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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1879: Judgment Day Final Judgment, July 1997

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So we reach the end of Moore's revamp of the Extreme Universe - this series is really a look in minute detail at the process of a Revision Wave, as Moore more obscurely details in his earliest Supreme stories. The Revision Wave is, of course, the unending process of contemporization that happens to comic book superheroes over the course of their existences. The significant bits and pieces are kept from previous continuities and the rest is filled in as the universe settles into its new form. We'll see this moving forward with the short-lived Youngblood series, as well as with Supreme when I get back to reading it.

I've noted my love of the revision wave theory before, and I've even started scripting a Supreme series set after the next one - though given my disparaging comments about Mr. Liefeld on this blog, I can't imagine he'd ever let me work on Supreme - a shame really. In my version, Diana Dane is Supreme. I think it would be pretty good.

I also love about this comic how Moore uses Mercury's Book to explain exactly how the ultra-violence of the last decade had come to overwhelm the Extreme characters, and, by proxy, how that same violence influenced most major superhero publishers of the time. So not only does Moore give the Awesome U it's back story, but it also offers an explanation for the real-world descent into violence that afflicted superheroes in the early 90s. And given that Moore is a magician, and magicians use words to effect change in the world, could we perhaps see Moore's explanation of the early Image violence and grittiness as a retroactive magical spell that explains what happened to comics then?

Or am I just talking to hear my own voice, so to speak?

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1878: Judgment Day Omega, July 1997

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The history that Alan Moore sets up in this series is really quite fantastic, and the reactions of the characters watching the trial are set up to mirror the readers' reactions as well. This is a situation where it's preferable (perhaps the only situation where it's preferable ;D) to have some background knowledge of the various characters and their style of adventures. When Troll's back story is revealed, it is shocking to his teammates. Similar revelations about Diehard have the same affect. Just as when Supreme is discovering his own history, so too are the younger heroes of the Awesome Universe discovering the history that they had no idea stretched out behind them.  But then, I suppose Moore is writing the book for them at this point.

I'm intrigued by the depth of the history that Moore manages to pack into these three issues. I'm trying to suss out whether or not it's a convincing history because it's well-written (which it is), or if it's because the characters are so familiar, in that they're homages to older characters, that that history is inflecting the Awesome U's history. I'm sure it's a little bit of both, and that's the point of some of the characters, I'm sure. As I've noted before, the Awesome characters, for the most part, are pastiches of older heroes anyway. But Moore performs a bit of comic book alchemy here in much the same way that Warren Ellis does in Planetary a decade or so later. He uses familiar kinds of characters to give us a familiar kind of history. It's a lovely little fictional trick to play, and very much in keeping with the spirit of the story of the book that being told to us.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1877: Judgment Day Alpha, June 1997

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The advertising for this series claimed that Judgment Day was the greatest thing Alan Moore had written since Watchmen. That's a pretty big claim to make, and it sadly is not true. Don't get me wrong - Judgment Day is a stellar series. Over the course of 3 issues, not counting the Sourcebook or Aftermath issues, it manages to create a coherent, internally-logical superhero universe out of the tatters of Extreme Studios and Maximum Press. And, honestly, creating something even remotely logical out of that is quite the feat.

This is probably one of the few comics illustrated by Mr. Liefeld that I actually very much enjoy. It's not that I'm a fan of his art, but the whole point of the series is to transition the characters in Youngblood, and those connected to them, into a very different kind of superhero universe. The violence of the preceding decade or so of comics is in fact a major plot point to the series. Perhaps a good way to compare this series to Watchmen is that the metatextual commentary is even more at the fore this time around. Watchmen manages to comment on the superhero genre by placing them in what we might think of as realistic situations. Judgment Day, instead, takes the superhero and uses it to explore not just the genre, but the very act of writing itself, comic or otherwise. It's this aspect that I think draws me into it, and the Awesome Universe, more than anything else.

Plus they get some frickin' fantastic artists to do the flashback sequences, and I'm a sucker for a good flashback.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Another of the characters who undergoes a significant revamp in the Awesome U is Glory. Her eventual series also has a ridiculous amount of variant covers, which I decided to collect and talk about. 

John Prophet, another Liefeldian pastiche, also undergoes a transformation, and series, that revamps this universe again, and it's utterly brilliant.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1876: Judgment Day Sourcebook, 1997

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 Let's jump back into the Awesome Universe for a bit, shall we? I decided that I'd read Moore's take on Youngblood for the next few days, encompassing this series and the sadly unfinished eponymous series. Moore uses Judgment Day to transition the old Extreme Studios characters into the Awesome Universe, as publisher Jeph Loeb mentions in the editorial in today's comic. Indeed, the idea of the hyper-violent early years of many of these characters becomes a salient plot point in the series.

Today's issue, more than most of the Awesome U stuff, links to Moore's later work in Promethea. This "sourcebook," more a preview story really, is narrated by Mercury, a linguistic deity who plays a prominent role in Promethea's origin. My favourite lines from today's issue are his final words, "Spellbound, forget about the laughs and thrills that words may change a world...and language kills." As well as being a Youngblood story, Judgment Day is a stylized look at the way that language and words shape our world in a very real, phenomenological way. I emphasize this when I teach English and Literature, but I think only a very few of my students consider the real ramifications of this. Even the stories we tell ourselves are built of the language that we know, and it is these stories that shape the very way in which we view, and interact with, the world.

Mercury's only half right, though. Language may indeed kill, but it also births and creates. I guess the point of the series is that the two can, sadly, happen at the very same time.

 

Also, I will always, 100%, read a story written by Moore and illustrated by Sprouse and Vey. Utterly, utterly brilliant combination of creators.

More to follow.