The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1975: The New Mutants #98, February 1991

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(A brief note: according to The Atlantic, the term "latinx" is not exactly a popular one. It is used primarily in academic circles, and since that's where I come from, I'm going to use it. I hope it doesn't offend anyone. I use it exactly to avoid such offense.)

Let's start off my week of Latinx creators with a big one, and currently one of the most valuable comics in my collection. This issue, from featured creator Fabian Nicieza, is the first appearance of the inimitable Merc with a Mouth, Ryan Reynolds' alter ego, Deadpool. Though the credits list Nicieza as a "Scripter," and Rob Liefeld as the story writer, Deadpool's trademark, aside from his violent ways, is his unceasing patter while battling, eating, fucking, whatever. And that comes from a scripter, I would imagine. Rob Liefeld often talks about himself as Deadpool's creator, but comics are words and pictures.

Aside from this, we also have Domino's first appearance, a character played with utter perfection by Zazie Beetz. These introductions, of course, are groundwork for the end of The New Mutants with issue #100, and the beginning of the Liefeld/Nicieza title X-Force. With Liefeld's departure with the other image founders, Mr. Nicieza took over the creative direction of the series until the universe shattering events of The Age of Apocalypse. Mr. Nicieza was a foundational writer for the X-books throughout the 90s and early 2000s, and laid the groundwork for a lot of what has since become canonical in the Marvel Universe.

As with my look at Black creators, I'm interested to see what kind of Latinx representation there is in these comics that feature creators of that ethnic background. I didn't see too much representation in this issue, with the exception, perhaps, of Rictor, who leaves the team in this issue. I couldn't actually find too much info on Rictor's background, but it's telling that after Liefeld leaves the series, Mr. Nicieza returns Rictor to the X-Force fold.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1891: Awesome Preview, 1998

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This'll be one of three times that I'll be reading the story "Glory and the Gate of Tears," reprinted one more time from Awesome and then once from Avatar (plus a preview of it from Avatar). As I've noted in my posts on the various covers that this incarnation of Glory commands, it's a bittersweet tale to read because it's got so much promise. I know that much of that promise is fulfilled in Promethea, so that's nice, but I feel that Glory would have brought a very different aesthetic to the exploration of the World Tree and the Sephiroth. Where Promethea exists in a superheroic world, I'm not sure I'd class her as a superhero. But Glory definitely is - she's got the comics to prove it.

I'll talk more about this story tomorrow.

The Fighting American preview is quite cool - it's just Stephen Platt's pencils and I love seeing stuff like this. His work is super-detailed. I can't imagine being the inker for this work. That said, the Dogs of War mini was my least favourite of the Awesome Fighting American stuff. But his pencils are gorgeous.

The Re-Gex preview is Beowulf's story, but without dialogue. I think this story is reprinted in an issue of The Coven, in the Re-Gex zero issue, and potentially in one of the Re:Gex preview issues that I do not have. Maybe this one is reprinted almost as much as the Glory story. As I've said over the last couple of days, Re:Gex is interesting, but ultimately goes nowhere.

First day on a new job today.

More to follow.

And here's the flip cover:

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1888: Re:Gex #0, December 1998

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 The only other full issue of Re:Gex is, as far as I can tell, simply a repackaging of a number of short stories previously published elsewhere. I am torn over this.

I think the main story in today's issue comes from the Wizard World convention preview, while the story of Scarab's early years was a back up feature in The Coven. Similarly, Beowulf's 4-page tale is from both the Awesome Preview, though reproduced without dialogue there, and also from The Coven #5, with dialogue, as a back-up feature.

I'm totally fine with repackaging like this. If you publish stories as back-ups in comics that readers may not have picked up, it's nice to get all these little bits and pieces under a single cover, and under the title of the series one is collecting. However, I think that's a good thing to do if you're actually producing new content to go alongside this reprint issue. That was never the case with Re:Gex, unfortunately.

As I was going through the GCD, there was a note on one of the comics I was looking at for Awesome that made reference to something called the "Awesome Implosion." Likely a reference to a well-documented event in the 70s in which DC reduced their number of published titles for a time, Awesome underwent a financial crisis in late 1998 - early 1999 that shifted their publishing schedules and art teams, and eventually led to their collapse. Brigade, published in early 2000, was Awesome's last gasp. It could be that Re:Gex was simply a casualty of this implosion, though I also wonder when you're getting 4 or 6 page stories whether or not those responsible for the comic are simply incapable of producing enough work to fill a full comic. In yesterday's issue there's even a note that the comic was shot from pencils, rather than having the series inked, and though it's passed off as a choice made by the creators, I think it may have had something to do with hitting deadlines as well, which Mr. Liefeld is notoriously bad at.

Anyway, that was Re:Gex. I don't think I like where it was taking the Awesome Universe, and I wonder how it would have stood up against Alan Moore's stories if both had had a chance to flourish.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1887: Re:Gex #1, September 1998

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I bought this comic years ago, when it came out, actually. I'll admit that I was probably drawn in by the semi-nude Genie on the cover, but I also knew virtually nothing about Mr. Liefeld and his history in comics at the time.

 

I admit that when I read this comic this morning, there were parts that I had literally no memory of. It's got an interesting, if very X-Men, vibe to it, though 3 pages devoted to Genie showering is a bit much, Rob, you horny devil. It's set in the Awesome Universe, given Avengelyne's appearance at the end, and appears to be trying to add another hidden history to the setting. As I say, intriguing, but aside from 2 or 3 little 4-page stories in preview issues, and a cobbled together zero issue, this is all the Re:Gex we get. I'm very surprised the Liefeld hasn't tried to start this series up again. His thing these days really seems to be rebooting his own series over and over and over.

Though, were that to happen, I cannot imagine I'd be picking it up. Jeph Loeb's words are good, but Liefeld's art is Liefeld's art. Genie's boots are just the worst.

More to follow.

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 1870: Awesome Holiday Special, December 1997

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In much the same way I wrote a series on the minor works of Steve Gerber, I think it would be worthwhile to do the same for Alan Moore. He's had so many series that just never went anywhere, and for the most part they were going to be amazing. There was a recent interview with Leah Moore in which she described her father's deep love for superheroes and the damage that was done to this love by his time in the comics industry. It's actually quite sad that someone who so obviously loves superheroes so much got treated the way he did by virtually every major superhero publisher in North America. No wonder he's so bitter.

The reason I bring this up is that there's a Youngblood story in today's issue that is the prelude to the 2.5 issues we end up getting of his reboot of the team. As I was reading the story, told in the voice of team leader Jeff Terrel, Shaft, I was amazed at how Moore's voice in the story was so different from his voice in any of his other stories. I know this seems like an obvious thing to point out, but a lot of writers have one voice when they write - their own - and they simply layer it over whatever character they're writing. But one of Moore's great gifts is to give each character their own distinctive voice, to the extent that I'd be hard-pressed to point to a comic that is actually written in Moore's own voice. Like Foucault said, the author isn't a person, it's a function, and at the best of times that function includes an erasure, or subsumption, of the author's own voice.

But there's more than just Moore in this issue. I have to say, at the end of the comic, I was left smiling and feeling pretty good, which is exactly what one wants from a holiday comic. I'm actually surprised that I haven't read this one already, but I'm glad that I was able to leave it until I was reading Fighting American. The FA story in this issue is about S.P.I.C.E., written and drawn (almost exclusively in full page panels) by Mr. Liefeld. It's not bad, but not great, but also takes place after the Rules of the Game series I just finished, as FA is in the process of putting the Allies back together.

What else? Both the Coven and Kaboom stories were good enough to make me want to track down their respective series. Honestly, I'm not that far off from having everything that Awesome produced, and, as I've said before, I just love the hell out of this universe. Back to FA's final Awesome outing tomorrow. Then maybe Youngblood?

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Though I missed it this year, I'm usually pretty good about reading holiday-themed comics (though apparently I have two different tags for them?)

And if I'm going to dive into Youngblood, you can find what I've previously said about them here and here.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1866: Fighting American #2, October 1997

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As a follow-up to some of the things I said yesterday:

First, I fucking love the Awesome Universe. Once Alan Moore revamped it, it became a place where we could both question and celebrate some of the greatest superheroic characters ever created. I've no doubt that, had Rob Liefeld managed the company a bit better, it could have grown into one of the greats. Having Moore and Jeph Loeb as two of your primary writers, how can you go wrong?

Second, it turns out that Marvel, in the 90s and during "Heroes Reborn," started failing as a company, and asked Liefeld to take a lower pay rate for his work on Captain America. Liefeld refused and left, taking his stories with him, one of which turned into this series. Perhaps that's my big problem with Liefeld. It's the same problem I have with John Byrne. They think so much of themselves, rather than recognizing that they are people doing a job in an industry with thousands of others. Just because you're lauded for a little while doesn't mean you have carte blanche for the rest of your career.

Today's issue attempts to mimic Alan Moore's model of Supreme, giving us a flashback sequence mid-comic. It doesn't quite work as well, as the flashback is drawn by Stephen Platt, in his own inimitable style, rather than in the style of the era within which the flashback was set. The same thing happens with Moore's Glory from Avatar. In order for these flashbacks to work in the way that the writers want them to, they need to be era-appropriate. That's how Awesome was building its universe and its history at the time. Platt's art, which I actually love, screams 90s, so it's hard to imagine that the story he illustrates is taking place in the 50s.

That said, I'm sure lots of people had no problem with it whatsoever. Taste is a very personal thing.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Fighting American was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and was, uncommonly for the time, creator-owned. I've had a fair bit to say about Jack Kirby. 

And here's a post on Youngblood that I think goes some distance to explaining my fascination with the Extreme/Maximum/Awesome characters.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1865: Fighting American #1, August 1997

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The editorial at the back of this comic is a full page of Rob Liefeld whining about how Marvel Comics wouldn't allow him to publish this comic. Every time I try to give Liefeld the benefit of the doubt, I run across something where he's just the worst.

Let's be very clear: the Awesome Entertainment stable of characters, with possibly one or two exceptions, are thinly-veiled knock-offs of DC and Marvel characters. This is especially the case in the post-Judgment Day universe within which this character makes his appearances. Supreme is Superman. Glory is Wonder Woman. Fighting American is Captain America. It's not hard to see this. Now, don't get me wrong. Marvel should not have shut this comic down the way that they did. No one is going to mistake this mediocre comic for the Waid/Garney Cap stories that were being published around this time. Liefeld seems to be angry about the "Heroes Reborn" initiative being shut down by Marvel, but here's the thing - they were really pretty crappy stories. Even after Liefeld left Captain America, the James Robinson stuff afterward is just awful.

Having said that about the Awesome characters, I honestly don't see anything wrong with it. These are simply paeans to some of the greatest mythic characters that North America has managed to produce from its hodge-podge culture. The problem comes once again to the idea of corporate copyright, or perpetual copyright. A company like Marvel truly believes that Captain America belongs to them, which shows a complete disregard for the way that stories work in our culture. Once it's out in the world, no one "owns" it anymore. It's simply a story that we transmit, and in that transmission we sometimes adapt the story in order that it suit our particular needs. Which, to me, is what Liefeld and company were doing here. If he couldn't tell the stories he wanted to with Captain America, why not simply tell them with a version of the character?

I have feelings about corporate ownership of stories. It just feels wrong.

More to follow.

Related Posts and Further Reading

Have a look here for some more of my thoughts on the Awesome Universe, the good and the bad.

And if you'd like to read more of my thoughts on Rob Liefeld, or at least stuff that mentions him, be warned: I am just not kind to him. 

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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 760: Extreme Hero, 1994

What is it about Extreme/Maximum/Awesome that keeps pulling me back in? I mean, I guess there's the occasional good creator that is somehow convinced by Liefeld to work with him until the inevitable financial disaster. And perhaps, just perhaps, there's something about the ridiculously hyper-masculine aesthetic that I find fascinating, and slightly titillating. Though when we come to the 8 or 12-pack stomachs, I think perhaps these comics artists need a bit of an anatomy lesson.

This is a sampler that was distributed with the now-defunct Hero Illustrated, one of the numerous comic industry magazines that offered "news" to fans in the 90s. And anything new from Liefeld and co. in the 90s was news. As far as I know, none of the series in this sampler made it beyond maybe issue #3. Liefeld, as is well known in the industry, is insanely bad at business. I mean, really, who fucks over Alan Moore when he's writing one of your comics? Who does that? He, for some reason, booted Joe Casey from an excellent run on Youngblood, managed I think one issue that he decided to write and draw, and then the comic folded.

Anyway, the short stories in here are exactly what you'd expect. The art is okay, though very 90s Image. The stories are blunt. It's meant to entice us into reading the regular series, but the problem is that the regular series never appear. *sigh*

I'm hoping one day that I'll stop being so annoyed with Liefeld and 90s Image. But I don't know if it'll happen.

Onward!

The First Few Issues: Early Writings of the Giant Box of Comics

(I dropped the ball on my Shadowline posts, part 2 of which was supposed to go live today. I just haven't had the energy to put toward the kind of post I'd like to do about them. I really think they're important comics, so I want to get it right. By way of apology, and I'll be keeping a few of these queued up just in case I drop the ball again, here's some of the earliest "critical" writing I did on comics, circa 2001. I haven't edited or changed anything. I think it's important to recognize where you've come from. Be gentle.)

Supreme

A review of issues #41 - 52b, by Alan Moore and various artists

Having just finished re-reading these 13 issues, I feel like I've been reading Supreme for about 60 years. That's not a bad thing. In a world where a continuity error in a comic book can completely eclipse a really good story, Alan Moore has found the solution: Create your own continuity. Taking a second-rate Image universe character and wiping the slate clean, Moore has created a super-hero that the more well-known Man of Steel wishes he were.

Supreme started out existence as a sort of violent Superman, Image's and more

specifically, Rob Liefeld's, answer to the Man of Tomorrow. That the book lasted through 40 issues and various mini-series' is a testament to his popularity, but it wasn't until #41 that both fans and the industry sat up and took notice. Perhaps in an effort to tell the Superman stories he couldn't tell at DC, Alan Moore took over the book, and in many ways, the whole universe he existed in.

In each issue of the 13 I'm talking about, Supreme in the 90's confronts a problem that puts him in mind of past events, which are then presented as flashbacks. A common enough trick, yes, but the way it is pulled off here is what makes the book special. Each flashback, illustrated by the amazing Rick Veitch, is drawn in the style of the era it is supposed to represent. For example, when we see Supreme's origin in issue #42, set in the 1930's, it is drawn much as a comic from the very beginning of the Golden Age was. Moving on a few issues, a story of Supreme in the 70's (long-lived fellow, that Supreme) is drawn in the appropriate fashion. Even the pages these stories appear on have been artificially yellowed to enhance the effect. 

The effect these flashbacks have, especially in the later issues where Liefeld had departed from the ranks of Image and taken his characters with him, is to set up an entire super-hero history that you can get the scope of in only 13 issues, hence the 60 years of reading Supreme. In much the same way he parodied / tributed old Marvel titles in the 1963 series, Moore takes all the conventions of the DC universe and makes them new. For those familiar with comics there are in-jokes a-plenty, yet not so many that new readers will feel lost.

As for the story of Supreme itself, I'd rather not give too much away. We meet Supreme on his way back to Earth after a mission in space. He finds that the universe is about to undergo a revision, a fact made clear to him by a multitude of other Supremes he meets who have already been revised. In this way, Supreme is finding out about his past at much the same time that the reader is. Moore has taken the approach of single issue, stand-alone stories, with one or two two-parters. There is a story running through all 13 issues, but not one that precludes reading issues out of order. The series continues up to issue #56 and picks up again with Supreme: The Return, which has so far produced 3 issues. Awesome Entertainment's unfortunate financial circumstances have made the further adventures of Supreme sporadic at best, but maybe once the second year of stories is complete (Supreme: The Return #8), it'1l be the huge seller it deserves to be, and I won't need to review them to get people to read it.

This is a comic for anyone who misses the wonder a super-hero title used to give. It's not grim, it's not violent, it's not full of sex, but it will make you smile and laughand be moved. The opinion I've most heard expressed about this series is it's contrast to Watchmen, Moore's most well-known work. Where Watchmen seemed to be about deconstructing the super-hero ideal, Supreme is about how wonderful an ideal it is. 

 Supreme is only currently available in back issue, and they're very scarce. There are plans to release a hardcover of the issues I've reviewed, but no firm date. Supreme: The Return #4 - 6 are supposed to be out in March - April 2000.

Supreme was published monthly by Image, then by Maximum Press, and then by Awesome Entertainment.