Alan Moore Obscurities: Supreme - The Return (#53-56, The Return #1-6) PART ONE

"By the Merciful Magellanic Cloud, what's happened to everything?" - Supreme

Let's kick off the new year with a two part look at the second compilation volume of Alan Moore's time writing the Rob Liefeld Superman expy Supreme while also working for Liefeld's Awesome comics label.  Or was he?  The first twelve Supreme issues I covered in my look at The Story Of The Year told a tight overall story while turning Liefelds psycho Superman into a old skool Superman pastiche with various aspects of Golden and Silver Age Superman being explored.  Now it's no secret that Liefeld's company was in some financial trouble by then, and Moore had some scathing things to say about Liefeld's management at the time.  Which might explain why these ten issues have a more chaotic feel to them. The first four concluded the main Supreme series, then the second six which were published when Moore had long ago left to work for ABC comics became Supreme: The Return.  I get the feeling when I read this volume that Moore, who usually has such firm control of how his stories would look just faxed them the scripts and went back to drawing up his plans for the ABC comicverse, I have no evidence but it sure feels that way. The issues also had lateness problems, the first in this volume is dated 1997, three years later we get the final issues of The Return, three years to produce ten comics, tsk tsk.  All-in-all behind the scenes was something of a clusterfuck for example there are eight pencillers and six inkers credited across these ten issues, including Rob Liefeld himself, but are the stories still worth reading?  Let's find out first with the final four issues of Supreme's original run and  the first issue of The Return, because the story started in #53 concludes in The Return #1. And in a few days time the rest of the issues making up The Return.

We find out after the defeat of his arch-enemy Darius Dax that Supreme has spent his time fixing up the Citadel for a while.  He also has the aged comatose body of Judy Jordan, the woman who Dax took over so he could live on past his first death from cancer.  Supreme is trying to find a way to retrieve her original personality which Dax overwrote with his own.

Suprema, his sister, comes and tells him he is needed in the "Hell of Mirrors" where he had placed writer Billy Friday after he became a huge bulk of limbs from his exposure to Supremium.  He's actually back to normal now, and the other villains contained in the mirrors are demanding he be taken away.

Suprema: "They're really anxious to get rid of him.  Apparently he's been asking them questions about their childhoods and motivations."

They let Supreme retrieve Billy from the Hell of Mirrors without incident although Supreme feels a bit sorry for him because he'd been through such a lot recently.  When he leaves the mirrorworld, he hysterically demands they send him back to get his laptop, but Supreme and Suprema gently lead him away. Supreme decide to send him to an expert in "super-power breakdowns" and Billy ends up at the "Miskatonic Mental Institution" under the care of the Batman expy.  By the way, Billy Friday is almost certainly a parody of arch-enemy Grant Morrison who made his name with the Batman graphic novel "Arkham Asylum".  Tee flippin' hee.

We return to Supreme who is in his civilian disguise as mild-mannered comicbook artist Ethan Crane telling all this to his writer Diana Dane, although she doesn't know he is Supreme.  Diana then pulls out what should have been an issue of "Omniman" but somehow it's turned into a comic about Supreme.  Ethan starts to panic saying it could reveal all Supreme's secrets and they must stop it going to press.

Supreme meets Omniman.

As he runs, he takes off his suit and turns into Supreme, he arrives at Dazzle comics and his editor is as suprised as he is to see the comic has changed. But when Supreme says they must run the original Omniman plates, the supposedly fictional Omniman appears and says he couldn't allow anything to compromise his secret identity.

Supreme says he can't be real, but Omniman says that Supreme is the comic book character.  Supreme says it's a mistake, "I'm not some made-up fantasy hero".  Omniman insults him so an annoyed Supreme suggest they fight it out and Omniman delivers a huge punch which smashes Supreme through the walls and into the pavement.

Diana has just arrived.  Supreme says she should stay out of the way, but she says she's the Omniman expert and she knows all about the powers Supreme doesn't have like "Omni-ventriloquism, Omni-exhalation".   This distracts Supreme and he takes another hit from Omniman's super-breath.  Oniman asks if he's had enough and is ready to crawl back into his comic?  Supreme say he know's Omniman isn't evil, "you're just badly written" and he punches him.

Diana and the editor watch as Supreme and Omniman duke it out.  The editor say with the industry the way it is this is the last thing they need.  As the fighting pair crash back into the offices, an assisstant editor called Carl Chambers arrives and asks if they are their models.  When told they are real he exclaims:

Carl: "Boy, that's incredible.  I never realised... I mean, I always thought the artwork on these character's anatomy was ludicrous, but they're actually built like that!"

Very droll Alan.  Anyway suddenly Omniman grins at Supreme and says he's given a "tremendous performance" and he transforms into a super-deformed version of Supreme, he is actually the imp "Szazs" who says he's now a "shoo-in at the Impolympics!"

Szazs.

Szasz explains that the Impolympics is a competition between each super-hero's personal imp antagonist, "there is only really one event, and that's to see who can come out with the most irrational and pointless stunt." He thought up the Omniman routine for his opener and now he's going for gold to reward all the patient weeks he spent in "nuisance training." He grows to huge size as Supreme flies Diana to a safe place.  He then flies up and tells Szazs to cut it out.

Supreme: "Earth's changed since the sixties!  Nobody finds this kind of stuff funny or appealing any more!"

Take that, the nineties! Szazs shriks back to his normal size, then transforms the sky into a reflection of the city.  Supreme tells him people will go crazy trying to navigate the mirror-sky.

He then flies down to Diane and she tells him if he still has the Supreme comicbook he can flip to the end and find out how he defeats Szazs.  Supreme reads it nothing that even this moment is in it now.  He defeats Szasz with a "logical proposition".  Szaz flies down to see what Supreme is up to.

Supreme tells him that Szazs can only exist in prime-numbered dimensions and that logically they are actually here in the fourth-dimension not the third because time is the fourth dimension.  And as four is not a prime number, Szazs shouldn't be able to exist here.  Szazs starts fading away:

Szazs: "No! It can't be!  You're disproving my existance with a syllogism supreme!  I'm becoming completely... unbelievable..."

And he pops out of existance and the city returns to normal.  Supreme still has the comic, but he says Szaz always leaves a souvenir of his visits and the real comic is back as Omniman again.

Moore can do postmodernism too!

We then cut to him at the Citadel, finishing off telling his story to the android and member of Youngblood, Diehard (who also starred in the Prophet reboot I covered on this blog).  This then leads into a discussion of the murder of one of the team by another and the trial they are going to have. This was covered in the Moore penned miniseries "Judgement Day" also covered by me, ages ago.

As they walk through the Citadel, Diehard comments that whatever comic book he's in has "turned pretty grim recently" and he'd like to close the covers and begin a whole new chapter (which I believe is reference to Moore's aborted run on Youngblood).

Supreme: "Look on the bright side.  We've both been in this business long enough to know that no era lasts forever... even a dark one!"

Diehard agrees and says it's no use worrying about what might happen, the future has already been written right? Supreme says that it might not have been written but it's definitely being advertised.  And that brings this chapter to an end.

The next chapter starts with a poem about Judy Jordan which recaps her story which was told in The Story Of The Year.  We see how wrapped up she was in her love of Supreme and weeping when she reads he's leaving Earth for a while.  Left aging and lonely she recieves a book from Supreme's arch-enemy Darius Dax who infused his conciousness into dust and when she opens the book the dust takes her over and she is left paralysed on the kitchen floor as Dax slowly takes her over, and she dies...

... but then she wakes from the blackness and see's Supreme looking down at her.  We then see that he's resurrected her mind and put it in a new and young looking robot body. Actually it's one of his Supreme robots, "S-1".  He tells her she looks wonderful.  She is completely bewildered.  She says one minute she was dying on the kitchen floor and now she alive and twenty-five years younger, "oh god! What's happened...?"

Chris Sprouse didn't draw this issue, Rick Veitch did and OMG Rick I know you can do better than this!

Supreme's super-dog Radar tells her what happened to her, and if she checks the room next door she'll discover it was true.  And she looks, seeing her comatose body in its seventies.  Radar says it's been thirty years since she opened the book and it's now 1997.  Radar say that Supreme found echos of her in her aged body once Dax was gone from it.  He rebuilt her mind like an electric jigsaw puzzle. Also, "he thought you might prefer a younger, friskier body" so now she's a Suprematon.

He tells her that her body is the most advanced robot there is and only S-1 is close to it.  She's now strong, fast and almost indestructible.  Judy says this isn't what she wanted, she wanted to be Supreme's wife.  He can't love her as either a robot or an old woman, so "what point does my existance have?"  Radar says Supreme couldn't bear to see her "consigned to oblivion".  Tearfully she ask to be left alone, she needs to have time to think.

Later we see Radar and S-1 discovering she has gone.  She has also taken the hero costume from an exhibit and we see her clad in it and flying over the city.  She flies to where Suprema is saying she is "Super-Judy" and starts dealing with the emergency Suprema was dealing with. Suprema objects saying Judy has no training as a superhero.  Judy just sneers that she's afraid of the competition.

But she almost allows a passing plane be hit by the space debris, so Suprema yells at her saying she doesn't "have what it takes as a cheesecake champion!"  Judy says super-heroing is her new career.  They bitch at each other about their costumes and when Suprema tells her the Suprematons are disposable an angered Judy punches her right in the face.

Dat ass.

Judy says she should pack up and go, Omegaopolis has a new "dame defender".  Suprema is pissed about her costume getting messed up and does a flying smash into Judy's stomach.  She flies them both up to the moon so they can fight without wrecking the city and they really go at each other until Judy is rendered unconcious and a regretful Suprema takes her back to the Citadel.

S-1 and Suprema bring Judy back round and Judy apologises for lashing out at Suprema, "I just felt so frustrated and angry is all."  Suprema realises her pain is also being caused by not being able to be loved by Supreme in return and she gets mad at Supreme for not taking that into account. Supreme himself appears saying he needs to face up to that.

He and Judy go and sit in the roofgarden.  He apologises for not being there when she woke up, he was dealing with a rogue comet. He tells her that the body she has is more than just a robot, but she snaps "what' the point of giving me life if you can't give me love?"  He says he thought he did what was right.  She hugs him saying he always does that and she isn't really angry at him just the ridiculous situation she's now in.

They walk through the Citadel and Supreme says he still loves her, but circumstances are different now, she still has the same personality just not the same organic body.  Then S-1 approaches them and Judy says to let him speak because he seems different from the other Suprematons.  S-1 says he is different, his mind is an exact digital copy of Supremes and he alone amongst his fellows knows independent conciousness.

He then says that for a great many years he has loved Judy and now would "know no greater happiness than if you would consent to be my wife".  Supreme wonders if he is lapsing into the robot madness again which he had while Supreme was in space and recreated all Supreme's family and friends on the Citadel.  S-1 tells Judy this and that when Supreme reprogrammed him he didn't remove his love for those people.  Supreme says he doesn't understand, but Judy does and looks at S-1 with a curious expression on her face, then she asks Supreme to leave them and as he turns away they kiss.

We then get an epilogue.  Supreme is now Ethan again and is telling this story to Diana and Carl.  S-1 took the name "Talos" from the metal man of Greek legend and Judy made him a new costume  They married in the Citadel stadium, "Suprema was maid of honour.  Radar was Best Dog".  Diana wants to know what happened next.  Supreme lent them his deep space vessel and learned from it's log when it returned unmanned a week later.

This was the last we heard of them.  Still it's sweet all the same.

He doesn't know how physical their relationship was, but maybe androids have "more options for mutual pleasure and communium than us organic beings."  Eventually they found an uninhabited planet and they have started building a civilisation there, populated by their "digital children".  They are going to call they planet "Suprematonia".

Back in the office Carl says it's taking him a while to adjust to all this casual talk of superhero antics.  And Billy Friday has contacted them from Miskatonic Asylum still anxious about his laptop communicator.  Diana says he's still in trauma.  Ethan just mulls over the fact that at least they know somebody far away got a happy ending, and we finish on an image of Talos and Judy kissing on their new world.

The next chapter begins with Ethan waking up and putting on his Supreme outfit which ominously has the Confederate flag's starry blue cross on it.  Then he puts on his civilian clothes and sets off for work.  The bus stop is labelled "Whites Only" and when he arrives at Dazzle comics, Carl (who is black) is mopping floors.  Ethan asks Carl if he thinks things are a bit odd around the city today.

Carl speaks in a thick accent that he knows nothing and wants no trouble.  Ethan asks him if this is some sort of joke, but then Diana arrives and has looks like a Southern Belle with accent to match.  She orders Carl to get back to work and when the editor arrives turns out she's married to him.  She says to him that Ethan is acting peculiarly, "talkin' with coloureds an' everythin'!"

This really jolts Ethan, he asks if this is really Dazzle comics and that they all work on Omniman.  The editor says he's been drinking, Ethan draws their most famous character, "Klansman". Ethan reads it in horror then leaves, turning into Supreme as he does so.  He heads for the Citadel as someone points to him and calls him "The Supremacist."

Hah as if America would ever tolerate being ruled by a racist elected along a right wing populist agenda.  The very idea!

He arrives to find the place looks different and he is greeted by a stereotypical black servant, "Ro-Boy, R-1". Supreme finds everything is nightmarish because his hall of exhibits covers adventures he never remenbers happening. He decides to check what's going on from outside time, and heads for "The League of Infinity's Time Tower" (the League are an expy of DC's Legion of Superheroes).

However the Time Tower is shattered.   The various members are standing of different pieces and Supreme is told that one of the League has betrayed the "oath of infinity".  He's altered time and history has collapsed upon itself.  They remember the old history, but are unsure why Supreme still does.  He wonders if it's because he has gone through a reordering of history during his trip to the Supremacy in the first chapter of The Story Of The Year. Turns out the member who changed history was Wild Bill Hickok who changed who won the American Civil War.   When Supreme asks how and why, Future Woman tells him to get comfortable and she'll tell him the full story.

Wild Bill was born in 1837 and fought for the north during the war.  When it was over he settled down as the Marshal of Abilene.  He actually got along with the Texan cowboys who fought for the Confederates and they respected him. He had a crush on a woman called Jessie Hazel, a  dance-hall girl. Unfortunately so did the co-owner of the tavern she danced in, Phil Coe who hated Bill as did the other tavern owner Ben Thomson.  A feud that started over a petty event.

With Hickok and Coe in love with the same woman, "something had to give".  One night Hickok accused Coe of cheating at cards.  There was an explosion of violence, and Coe was killed as was one of Hickok's deputies.  This made something inside Hickok snap, "he went berserk and drove all the cowboys out of Abeline that very night".

And this didn't win him his love.  Hazel called him another "damn Yankee" who'd humiliated her people.  He still tried to court her, over the next four years he grew more desperate and unbalanced.  With his access to the Time Tower as one of its "most trusted founders" he decided to prove to Jessie Hazel he loved the South as much as she did.

Those captions were impossible to read unless I scanned and brightened them. Grumble.

He went forward in time and took plans for a crude nuclear bomb and then went down to the time of the Civil War and gave those plans to the Confederates.  They built it and smuggled it into Washington in a covered wagon.  Using a primitive radio crystal transmitter General Lee triggered the explosion himself, "the unconditional surrender of the Union forces followed the next day."

We return to the destroyed Time Tower and Supreme is aghast at what happened, slavery is still legal and Atlanta is the capital of the USA. Future Woman says they have to do something, Supreme ask what can they do.  Then a goth looking woman called Witch Woman says that they must repair the rend in time before Wild Bill "worked his mischief." They must cut the thread to stop the rip in time ever started.

Future Woman realises she means they should kill Wid Bill.  They take a vote and it carries, so Supreme flies Future Woman with him to Wild Bill's time of the tower.  As they fly down Supreme says he has a no-kill policy but his gut is telling him Witch Woman is right.  Future Woman says that it would save so much tragedy but they must make sure they kill the right one.

They find two doors one for each strand of his life, Future Woman identifies the correct door which is the North dominated one in 1876 and Witch Woman conjures up some period specific clothes for them and the other members of the League who have come with them. As they walk out into Abeline, they begin to remember how Wild Bill originally died, shot because he had his back to the saloon door.  Maybe they are here to provide the reason why a hyper-cautious man like Bill would drop his guard like that.

Witch Woman makes Future Woman look like Jessie Hazel, she walks in and says to Wild Bill that she loves him.  He gets up and smiles at her and one of the League (who looks a lot like young Wild Bill) shoots him in the back. They rush back to the Time Tower which is now mended and Supreme's costume is back to normal.  They head up to the League's 24th Century headquarters and see there is a memorial statue of Wild Bill is there.  Future Woman says they all have statues, even members who haven't joined yet.

Time is repaired, all is well.

Supreme bids them farewell and heads back to 1997. He arrives back at Dazzle Comics as Ethan.  Diana tells him that Bill is still bugging them about the laptop communicator he left in Supreme's mirror prison.  Carl orders them to get back to work and Diana says he treats them like slaves, which gets her a strange look from Ethan.  This chapter ends inside the Hell of Mirrors and Billy's laptop communicator is discovered by the villains in there.

Inside the Citadel two Suprematon's are doing some monitoring of what everyone is up to in the various rooms of the place.  Then they see the "Televillain" and chase after him saying he should be imprisoned inside the Hell of Mirrors.  The Televillain then disappears through a TV monitor.  The two Suprematons figure out that he must be involved in a jail-break and we cut to them both smashed to bits by the rest of the villians now freed from the mirror prison.

While Shadow Supreme tramples all over the androids wrecked bodies, "Korgo" who is a viking-esque villain says it's good to be free again. Other villains emerge, including "Sentinel", the murderer from Judgement Day who just flies off.  A female one called "Slaver Ant" says she'd like to go and find some children for servants.  But for now she'll hang out with Televillain and they both find the "Prism-World of Amalynth" and then they find a big crystal next to it and Televillain cackles and tells Slaver Ant to fetch the others, "tell them it's showtime."

Shadow Supreme, Korgo, Televillain and Slaver Ant.

Round at Ethan's place, Diana is there helping him with his reference files.  Diana asks if he has any life outside of drawing Omniman.  She turns on the TV saying he should watch Friends.  She describes it to him while he starts watching.  Suddenly the Televillain appears on the screen and interacts with the actors... magically somehow because it's not broadcast live is it?

Televillain: "I'm here to deliver a message to the networks.  Basically, I get a million dollars, or I kill your ratings...like this".

Then he shoots Monica execution style then says if they don't pay up tomorrow or he whacks "Commander Picard and the fruity robot guy."  Hey now, Picard is a Captain and Data is an android not a robot.  Destroy crappy sitcoms as much as you like but hands off Star Trek: The Next Generation!

Ethan calls up Youngblood HQ to ask if his sister Sally (ie: Suprema) is still there.  But he is told she has gone to meet Radar at the Citadel.  As Ethan leaves, the TV announces that the cast of Friends are all OK and just as puzzled as everyone else regarding the interruption.  Ethan heads out saying he has to warn Supreme about the Televillain.

The Televillain returns to the Citadel where he picks up the large crystal, he, Slaver Ant, Korgo and the lionheaded "Vor-Em" leave Shadow Supreme hunting down and destroying Suprematon and head back to Earth.  Meanwhile Suprema has returned to the Citadel and calls out for Ethan.  But she comes face to Shadow Supreme standing by Radar's corpse, "by the way... I killed your dog... eventually".  Suprema is horrified and says "oh my God."

A genuinely horrible moment.

Shadow Supreme snarls that god is dead, his god was Darius Dax and she and Supreme destroyed him.  He punches her round the room saying that when he and Korgo rule the Earth she can be their concubine and they'll share her.   But then Supreme appears and lays into Shadow Supreme saying, "leave... my... sister... alone" punctuating his words with punches.

With Shadow Supreme knocked back down to Earth, Suprema says she'll deal with the rest if Supreme handles the Shadow Supreme.  He decides to review their cases to see how they came to be in the Hell of Mirrors, which he built in 1954, in the first places.  And that sends us into a flashback drawn in the Silver Age style.

He is showing Judy's nephew and niece around the Citadel and takes them into the Hell of Mirrors.  In there are villains who are too evil to keep anywhere else.  The glass is special, it's a barrier of hard light between here and another world.  He discovered the glass in 1954 when he investigated the disappearance of a professor called Daniel Dodgson.

He found out that the old mirror in his study could be walked through into another dimension which was like that described in "Alice Through The Looking Glass."  The professor was a descendent of Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Dodgson.  He rescued the professor from the Jabberwock and took him home.  Then he was given the mirror and was abl to duplicate the glass and have it open in a different area of the same realm, and that's how he constructed the mirror prison.

Our one flashback this time.

The first he imprisoned was the space tyrant Korgo.  Then Vor-Em a freelance executioner hired by Darius Dax to kill him. Then he trapped the Shadow Supreme and the Televillain and more recently Optilux a being made from light who he isn't sure the prison will hold.  Finally he caught Slaver Ant who stole children to rear as servants.  He has imprisoned Supremium Man II but he tricked his way out. Also Emerpus the reverse Supreme tred to "un-jail" the mirror villains, but he and Suprema stopped him.

The boy asks wouldn't it be safer to execute all these villains but Supreme says it goes against his sworn oath not to kill.  The girl then finishes this flashback with a groanworthy pun saying that the villains are in "no better place for them to reflect upon their crimes."

Back in the present Supreme says Optilux did escape, (see The Story Of The Year) but the rest had stayed put until today.  Shadow Supreme is rampaging down below, so Supreme goes down to face him while Suprema goes putting out the fires he's started then she'll go deal with the rest.  They others are tough, but nowhere near as powerful as Shadow Supreme.

She finishes dealing with the fire and finds Televillain sitting on a TV aerial.   She asks him where the others are. He tells her Korgo and Vor-Em decided to go to Washington and Slaver Ant is off looking for children to enslaves.   He also tells Suprema that he's set up a guest act in Omegaopolis stadium, and he points down to a shining blue figure standing on the stage inviting everyone to become light.  It's Optilux.

Optilux.

And that brought the first run of Supreme to a close with a cliffhanger.  Over ONE YEAR LATER the story was finally resolved not in issue #57 but in a new series called Supreme The Return. So we continue this story with issue #1.

Korgo has arrived at The White House and has demanded that the President - a this point in time it was Bill Clinton - come face him.  So Bill and Hilary go to meet him as we see a smoking heap of what was Presidential security behind him and Vor-Em.  Korgo demands that Bill face him in a fight issued under the "Formal Rules Of The Cosmic Dictators Guild".

Bill tells him that the President doesn't engage in brawls on the White House lawn.  "What's the matter? Scared?" taunts Korgo. Bill blusters at him and Korgo mocks him further saying he's going to cry and run and tell his mother. This makes Bill mad and after more taunting, he lays a punch on Korgo's face.  This doesn't hurt Korgo who then knocks Bill out with one strike and he declares himself America's 43rd President.  He then declares Hilary his wife number one and demands she make his supper then "have yourself perfumed and brought to my chamber.  We have a new Dark Age to celebrate". 

Satire for the Liefeld generation.

Meanwhile Supreme is still battling the Shadow Supreme, Supreme thinks to himself that they are too evenly matched and at this rate they'll be fighting forever.   He suddenly flies away only to do a fast U-turn and smash back down into Shadow Supreme and driving them both through Earth's crust.  He then uses the Earth's core magnetic field to hold him and flies back up to aid Suprema against the rest of the super-villains.

Meanwhile we see Slaver Ant using her chemical scents to turn loving parents against each other and in the process make off with their babies.  She notes Suprema hasn't appeared yet.  Suprema is tied up trying to figure out how to defeat Optilux, a being made entirely of light.  She thinks to herself that the audience is rather badly dressed but then has an idea, she sucks up the adhesive glitter the audience members were wearing and blows it at Optilux where it starts to break his signal up.

This causes Optilux to drop the "photo-plasmic convertor" he was holding and it has just enough mass for Suprema to pick up, he demands she give it back but she fires it at him and blasts him back into Amylynth.  Supreme arrives and she says that she sent him back there but not before he'd sent "a few hundred Bon Jovi fans there as well".  Uh... was Bon Jovi still a thing in the late nineties?  If they were I don't think they'd be  appealing to the youth anymore.  Supreme responds "Oh well. Can't be helped".  Heh.  Heh heh heh heh, nice one grandad.

He asks if Televillain is still around and Suprema points him out nearby, asking if she should send him to the prism world too?  Supreme says no, they shouldn't burden that place with too many nuisances.  He then uses an electric charge to zap the Televillain and fry his circuits so he can't "network" any more.  Then a crowd spot him as the person who shot Monica and they start beating him up. Suprema says they can leave him with his new friends for now, "nobody told him it was going to be this way..."  Alan.  STOP IT NOW.

Suddenly the Shadow Supreme burst up through the ground. Suprema tells Supreme that he killed Radar, but suddenly Radar appears:

Radar: "When a dog is mad, mistress, you must pay no attention to its bark. You must be merciful... and put it to sleep."

Supreme says that Shadow Supreme must have wrecked a Suprematon Decoy and lied about it to demoralise them. Well no one told the colorist as we saw an awful lot of blood round "Radar's" body.  Still I'm glad Radar isn't really dead.

Go get him Radar!

Shadow Supreme says he will kill Radar for real now but Radar says he knows that he relies on Supreme's no-kill policy to keep him safe.  But he is a dog and then he launches himself at Shadow Supreme and starts mauling him.  A somewhat shocked Supreme calls him off, an injured Shadow Supreme flies off and Supreme tells Radar to follow him while they deal with Slaver Ant.

Then they see a news report on a TV in a TV shop.  In a hastily convened press conference by "First Lady, Ms. Hilary Rodham Space-Tyrant" she says that there are many positive aspects to Korgo's new administration including the new president's "radical views on health care."  When asked about Korgo's record of scouring entire galaxies leaving no survivors she accuses the media of being too downbeat and that there won't be any more "bimbo scandals" surfacing.

The TV also reports a spate of child abductions which galvanises the pair into going to look for Slaver Ant.  Turns out she's pretty easy to find using their super "scent-supreme" which detected her formic acid.  And they recapture her without a fight.

Meanwhile Radar has chased Shadow Supreme to the White House, he arrives and whines to Vor-Em that he's hurt.  Vor-Em says he is Vice President now and too important for this.  But then he sees Radar and decides to help Shadow Supreme. Then Supreme drops Slaver Ant in-between them, Shadow Supreme and Vor-Em both crash into her and pick up her aggression causing scent and begin fighting each other instead.

Vor-Em and Shadow Supreme go at it.

As they battle, Supreme tells Radar that Suprema is busy reuniting the kidnapped babies with their families and then "scraping up what's left of Televillain".  He says only Korgo is left to deal with, but he surrenders to Supreme willingly.  Under his breath he asks Supreme to make his capture look convincing:

Korgo: "Just make this look good, all right?  Then put me back in the mirror.. anywhere away from that woman!  Gods, I thought I was ruthless!"

Alan, are you a time travelling Donald Trump supporter? So Supreme complies and lays him out with one punch.  He tells Hilary that Korgo is defeated and it was a wise choice playing along but she can rejoin the real President now. "Huh? Oh, him.  Yeah, sure.  Whatever" she responds. In the background Radar is dragging an unconcious Shadow Supreme up to the Citadel while Supreme picks up the similarly KO'ed Vor-Em and Korgo.  And that brings that plotline to an end.  Bet the people who waited over a year for that were pleased.

If I can describe my journey through these five issues as anything it would be increasingly as a chore written while looking longingly at my Xbox One.  The tone is all over the place and much of the humour is derived from rather hypocritically denouncing the very Image-led movement Moore had been a part of.  For all his spiteful stabs at Grant Morrison, Morrison spent the nineties working on exactly what he wanted to work on within the mainstream and indeed his mid-nineties reboot of the JLA went a long way to signalling that the Dark Age of comics was going to be coming to an end combining as it did a retro feel feel with a modern outlook.  The rest of the humour in this veers from actually pretty funny to stuff that makes you groan like when your dad makes a joke. The more whimsical stuff about contrasting the modern era of comics with the Silver and Golden Age is pretty much gone now, with only one flashback this time.  And the art, oh my lack of God it's bad. Chris Sprouse did four of these issues and I have no doubt he was most likely tailoring his preferred style to appeal to what was perceived to be the style Liefeld's readership wanted.  Compared with his work on Tom Strong which is beautiful stuff it's clear who is to blame for this and it's not him, and not really inker Al Gordon's either as he inked Tom Strong as well so all-in-all I blame Rob Liefeld for this crappy art even though he had nothing physically to do with it.  I have no excuse for the Rick Veitch issue as he inked it too and isn't known for pandering to an audience, a dreadful lapse there. As I said in the intro, considering the chaotic circumstances at Awesome comics and matching the release dates with the artists implies that issue #1 of The Return was written and arted on time but for some reason sat on and slipped out over a year later under a rebooted title.  Even though it was the conclusion to what became the final issue of the first series.  Crazy. I think it's fairly obvious as well that once The Story Of The Year arc was concluded Moore didn't have a clear idea of where to go next with the series, and we'll see how things pan out in the final five issues of Moore's run on Supreme in a few days time.

Prophet Book 2: Brothers (#27-31, #33)

"It's all been going on without us" - Hiyonhoiagn

So here we have the second volume in the reboot of Rob Liefeld's Prophet character where the current writer and artists have mined diamonds out of the unappealing mulch of his Extreme comics stable (although I realise I am still keeping Liefeld in diamond encrusted gold baseball caps by buying his studio's comics, so perhaps I am history's greatest monster, not him?).  The first book pulled an interesting bait-and-switch by following John Prophet as he is awakened from cryogenic sleep and sets off across an earth changed by hundreds of years of alien colonisation to reawaken the millions of cloned John Prophets seeded across the defunct Earth Empire.  It turns out that this John Prophet is not the main protagonist as the Earth Empire, which controls the cloned John Prophets via giant-brained "Empire Brain Mothers" are in fact the bad guys of this series.  The heroic John Prophet, a wild bearded old man who is able to resist the Empire Mother's telepathy via a special helmet and his own strong will only put in an appearence at the end of the first book.  Now this volume follows him as he begins to put together his resistance band against the awakened Empire, having defeated them in the past, in a marvellously imaginative pulp sci-fi storyline.  You might be wondering why the numbering of the issues is so high, that's because the series picked up at issue #21 (long after the first twenty of Liefeld version fell into disuse), but no knowledge of what came prior to that is needed.  Also two issues have been swapped to make the trade paperbacks flow a little better. Hence the missing issue #32 here, will actually be covered in volume three.

Old Man John Prophet sits and remembers his war brothers and his lover Yiala (a reptile woman), while sitting on the back of a giant space worm as it wends it's way through space. He survives the months aboard by eating food caught in it's "digestive web".  He reaches his destination, the "Pod Reefs" and jumps off and into cool water, where he catches something to eat later. Then he begins his search amongst the tree-like roots that make up the pods.

Narrator: "For a moment he feels older than the ancient Kinniaa whose body he climbs".

He reaches some other aliens living on the pod.  He asks for "Brother Hiyonhoiagn", a small four leggged root like creature from his previous memories.  He is attacked, but it is short lived, a root detaches itself from it's main part and it shows him through the wooden halls, the world "made out of the bodies of their forebears."  Through his protective crown he can hear their minds dreaming.

Friends reunited.

Finally he reaches Hiyonhoiagn, he reaches out with his mind and they touch. Hiyonhoiagn detaches himself from the wall and greets him:

Hiyonhoiagn: "It's you John.  Unchanged by all these seasons."

John asks him what became of their brothers, Hiyonhoiagn says they are "long dead" but his own "roots grow with yours."

They travel deep into the pod and Hiyanhoiogn hands him his sword, but it is broken after so many years of disuse.  He also hands him the cyborg Diehard's arm, and by using this they can locate the rest of him.  Diehard is another Liefeld creation, first as a member of the superteam Youngblood, later Alan Moore gave him some history by making him a member of his pastiche of the JLA in the pages of his run on Supreme.

They walk out to a ship graveyard to find something to travel in.  They are attacked again and the root that first greeted John is killed.  John saves Hiyonhoiagn and takes him on his back, he jumps towards an abandoned Empire "Sanctury Starship" and unlocks the hatch by hurling his Empire Knife (that he picked after killing the Prophets in Book One) and it opens just in time.

Blast off inside a worm.

The ship is swallowed by a giant space worm, but John jump starts the engines and it goes to warp inside the worm, ripping it in half.  John is now properly mobile and it is time to unite Diehard and look for aid in their battle against the Empire.

Some time later, their ship travels through space and John listens with his unguarded mind. Reaching out he feels the millions of John Prophets:

Narration: "Tied to the cruel whims of their Empire Brain Mothers.  On a thousand alien worlds, the Empire breathes".

He puts his crown back on and goes through the ship.  They have accrued a store of alien food and drink over the past weeks.  He also feels Hiyonhoiagn's pain.  The root that was killed helping them was his child.  He burns himself with firewater to forget. 

John and Hiyonhoiagn chill out for a while.

They sit together and contemplate how much of Diehard they have collected.  They are only missing his head and extra "warbody" now.  They land on a planet where his head is located as they leave the ship it is through a film of "shipskin".

Narration: "It coats them in a micro-thin layer to bind them to the ship and protect against foreign bodies."

The insect inhabitants are speaking the Empire language and wear the mind controlling blue "dolmantles" of the Empire.  They meet with their leader, a Qid-Pid, who says they have the head but a "trade must be made."

Diehard shows them to his head and they reunite just as Hiyonhoiagn is attacked by a dolmantle.  Diehard releases the crystal energy in his body that hits everything "not grounded".  It kills the dolmantles, and Qid-Pid pathetically drapes it's dead one over his shoulders.

Narration: "Old Man Prophet stares at the creature.  So frightened of it's own free will.  He would sooner die than be like that.... again."

Diehard almost completed.

They hurry back to the shop and pilot it to where Diehard's warbody is.  It is under dolmantle control and maintaining the cage of an "egg" - a weapon of mass destruction.  Diehard uses the combustible firewater to burn the dolmantle off his warbody and takes it back to the ship, while the egg rumbles into wakefulness...

The action then cuts to a chapter about the Prophet with a tail, who was introduced in book one.  He is fully under Empire control and part of a squadron of Prophets escorting an Enmpire Brain Mother through space, clad in pink, protective flying suits.  They find themselves travelling through:

Narration: "A 300-year war, raging between hundreds of different species.  Born into this and dying in this.  Entire lives spent knowing only this gargantuan ship war."

As they fly through, Prophet's suit is punctured and he falls into a star barge where slaves harvest food under the suffocating control of the Over-mind.  Prophet awakens to that control, but the control of the Empire Brain Mother is stronger.

The call of the Brain Mother.

He saves a small alien from being attacked by the slave drivers and the alien takes him to a small band of rebels, one of whom is a mushroom creature who blows spores in Prophet's face which frees him from all mind control.  It says it recognises Prophet from long ago where he saved their people, though the flashback seems to imply it was Old Man Prophet who did it, not this one with a tail. 

Whichever Prophet is was doesn't matter now, his arrival has goaded them into action.  he meets his fellow free minded individuals, a motley band.  And they start to plan.  They go back to slave work while they make ready and slip the anti-mind control spores into the "omni milk" all the workers drink for sustenance to weaken the Over-mind's control.

Finally they spring into action, a huge fight between the freed slaves and slavers ensues as Prophet and his band fight their way to the bridge.  They arrive there, though not without losses and Prophet slays the Over-mind with one blow.  The psychic backlash kills everyone but the rebels on the bridge.

Death of the Over-mind

Narration: "The Earth Empire Mother calls to John, but through the mind freedom of the spores, her words no longer hold him.  Outside the ship, the war continues."

Now we are introduced to a female reptile-person.  An assassin called Rein-East, destined to become one of John's crew.  She is preparing a hit on the leader of a rival clan - The Jinnah.  After making her way into the stronghold she comes to Jinnah-Guttum.  Who is hung and wrapped up to sustain his youth-life.  One of his aunts arranged his death at Rein-East's hands, "small revenge for what they did to her clan."  She kills him with one clean strike, then lashes out again in anger and cuts his head off.  Then the "Bothria" appear and capture her.

Back with the starship Insula Tergum, Diehard is working on his body.  He tries to recreate his once human face, but scratches it out in frustration.  Hiyonhoiagn has rooted into the ship which is sentient and tells him stories of all the wonders it has seen.  John meanwhile is practicing cutting drips in half with his blade to keep his combat skills sharp.

Prophet and Yiala in the past.

Finally they arrive at the "Scale" homeworld. John remembers his time there, how he fell in love with a storyteller called Yiala.  Soon his feelings for her "outweighed any mission."  They went to live in the "tower garden of history" and "this life with her was the best he had ever known."  But the Empire attacked the Scale and he chose to fight them again with Yiala by his side.  Back in the present:

Narration: "Centuries ago now  He still reaches for the Yiala's scale he'd worn round his neck.  Gone now."

He and Diehard travel down to the planet and are greeted by the new ruling clan, the Jinnah.  They pass Rein-East, imprisoned in a bubble that will eventually consume her.  John starts to give his warning about the resurgance of the Empire, but then a four-armed man appears with Empire markings and accuses him of being a traitor to the Empire.  They are betrayed by the Scale.

They are surrounded, Rein-East calls to John to free her so she can help fight.  John throws an explosive which bursts the bubble and she joins them.  In the melee, John cuts one of the four-armed man's arms off.  Then Jaxson, the roboty thing from book one who was searching for John arrives on the scene of battle.  His mind touches theirs and he blasts his way through the Empire ship, crippling it and giving the others time to escape back to the Insula Tergum.

The gang's all here.

The ship travels towards the floating dead body of the titanic Ixpolinix, so huge he's been colonised by aliens opposed to the Empire who mine his corpse for the resources of blood, meat and bone.  Curled up amidst the floating remains is a being that is related to another member of Youngblood - Badrock.  John and the others are stopping there for supplies before they go to meet the woman army, the "Babel-Horologian".

Jaxson, Rein-East and Diehard go into the colony to trade. John keeps his distance from Rein-East "she reminds him too much of the life he lost."  As he wanders the ship, a mysterious voice calls his name. 

Troll.

He follows it's summons out onto the planet and, with Diehard shadowing him, comes across a strange fourlegged being with a mask on.  Prophet calls him "Troll", yet another ex-Youngblood member.  Troll says he's been watching him, and warns him:

Troll: "Now, if you can survive today before Empire destroys the ground you stand on, then we'll need to find Badrock."

Then he vanishes.  Before they go back to the ship, John and Diehard spot an Empire pod nearby.  They mentally call for Jaxson, who rushes to their side, telling Rein-East to take the supplies back to the ship. 

John has tracked the trail of the Prophet from the pod and has found a patch of earth freshly dug and filled to prevent being followed.  Diehard and Jaxson dig down and find an Empire Prophet there armed with a bomb powerful enough that it would have blown Ixpolinox to pieces.  Diehard kills the Prophet's brain but not the body so he can safely remove the bomb, and Jaxson takes it into space where it explodes harmlessly.

Diehard deals with the exploding Prophet.

All stocked up, they carry on to meet the women army.  In his quarters on the ship, Diehard works with the parts from the slain Prophet:

Narration: "For the first time in thousands of years, a human heart beats within his chest."

While they travel, Rein-East and Jaxson play a game as Hiyanhoiagn spectates.  Then they arrive at the ruins that were once "one of the bright centres of the universe".  A giant tadpole creature accidentally phases through the ship and gets stuck.  Rein-East makes to kill it, but John stops her and calms it telepathically allowing it to disengage without further harm.

They fly their ship into a huge ship of the Babel-Horolegion and are met by a female being called Dion Neien.  She splits herself into two, so Rein-East and Diehard can visit The Lady Probable's body and John and Jaxson can go to her centre.

Supreme, now only a power source.

Dion takes Rein-East and Diehard down to the Lady's core and one of her "power keys" which turns out to be energy generated by the being known as "Supreme".  Supreme was Rob Liefeld's rip-off of Superman who enjoyed his most well thought of run under the pen of Alan Moore.  Diehard remembers his civilian name, "Ethan Crane".

Meanwhile Jaxson and John travel further into the Lady Probable's core.  She speaks to them directly, she tells them they battles one of the Empire's "flesh forms" and captured a piece of it.  It has remained dormant until now, and it is crying "they come!"  Prophet wonders if this is related to Troll's warning that something worse than the Empire is out there...

Then the sister ships are attacked.  John and the others hurry back to the Insula Tergum and blast off out of the main ship which is blasted to pieces causing a huge shockwave that causes the Insula Tergum to crash on the nearby planet.

Narration: "The old man can still feel the psychic wave of pain... in the face of that pain he can do nothing.  He feels the slaughter of the Babel-Horolegion continue."

The Insula Tergum takes a hit.

And that brings the second volume of the Prophet reboot to a close.  Once again I have to praise the imaginative world building, the fascinating reimaginings of once lame characters and the enjoyable team of characters assembled by John to begin taking on the mght of the Empire, plus the hints that there might be something even more troublesome than the Empire out there.  The artwork helps give the alien worlds and their inhabitants atmosphere and the lightly sketched histories give them depth as well. It mixes sweetly inimate scenes of the team bonding with epic ones of space combat easily. Also the choice to mediate much of the story via third person captions helps give the story an "alienated" feel that comes over as quite fresh and really works for the tale being told.  We also get our first glimpse of Old Man Prophet's past and the sadness he carries around with him gives him even more gravitas. Basically this is another slice of superb pulp science fiction storytelling and if that's a genre you're at all interested in, then you need to check this series out pronto.

Obligatory Rob Liefeld Mockery Corner....

If you're curious as to what all these characters looked like originally here are some images to fill you in:

Diehard looks pretty similar to his original form as seen here.

Looks quite different, also this isn't actually a Liefeld drawing but has all the Leifeldian aspects to it.  Ugh, it's pretty embarrassing.

This is a relatively recent Liefeld drawing, see how much he's learned in over 20 years of being a professional comic book artist.

So far all we've seen of Badrock are his relatives, the curled up space giants.  When he was in Youngblood he was a kid who was still growing.  The reboot series seems to be saying he grew to small planet size.

Alan Moore Obscurities: Judgement Day (#1-3 Youngblood Prologue and Aftermath)

"That book was made by a God.  By the most dangerous God of them all" - Glory

Well it's finally time to tackle when the sublime met the ridiculous and Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld collaborated on the same miniseries for Liefeld's post-Image studio Awesome Comics.  Awesome was formed in 1997 when, after accusations of financial irregularities were aimed at Liefeld, he took his Extreme studio creations, most notably Youngblood, Supreme and Glory and planned a full universal reboot which would be overseen by Alan Moore who was enjoying an acclaimed run on Supreme at the time.  If you read my look at Top Ten you'll remember this didn't get very far as Moore was offered a new universe of his own to play with by Jim Lee at Wildstorm and left the Awesomeverse dangling with just a few Youngblood comics, a couple of Glory issues and a truncated end to his Supreme run left to show what might have been.  I don't see this as a huge loss as it's self evident to me that what he produced for ABC comics so outshines his work for Image and Awesome it's untrue, but it soured his relationship with Rob Leifeld who has been pretty vocal ever since on the topic of Mr. Moore.

But what is a Rob Liefeld?  He's become something of an ur example for everything that went wrong with mainstream comics in the 1990's, to the extent that many people will dismiss the decade out of hand thanks to him and his Image cohorts, despite all the really good stuff that DID exist during that time.  Maybe I should let Grant Morrison sum up Mr. Liefeld for me, he absolutely nails it better than I can in his book Supergods.

Grant Morrison: "Rob Liefeld was the poster boy for Image... If Rob could get away with his barely original characters, his blizzard of crosshatched lines, the heroic legs that tapered to tiny screwdriver feet, and the multitudinous array of new muscles he’d invented for the human forearm alone, anyone could do it….  His drawings never missed any opportunity to inflict some elaborate new deformity upon the human physique. His ideas were secondhand, his research nonexistent, his vision eccentric and quite unique in every detail… [Background detail] would only get in the way of another shot of a clenched-teeth hero crashing through a window in a shower of unconvincing glass shards, to disembowel foes with names like Stryfe, Carnyge, and Myrdy’r."

Liefeld's critics however, were less kind.  But if you want a TL:DR version of that quote, Rob Liefeld is the artist who drew Captain America looking like this:

I think this could be classed as "treason".

Moving on to the main story itself, it revolves around the superteam known as "Youngblood", which was government backed and also merchandised itself, as well as not being shy of using lethal force to deal with threats.  There were about ten million members, all tending towards ripoffs of more well known Marvel and DC characters, most notably the most well known member "Shaft" who was basically a beefier version of DC's Speedy/RedArrow/Arsenal. The plot of the three main issues have one of Youngblood accused of murdering another and the subsequent trial uncovering the involvement of a mystical artifact.  Rob Liefeld pencils the framing trial sequences while different artists take on the task of illustrating the flashbacks covering the various hands the magical book at the centre of things has passed through over the millenia.  The collected edition - Judgement Day also contains a Youngblood "prologue" issue and a selection of short stories under the title "Aftermath" establishing new origins for other Awesome comics properties.  These are all written by Moore and drawn by various artists. As these universal reboots went nowhere after Moore's departure from Awesome, I am just going to concentrate on the three Judgement Day issues as they tell a self-contained story.

This here is a perfect storm of Liefeldian shittiness.  The ridiculous muscles, the crotchimus maximus, the pointless pouches and back sticks, fishlips, no eyes and although you can't see it here, the full page has something blocking Shaft's feet so Rob didn't have to draw them.  Wow.

The story begins with Youngblood member Knightsabre, staggering home, drunk, horny and depressed after being out celebrating his thirtieth birthday alone. In a typical Moore-esque touch, the scratchy, hand-written font the omniscient narrator is "speaking" to us in proves to be a plot point later.  He decides to visit the female hero Riptide, really hoping for nothing more than a peck on the cheek.  He finds the electrics off in her quarters and ends up drifting off to sleep on her bed as he waits for her.

He awakes to find Badrock, Vogue and Masada looking down at him.  They start questioning him about Riptide and his intentions towards her.  Knightsabre gets mad, and asks if she's accused him of anything improper.  But it turns out she was in the next room, battered to death.  Vogue starts planning a cover-up of the crime, Badrock asks what the hell she thinks she's doing.

Such emotion!

Vogue: "The world sees you as titans.  Like your movie stars, but even more so.  There has never been a super-hero murder before.  To your media it will be a primal event, an ancient drama acted out by beings stepped from legend".

If I didn't know better I'd say Moore was being sarcastic, because "stepped from legend" in no way sums up the members of Youngblood.  But anyway, Shaft is called in and won't be party to a cover-up.  Sentinel, also arrives saying he was on duty that night and only remembers Knightsabre coming in drunk.  Shaft decides it's time to call in "the dragon".

It's the Hulk with a fin on his head.

Savage Dragon is the name of the green-skinned fellow pictured above.  He is an Image character created by Erik Larsen who also happens to be a cop. He tells them the authorities have decided to let the superhero community deal with this matter, then leaves to process the scene. Youngblood member Diehard, a long-lived artificial human with a long history dating back to the second world war says they should call in help from the senior heroes, so they contact Supreme.

Supreme was created by Liefeld as a Superman rip-off who killed people, but Moore rebooted him as a love letter to the Silver Age Superman era (and I'll be covering Supreme at a later date).  He lends usage of his flying fortress, the Citadel Supreme to hold the trial in.  A Judge and prosecution and defence attourneys are found.  For the defence is Toby a sidekick to an obscure older hero, but fully qualified in law.  He asks for the recordings Diehard's artifical eyes make constantly, hoping that exonerating evidence can be found on them. Then after a time skip the issue ends with Shaft and Sentinel travelling to the Citadel Supreme for the trial.

Not Superman, Supreme right?

Also in this issue are flashbacks drawn by different artists, covering the strange history of a mystical book as it changed hands over the years.  This allowed Moore to do little parodies of other heroes.  There is one of Conan, of Tarzan, of Sgt.Rock and Easy Company and so on. 

The prosecution start by laying out their case, which is simply that Riptide spurned Knightsabre's advances and murdered her for it.  During a recess Badrock comments on the strangeness of the situation:

Badrock: "Y'know this is so weird.  Shaft said this was like a fairy tale gone wrong. The princess died, the knight accused and the dragon restoring order.  And now we are in a magic castle in the sky."

The court then reconvenes for the defence case.  Toby calls Glory to the stand.  Glory is Liefelds Wonder Woman rip-off.  A demi-god half Amazon, half demon who has lived for millenia.  I reviewed the two excellent books rebooting her for the modern audience a couple of months back. Toby asks her about a gift her mother received long ago, before humanity even existed.  The gift was a book from Hermes.

Hermes: "I have invented something for your earthly realm that I have called a book.  The template for all stories is within this tome.  All tales that are, or were, or ever shall be."

Glory's mother took the book and placed it in an enchanted cave on Earth, where " it's immortal pages could endure the aeons".  Glory said she saw the book again twice, once in the forties and most recently when Toby showed a photograph of it in Riptide's room.

Aah, Glory!  Where are your internal organs kept?!

Toby then goes about establishing the travels of the book through time, which involves several more witnesses and flashbacks.  The important point though is that the book finally ended up in the hands of a man called Prophet just before the second world war broke out.  The Judge asks where Toby is going with all this and he says the book is now missing from Riptide's room and was obviously the motive for his murder.

After all the weird and wonderful witnesses have given evidence, including a woman from the future who tells them the trial ends with a member of Youngblood being found guilty of the crime, the Judge calls it a day for now.  Shaft meets with a man called Graves, who reveals Knightsabre is his son, but also that the bad press this trial is getting has caused the government to pull it's funding of the team.

Graves: "I'm saying that as of noon today, Youngblood ceased to exist.  I am saying that it is over".

Note Liefelds skillful backgrounds (!)

Next day the trial begins with Toby saying he wanted to call Prophet but he's nowhere to be found so instead he calls Blake Baron, the Occult Agent.  He tells them a story of a soldier he served with in WW2 who had come into possession of the book via another soldier Prophet had entrusted it to.  He later became a hero called Storybook Smith who could conjure fictional characters to help him fight crime, using the book to do so.

Toby then reads a letter from an elderly woman who was married to Smith during that time.  He didn't just fight crime with the book, he wrote his own life as well.  He planned to have a daughter and that she would have superpowers of her own.  But the book was stolen before he could make that happen and he sank into alchoholism.  His wife left him, but later discovered she was pregnant with a girl  That girl was Riptide herself and she did gain superpowers of her own just as her father had written it.  Her mother told her about the book and she had always been secretly searching for it.

Then Sentinel's wife appears in the courtroom escorted by two Suprematons and Toby reveals that the book was found earlier that day at Sentinels house.  Sentinel is dumbstruck and won't say anything to defend himself, but Toby says that doesn't matter, his story is here in the book.  Sentinel's story is that he was the first modern superhero, founder member and leader of Team Youngblood the world's premier superteam.

Sentinel turned himself into a Mary-Sue.

But his story wasn't originally that at all.  His father, who was the one who stole the book from Storybook Smith didn't realise how valuable the book was and handed it to his son, the young Sentinel.  He found out that his life was going to devolve into that of petty crime and he would be dead before he hit twenty.  So he instead wrote himself becoming a graduate who was a whizz with electronics and built himself a supersuit, then gave himself superpowers as well.  He then writes other heroes in to be buddies and teammates.  He writes adventures, but there isn't enough shooting, he doesn't get to kill enough people.   So in the mid-80's he decides to create a shadowier, more darker world.

Toby: "Working a dreadful reverse alchemy, Marcus Langston [Sentinel] let our world slide from a Golden Age to a Silver Age and finally to a Dark Age...Our universe had been sucked into a bad action movie of constant, meaningless mayhem."

Well, where to begin with that?  This is Alan Moore not only being critical of the darker more violent comicbook era the Image gang brought in, but also criticising himself for ushering it in, in the mid-80's with Watchmen.  It almost feels like he took this job specifically to pass his own judgement on then modern sensibilities in comics that he felt responsible for.  The bleakness and death that ran rampant in comics after his seminal works of the 80's bought those themes to the forefront of peoples thinking about comics.

The actual murder.

Anyway, Riptide took the book from Sentinel and he found out and murdered her.  Then he wrote the words that introduced us to Knightsabre at the start of the book. The scratchy font showing us what he was writing as he framed Knightsabre for the crime.  Clever stuff. Toby asks Sentinel how the story ends and Sentinel attacks him and grabs the book saying he'll write everyone's death but his own.  Shaft however fires an arrow that hits the book and sends it flying off the Citadel Supreme.  The trial then ends like a Perry Mason one, with the real culprit handily confessing in court.  He is imprisoned within the Citadel's Hell of Mirrors because his powers mean he can't be contained in a normal prison.  The book ends up landing by a homeless kid, while the assembled heroes wonder if the world will become a more optimistic place now Sentinel isn't writing it.  The End.

Bye bye book.

Judgement Day is a strange beast.  It's perhaps best understood as another deck clearing exercise by Moore who was going to write Youngblood fulltime.  Indeed the collected Judgement Day book has a Youngblood "Prologue" by him as Shaft puts together a new team.  Wikipedia tells me Moore wrote a couple of issues of the comic before quitting to work on his ABC properties, I don't own those unfortunately so I don't know how much they stuck to the setup Moore created for them.  Judgement Day itself suffers very much from the inconsistency bought about by having a ridiculous twenty-five pencillers, five inkers and seven colourists credited to it.  Also it goes without saying that the Rob Liefeld sections are very poor artwise and don't do Moore's often amusing and clever script justice.  Liefeld and Moore inevitably had a major falling out over his departure from Awesome comics.  Probably Liefelds's most notorious quote about Moore is this one:

Rob Liefeld: “He once called us up to tell us that he had just been in the dream realm and talking to Socrates and Shakespeare, and to Moses, dead serious, and that they talked for what seemed to be months, but when he woke up, only an evening had passed, and he came up with these great ideas. And I’m tellin’ ya, I think it’s shtick, dude. I think it’s all shtick. I’m gonna start saying that stuff. Cuz you know what? It makes you instantly interesting. Like ‘O yeah, last night I was hanging out with Socrates. Came to me in a dream. We played poker. We dropped acid.’ That’s the kinda stuff Alan would say all the time, and he’d say ‘Oh, I’ve been practicing dark magic.’”

Oh no, Mr. Liefeld, you do not diss my hero like this.  Alan Moore gave the world, amongst other things, The Ballad Of Halo Jones, V For Vendetta, Watchmen, and Promethea. YOU are the man who drew Captain America looking like this:

Kawaii Captain!  (source: Fuck Yeah Liefeld)

 Kind of.  Alan Moore of course denies ever even talking to Liefeld, now both of them can be pretty diva-ish but I trust Moore over Liefeld anyday.  Well, that was Judgement Day.  An interesting script, torpedoed by bad and inconsistent art.  It also suffers from having many heroes in it with no history meaning Moore has to riff on more well known ones to give them a bit more narrative weight.  Maybe he planned to do more with them once he was controlling the Awesomeverse, but we shall never know and Judgement Day remains a strange curiosity of what might have been had Moore not taken up Jim Lee's offer instead...