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Post by rberman on Jul 27, 2020 19:12:17 GMT -5
Supreme #41 (August 1996) Story: Alan Moore Pencils: Joe Bennett and Keith Giffen Inks: Norm Rapmund and Al Gordon In Memoriam: Curt Swan 1920-1996 The Story: Returning to Earth after a mission, Supreme encounters numerous alternate versions of himself. They invite him to travel to their world of Supremacy, where he meets a host of other alternate Supremes, each of which has been revised out of continuity at some point in the past. Supreme returns to his own world to discover his own new continuity: He is Ethan Crane, cartoonist at Dazzle Comics, working on their superhero character Omniman.  My Two Cents: I’ll give Rob Liefeld this. When Alan Moore agreed to take over the gritty Supreme Superman knock-off and make it into something gentler and more fun, Liefeld was a good sport. He got out of the way and let it happen. The cover tells the story, a recreation of the iconic cover of Superman #1. “Let’s meet all the alternate versions of myself” has been done many times by now. I’m trying to recollect how often it had been done in 1996. Grant Morrison’s Superman Dynasty was a couple of years later in the DC One Million event. Which makes me wonder, since Moore’s ultimate Supreme is a solid gold dude:  And so is Morrison’s ultimate Superman Prime.  Throughout his run on Supreme, Moore will rope in older artists to provide vintage-looking flashback scenes. Here, Keith Giffen gets to depict the magic-based origin of the Golden Age Supreme. 
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Post by berkley on Jul 27, 2020 20:24:11 GMT -5
Superman analogues or tributes don't hold much attraction for me but it's really the artwork that is a seemingly immovable mental block to my ability to read these Supreme comics. I can't get past how terrible it looks to my eyes. Still, it's Moore,so I might try to force myself one of these days.
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Post by rberman on Jul 28, 2020 7:46:57 GMT -5
Supreme #42 (September 1996) Story: Alan Moore Pencils: Joe Bennett and Rick Veitch Inks: Norm Rapmund and Rick Veitch The Story: Ethan Crane travels to Littlehaven, where he is supposed to have grown up, and an eight page Golden Age flashback (courtesy of Rick Veitch) gives him access to the backstory he never knew he had.  The town has fallen on hard times. His high school flame Judy Jordan has aged since the Golden Age, whereas Ethan remains young thanks to comic book revisionism. Ethan pretends to be his own son to avoid a painful discussion about Comic Book Time.  Judy reminds Ethan of his Silver Age adventures, meeting the LSH stand-ins the League of Infinity. Ethan wants to learn more about his own past adventures… but how?  My Two Cents: Moore is recapitulating the history of Superman at breakneck speed, focusing on post-Comics Code amusements like Super-Tot, Krypto, and the endless run of Superboy robots. It’s a work of nostalgia intended for readers (like myself) with warm feelings for those innocent action stories whose tone Moore is nailing so well here. I always liked the Silver Age Legion. 
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Post by mikelmidnight on Jul 28, 2020 11:57:37 GMT -5
While I generally rate Moore higher as a writer than Morrison, I never cared for his pastiche work (like Supreme). I think he's perhaps overly faithful to the original material which renders the result bland (while Morrison captures the feel of the original material while adding just a touch of surrealism to make it interesting).
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Post by rberman on Jul 29, 2020 7:55:15 GMT -5
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Post by rberman on Jul 31, 2020 9:29:23 GMT -5
Supreme #49 (June 1997) Writer: Alan Moore Pencils: Mark Pajarillo and Rick Veitch Inks: Norm Rapmund and Rick Veitch The Story: Optilux the light-villain attacks Supreme and his allies, transforming them into beings of light within Optilux’s thoughts. Everything is an illusion now.  Supreme recalls a groovy cosmic adventure he had in the early 1970s, facing off against the Spectre-like Jack of the Lantern. The encounter incapacitates Supreme for almost 25 years, until he awakens in the Image Era.  Escaping from Optilux’s mirages, Supreme uses a super-scream to free his friends (JLA and Blackhawks analogues, and maybe some of these are existing Image characters?) from their crystalline cages. Optilux himself is imprisoned within a large refracting gem.  My Two Cents: This issue seems to be paying tribute to the psychedelic stories of Ditko and Starlin while relieving Supreme of the obligation to appear in subsequent stories homaging the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps Moore feels that he already covered that time period well enough when he lived it himself. Would have been fun to get a Swamp Thing homage, though.
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Post by rberman on Aug 1, 2020 19:18:29 GMT -5
Supreme #50 “A Love Supreme” (July 1997) Writer: Alan Moore Pencils: Chris Sprouse and Rick Veitch Inks: Al Gordon and Rick Veitch The Story: Ethan Drake and his Omniman co-writer Diana Dane discuss plotting on a possible love story for their hero. They imagine three scenarios. First, a Silver Age “imaginary tale” in which Supreme has an awkward 1950s sitcom marriage to his longtime girlfriend Judy Jordan.  What if Supreme married a creature more befitting his supreme status? Like, say, an angel. This turns out poorly for different reasons, as angels are degraded by ongoing contact with our world of woes.  Finally, Supreme considers a marriage to an equal, someone of Wonder Woman stature. They bicker constantly, annoying their peers. Ethan and Diana decide it’s best to keep teasing a relationship for Omniman rather than actually portray one.  My Two Cents: Sexual politics were a huge part of Silver Age superhero comics, hybridizing action stories with romantic elements awkwardly for a preteen readership. Why was romance portrayed in such a negative light? Because the writers were desperate for Code-approved sources of conflict. Kurt Busiek lampooned these stories well a few years later in Astro City: Local Heroes #2 (2003), in which the Lois stand-in ruins the hero’s secret identity with her nosiness.  Everybody here knows that the issue title refers to John Coltrane’s landmark 1965 jazz album. But I’ll say it anyway.
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Post by chadwilliam on Aug 1, 2020 22:08:55 GMT -5
While I generally rate Moore higher as a writer than Morrison, I never cared for his pastiche work (like Supreme). I think he's perhaps overly faithful to the original material which renders the result bland. Moore was faithful in only a superficial way - he could copy a lot of the inventiveness, weirdness, silliness of the Silver Age, but never seemed capable of handling the purity of a character such as Superman. The Silver Age wasn't all about goofy transformations, multicolored kryptonite, and convoluted schemes designed to protect one's secret identity - there were character based stories which explored the selflessness of Superman's mission on Earth and the sincerity with which he went about his self-imposed duties and I think this is where Moore stumbled time and again with Superman. I mean, I love those crazy Red Kryptonite tales from the past, the stories where Superman would have to carry out some convoluted Rube Goldbergesque mental gymnastics to keep his identity a secret for another 30 days, and anything from the Bizarro World, but to do a Superman pastiche based only on those elements makes you realize just how one-dimensional the source material wasn't and how limited Moore is as a writer when trying to handle a character for whom you can't just tack on some sort of neuroses or feet of clay and not worry about genuine characterization. |
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