with Supreme.

To be continued.