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Supreme 41
THE STORY OF THE YEAR
Alan Moore likes his sixes and twelves. The first twelve issues of Supreme were conceived and pitched as a single thing (as far as I understand), under the collective title “The Story of the Year.” A nice, clean idea: twelve issues over twelve months, giving the title a slightly punny meaning. The usual implication would be “The (Best) Story of the Year,” but in this context, it means, “The Story of (the newly revised Supreme’s first) Year.”
So a couple things about this.
1.) Considering the track records of both Moore and Liefeld, the idea that the twelve issues would actually all come out within a single twelve-month span was incredibly optimistic. (Liefeld and Moore don’t have many traits in common as creators, but an inability to get comics out on time is one of the their few.) But as it turned out, neither Moore nor Maximum Press/Awesome Entertainment did *too* terribly badly. Issue 41 came out in August of 1996, and issue 52 in October of 1997. Not quite a monthly schedule, but certainly not embarrassingly off course. Fortunately for me I had just turned eighteen, and was thus a legal adult – because really, you’d have to be a child to get that upset over some story not getting finished in a timely manner, and go posting on message boards about how the author is a “lazy f*ck” and what-have-you.
2.) The other thing is that, if I remember my rumors correctly, Moore’s plan originally was that after the “Story of the Year” was finished as of issue 52, he would move on and become a magician. But sales ended up being good; the reviews were good; Moore was happy; Liefeld was happy; so well before The Story of the Year was over, Moore was pitching not only Supreme Year Two, but also more revamps of Liefeld stuff: the “Judgment Day” three-issue miniseries; Youngblood Year 1; six months of Glory … Oh, the future looked good, my friends. Alas, Year Two of the Moore/Liefeld association did not go *quite* as smoothly as Year One.
In a lot of ways, Supreme 41’s narrative function feels more like a “zero issue,” a prologue to the next eleven months, rather than the start of twelve. Many of the story elements that come together in the big climactic double-sized Part Twelve actually don’t get introduced until the following issue. That’s really when the long-running plot threads start, and a lot of the major characters are introduced.
Issue 41 is less the start of Moore’s new vision for Supreme than a meta-narrative justification for why the original Liefeld vision is going away.
Thus: Revision!
THE REVISION
As Geoff Klock once explained to me, Moore understood that with a character like Superman (or a Superman homage like Supreme), part of what makes the concept interesting is its interaction with its own past. Even something like Byrne’s “Man of Steel” reboot of ’86, wherein Byrne was ostensibly jettisoning all of Superman’s long history, part of the interest came in the juxtaposition of Byrne’s version with previous versions. In effect, a reboot like Byrne’s can’t really erase Superman’s history; it just becomes the latest chapter in that history
Supreme, who in 1996 was only three years old, was thus a Superman avatar who lacked this crucial Superman component: an interesting past. So Alan Moore makes one up. Not only that, he puts the cart before the horse in issue 41, by opening with the revision. In a way, Supreme is a kind of perfect antithesis of Byrne’s “Man of Steel.” Byrne used his revision to start from scratch, and unload the “baggage” of 50 years of Superman history, to try to make Superman a new character whose story began with Byrne’s first issue.
Supreme 41 reverses this concept: Moore takes a character only three years old, and uses the concept of a reboot to GIVE Supreme the baggage. Wisely, Moore recognizes that the history of Superman enriches him. On some metaphysical level, it’s as if all of the “barnacles” that Byrne scraped away floated across “idea space” adrift for ten years, before Moore found them – recognized them for the treasures they were – and attached them all to Supreme. And to get even more meta with the metaphor, Moore incorporates not just the barnacles into Supreme, but the barnacle-scraper as well: The very concept of the reboot – usually something that’s outside the narrative – becomes, in Moore’s hands, another element *within* the narrative.
THE SUPREMACY
How is this accomplished? By bringing Supreme into “the Supremacy,” a limbo where reside dozens upon dozens of other Supremes who claim to pre-date the current one. “Original Supreme” came first, but about a year into his career he was “revised” out of existence. He landed in a blank limbo dimension, which – as years went by – came to be populated by more and more “revised” Supremes. Eventually, these Supremes created an entire society for themselves – for, it wasn’t just themselves that ended up in Limbo after each revision, but all of their “supporting casts” as well. Most interestingly, that includes “secondary” Supremes: the sidekicks and female counterparts, the versions from alternate futures, and the “imaginary” ones (“who became no less real after our revision!”) …
I’ve always thought it was an inspired idea. Obviously Moore isn’t the first writer to get “meta” with characters, letting aspects of their production be incorporated into the narrative in some way. But I’ve never seen the ubiquitous concept of the “reboot” done this way, where there is an actual in-story phenomenon that explains the character’s restart. (Oddly enough, the only other example I can think of is Abrams’ “Star Trek,” which made its reboot the result of time-travel.)
FUTURE-SUPREME
The gamma-evolved brain of “Future-Supreme” attempts to explain the “paradoxes of Revision Theory,” suggesting two possibilities: The creation of original Supreme back in 1940 was such a seismic event for the space-time continuum that it sent ripples through it, causing the universe to periodically revise itself. The other theory is that revisions are and always have been taking place in the universe, but the Supremes are the first beings powerfully aware enough to realize it (and survive it). In a winky bit of dialogue, Gamma Supreme then notes that perhaps both theories are incorrect. Despite the amazing wisdom of Future-Supreme, the concept that he and the other Supremes are all fictional characters at the mercy of comic-book publishers’ whims never occurs to him.
For all of Moore’s meta-commentary, his characters in Supreme never seem to quite realize, or even consider, that they might be fictional. Even when they (unconsciously) speak as if they are (like when Supreme refers to his friends as his “supporting cast” or MacroSupreme laments only having existed for a month, with “no second appearance”).
THE QUESTION NEVER ANSWERED
Moore’s premise is that Supremes never learn about the Supremacy until after they are revised. But in issue 41, the latest reality-revision occurs but leaves the Supreme of issues 1-40 unaffected. The only people revised are some of his supporting cast members (Probe and Kid Supreme). The Supremes who rule the Supremacy realize this is odd, so they go and pull Supreme into the Supremacy just before the revision can conclude. They explain this entire premise to him, then tell him that if he’d like he can stay in Limbo with them, or he can return to the newly revised world and take his place as that world’s Supreme.
What’s never explained is WHY this Supreme didn’t get pinged by the revision. From a narrative standpoint, it’s presumably so that the Supreme we read about from issues 41 onward can also be said to be the guy who was in issues 1 through 40. But Moore’s version is so different that this hardly seems necessary, or even logical. (Erik Larson didn’t seem to buy the idea that Moore’s Supreme was the same guy from issues 1 through 40. When he took over the storyline after Moore, he revealed that Liefeld’s Supreme was in the Supremacy as well, behind the scenes in issue 41. But this clearly wasn’t Moore’s intent.)
So there’s a paradox to chew on.
SUPERMAN ANALOGUES
Right from the start, the entire Supreme saga under Moore is an homage to Silver Age DC. Most elements of it map onto Superman … though as the story continues, it expands to the entire DC Universe. But that’s later. Issue 41 is firmly in Superman territory. Reading this comic as an eighteen-year-old in 1996, I was already geeked out enough to recognize most of the references, but even today I am not sure I know all of them.
The ones I get:
Supreme’s costume is white, red and gold, and at one point in the Supremacy he meets “Supreme White and Supreme Gold,” imaginary Supremes that became real upon revision. These are analogous to Superman-Red and Superman-Blue, of the classic Silver Age Superman Imaginary Story that I have never read.
Liefeld’s origin for Supreme from the early 90s (issue 10, I believe, is when it’s finally revealed) is actually closer to Captain America than Superman: a kid who volunteers for a program to become a super-soldier in WWII. I guess when I say “closer to” what I really mean is “indistinguishable from.” The only difference is in the power-levels, with the super-soldier program in Liefeld’s world being much more … let’s just say EXTREME … than Marvel’s version. So skinny little Ethan Crane gets juiced up to Superman levels. (Actually the name “Ethan Crane” came later, I believe; he is anonymous in the original Supreme comics … I believe it was Kieth Giffen who eventually did his own “revision” of the origin, and that’s where “Ethan Crane” comes from. I could be wrong. I want to eventually dig into the pre-Moore Supreme more, just to get a sense of how chaotic it was before Moore did his clean-up job.)
“pre-Moore Supreme more.” Boy, try saying THAT five times fast.
I digress. I was talking about Superman analogues. So, most of the Supremes in the Supremacy have an origin that is closer to Liefeld’s, but one of them explicitly calls himself “the last son of the exploded planet Supron.” So THERE’s an analogue for you.
Some supporting character-names are dropped, and even though we don’t get much details about them, it’s easy to guess who they are: Lucas Tate (Perry White); Judy Jordan (Lana Lang); Diana Dane (Lois Lane); Darius Dax (Lex Luthor); Billy Friday (Jimmy Olsen). There’s also a Daily Planet analogue thrown in there, some newspaper where some of the Supremes have worked … although Moore will do a twist on that in the final few pages of issue 41, when he reveals that this latest revision of Ethan, Diana, Billy and Lucas are all employed at a comic-book company rather than a newspaper. The company is “Dazzle Comics,” a kinda clever name that evokes “Marvel Comics” but whose initials are D.C.
There’s a “Horse Supreme” in the Supremacy, presumably meant to evoke Comet the Super-Horse.
“Fifties Supreme” is shown to have a lion’s head; that specific mutation may be a nod toward the “visualize a lynx” version of Superman that Denny O’Neil did in the 70s. But the idea of the Fifties version being mutated is a nod to all the red-kryptonite-related transformation stories of Superman in the fifties. It’s explained here as being the result of “violet Supremium.” A later issue will make it clear that “White Supremium,” as the default version, maps onto the green Kryptonite, while the violet version – which causes bizarre temporary transformations – maps onto red.
“Omegapolis” is the analogue for Metropolis, while “Littlehaven” is the analogue to Smallville. (“Kid Supreme” will end up being the analogous “Superboy” name for Supreme when he was as boy.)
The ones I am not sure I get:
Macro-Supreme, a giant sentient stone statue. This feels more like something out of pre-Silver Age Marvel Comics, one of Jack Kirby’s giant monsters (most specifically, the Colossus, i.e. “It, the Living Colossus”). Was there a giant Superman statue?
One of Moore’s favorites is “Squeak the Supremouse.” To me, this guy is evocative of Mighty Mouse, but that character isn’t a part of the Superman family, despite being Superman-influenced. Is there a more specifically “Super” analogue that I am missing? (The other character that comes to mind is Spider-Ham, very specifically an anthropomorphic animal-version of a major super-character, though obviously not Superman, or even DC.)
Superion … a “future-variant Son of Supreme” … Obviously there were a lot of Imaginary Stories that showed scenarios with a “Son of Superman,” although Superion, both in name and visual, seems like potentially a shoutout to one of the very first Superman analogues, Roy Thomas’s “Hyperion.”
Sister Supreme … a joke on 70s comics’ attempts to be more relevant, with lots of mileage gotten out of the “Sweet Christmas”-styled vernacular that Marvel used for Power Man. Dunno if there’s a more DC-specific analogue for this character.
Future-Supreme, with his giant gamma-evolved brain, is evocative of the Watcher or the Leader … is there a more “Super” character here that I don’t know about?
The Three Sergeants Supreme: Not sure who these three very cartoonish guys are meant to evoke, but they seem too specific not to be referencing something.
OTHER REFERENCES
Some obvious ones:
The original 40s Supreme cannot fly, but instead travels in giant leaps. His catch phrase, is “Up, up and over!”
At one point, Original Supreme wonders if the new Supreme thinks that the Supremacy isn’t real, but rather just “a hoax or a dream.”
NON-SUPERMAN REFERENCES
Moore also pokes fun at 90s superhero comics, which Liefeld’s Supreme epitomized. Some of the variant-Supremes suggest that “90s model” Supremes have powers “so poorly defined as to be virtually limitless!”
CONSPICUOUS BY ITS ABSENCE
Over the course of Moore’s tour of the Supremacy, we get a look at incarnations from the 40s, the 50s, the 60s and the 70s … and as noted above, the current Supreme represents the 90s. The only decade never shown is the 80s, the decade in which Moore was so prominent as the voice of superhero comics. Was Moore reticent at the idea of doing a pastiche of his own style? Perhaps it was a bit like Spielberg’s unwillingness to reference his own movies in the movie version of “Ready Player One,” as he thought it would seem vain or egotistical. Instead, Moore simply makes a dialogue reference to “Grim Eighties Supreme,” but we never get to hear how he talks. (Eventually, Moore will finally give the people what they want. “Grim Eighties Supreme” will co-star in a story later down the line, and it will be truly sublime.)
MISCELLANY
Again, I believe it was Keith Giffen who wrote the “definitive” origin for Liefeld’s version of Supreme. As a possible nod in that direction, Giffen illustrates a single page of Supreme 41, the one recounting how “original Supreme” from the 1940s got his powers. Or maybe the Giffen connection is a coincidence.
When Ethan goes to Omegapolis for the final few pages, there’s a newspaper headline in the background that references Youngblood, a signal to readers that the world we’re now entering is not disconnected from the other titles Liefeld was pumping out at the time. It’s weird to think that during this first year of Supreme, all the other titles in the line were still sticking with the “Extreme” aesthetic. It wouldn’t be until Year Two that Moore would be given free rein to do the same kind of “newly classic” revamp to the entire Extreme/Awesome universe, bringing it all into line with the old-school tone and style of Supreme. (I’m re-reading “The Story of the Year” in TPB format, but reading the original comics at the time, it was always striking to see the ads in the back for the other Extreme books, which looked hopelessly garish compared to the elegance of Supreme.)
One of the most memorable moments in Supreme 41 is the transition from the last panel of page 5, with some pun-filled dialogue spoken from off-screen, into the large first panel of page 6, which shows Squeak the super-powered cartoon mouse in all his glory. Moore ended up being so pleased with his own work here that he would do at least two more variations on this style of reveal: Once during Supreme Year Two, and then again in Tom Strong #10. In all three versions, it’s a confrontation between an archetypal character and his anthropomorphic cartoon-animal counterpart, and there are always puns in the dialogue related to whichever animal it happens to be. I wonder if Moore’s work here influenced the creators of “Into the Spider-Verse,” and their choice to use Spider-Ham as one of the hero’s multiversal counterparts?
LOOKING FORWARD
Again, much of this issue is entirely superfluous to what will end up being the “Story of the Year,” much more of a prologue than a Part One. (The Supremacy never appears again over the next twelve issues, except in some backup stories.) THAT SAID, the Supremacy will become a major story element in Year Two of Supreme
FINAL THOUGHTS
I absolutely loved this issue when it first came out. I’ve re-read it countless times, and I still adore it. Back in 1996, I was still in my phase of believing that every single thing Alan Moore did was pure genius. These days, I’m a little more aware of the context into which he was coming. There are elements of this concept that have their seeds in the work of other writers, I’m sure. The final result is still brilliant, but it didn’t come out in a vacuum, and other writers around this time were also getting into exploring this nostalgic vein that Moore taps here. (Alex Ross had already teamed with Kurt Busiek for the nostalgia trip of MARVELS, for example. Whether that was an influence on Moore I’m not sure, but Moore was enough of a fan of Ross’s style to tape him to do covers for his ABC comics in 1999 (ABC itself being an extension of the “new classical” approach that Moore is also brought first to Liefeld’s properties).
So, while at the time you probably could have heard me proselytizing that Moore basically had reinvented the entire world via the genius that was Supreme issue 41, even now – with a cooler head -- I still think it’s an amazingly entertaining issue, endlessly re-readable, and a fantastic love-letter to Superman, the character that started it all.
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