Daredevil Message Board

[Neilan]

Here, far me, is what being a completist, or borderline obsessive compulsive, means.

So because I want to read as much Alan Moore as I can, I get the 2 big trades of Supreme. Then I see the 1st few issues in a store for pretty cheap. Then I say to myself, hey, why don’t I read the pre-Alan Moore issues and see what kind of change he made to the title? That would probably be a cool thing to do. I’ll bet it’s a change for the better. So I proceed to collect every issue before Moore closed out the series. I ‘read’ the 1st few issues, although it was more about looking at the aggressive poses, and I think, “Well, it is somewhat stylish artwork, and it is interesting to see a Superman character who is not such a nice guy, I just wish more happened. I’m interested enough to want to see what this guy is about. But it sure does seem like it’s all about the guy striking a pose.” This was my 1st major Rob Liefield produced comic. Well, within like the 1st 5 issues, some other guy takes over the art and I think it was Kurt Hathaway (please excuse my poor memory) took over the writing and it got a little better, and the artwork was still good, but it just didn’t seem to know where it was going. Within a dozen issues, he had sort of lost his powers, except that Thor???’s hammer was giving him some lesser powers. How come they were allowed to use Thor? I thought these characters were trademarked? Is it because Thor was a (real?) God? Anyway, through various writers and art teams, I kept (wishfully?) thinking it was getting better and yet it still kind of stunk, with the art seeming repetitive and boring, more about style and less about substance, while the stories were shallow and the character forever wandered in development limbo. After a while, I became numb to it all, there are 40 some issues before Mr. Moore takes over, and each successive author seemed to have no luck explaining what the previous one was trying to get at, before he was replaced and it just got to be a bigger and bigger mess. And the whole time, the letters page was praising the book for being innovative, daring and character driven. The consensus seemed to be that it was neat to have the Superman mythology turned on its ear by this arrogant, not very nice “hero”.

When Moore finally takes over the writing chores, he makes the book into a parody of Superman. Showing many flashbacks in the old naïve, yet charming, DC style. He added fill-ins for many of the Superman clichés, his own versions of Supergirl, Superdog, superrobots, the Fortress of Solitude, Lex Luthor, Mr. Myxpltzk(sp?), Kandor and Kryptonite. Slowly, the character becomes a little more likable, the stories become richer and deeper, with time conundrums becoming a constant theme, and quickly the title becomes much more interesting. It’s just ironic that it went from going against type to embracing and celebrating the Superman myths. Moore spins gold from dreck.

Now, as for Image, what was the deal back in those days? Supreme, Youngblood (ugh! It made early Supreme seem tolerable), and I wish I could remember some of the other related titles, were put out by something called Extreme Studios that had Liefield as one of its founders. So Image was a collection of different comic studios? Isn't that where Jim Lee's Wildstorm, got its start? How did it become part of DC? What other studios and creators, besides McFarlane and Jim Valentino, were involved in Image?. Speaking of Valentino, he had a brief run on Supreme, it was right before Moore’s. I thought it was a game attempt at resolving the previous 3 years of muddled, mixed up, modeling sessions, I mean storylines, and at the very least helped give Moore a little something to work with.
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It's never too late to have a happy childhood!

[Gloria]

I confess the only stuff i read about Supreme was the one written by Alan Moore, and you confirm that my lack of curiosity for the previous stuff was... hum, convenient.

Moore's play with the elements of the Superman Mythos was fun to read. I larfed & larfed when Supreme and his gal went to met their counterparts, and the nineties version of her was... a junkie! (take that for a "passing" comment on the dark & Gritty nineties)... and, oh, the British guy who was writing the "Omniman" comics, LOL

Re Thor: He also showed up (along with Loki and Odin) in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman", and in Alan Moore's "Top Ten" (Where Balder, Hoder and Frigga joined the act).

I'd say that, while Marvel surely owns the character as designed by Kirby & conceived by Lee, they don't have the exclusive about using Norse Myths Same seems to work for Greek Gods.
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Gloria
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