Random Reviews
Supreme #63+64
There are good comics, there are bad comics, there are comics that get better, and comics that get worse. In this three-part series, we'll meet the comic that was bad, became good, and started sucking again.
Introduction
To properly introduce Supreme, we need to cover a little comics history first for the uninitiated, hold on tight people, it's a long one.
In the late eighties and the first half of the nineties, comics were going through the "Dark Age"; comics were bloody, violent and often morally repugnant. The blame is nowadays mostly pinned on a man named Rob Liefeld, and his company Image Comics. Now, Rob was not single-handedly responsible for the Dark Age, but he and Image were pioneers of it's style and tone, and even if Rob wasn't the architect of the Dark Age, he has been retroactively named as it's poster child.
Image is still going strong today and has a number of interesting and original comics out there (for instance, I've just started reading Saga, it's great), but when it first began it was a little barren as far as creativity goes. A lot of their work were either ripoffs of characters from other publishers, or the same concepts recycled over and over. One such character was Supreme, a basic "Superman as a massive jerk" antihero. Now, there's nothing wrong with creating characters inspired by more established comics, even Watchmen was populated by blatant clones of characters from the recently acquired Charlton Comics.
Which brings us nicely to Alan Moore. Rob and Alan are almost polar opposites, not only because they are popularly considered the worst and best comic creators of all time respectively, but also in their attitudes. While Rob gloried in the Dark Age and all it's excesses, Alan Moore has spent almost his entire career since Watchmen apologising for inadvertently creating it along with Frank Miller.
In 1993, Rob hired Alan to write WildC.A.T.S. following on from the success of Alan's miniseries "1963", and later Supreme, starting at issue 41. Alan completely rebooted Supreme and even integrated the reboot into the plot. He also decided to totally embrace the Superman elements, remaking Rob's antihero into the Silver Age Superman reborn, thereby making the whole fictional universe much lighter and happier. For some reason Rob never fired him, despite the fact that Alan had pretty much declared open war on Ron's legacy and everything he stood for.
Alan Moore's Supreme is absolutely great by the way, I've read every issue and I love it. It isn't a perfect comic, but it's damn near close. For the sake of completeness, I suppose I should probably also read Rob's original run, but I can't actually find it. Liefeld's run isn't on Comixology, I can't find any copies on Amazon and only issue 1 on eBay, I can't even find it on any of the torrent sites that I absolutely do not frequent because that would be very wrong.
Now, it's important to note that Image at the time was not so much a publisher as a banner that various small, creator-owned studios would release their comics under. Rob's studio- Extreme Studios, published Supreme and therefore Rob, not Image, owned the exclusive rights to the character. In September of 1996 the other founding partners voted to fire Rob due to abuse of his power as CEO and using company funds and resources for his non-Image studio Maximum Press. Undaunted, Rob took Supreme and Alan with him to his new company Awesome Entertainment (yes, really).
The comic trundled along happily until March 2000, with a pretty erratic release schedule. In May 1999 it was retitled as "Supreme: The Return" and restarted the numbering at #1, but continued the story exactly where the original title left off. I mean literally carrying on from the cliffhanger of the last issue of "Supreme" so what the holy hell?
Anyway, Supreme: The Return ended on a high note; it tied up a few loose ends, left the door open for future issues by resurrecting Supreme's arch-enemy Darius Dax, and ended with an issue-long tribute to Jack Kirby. And that was the end of it; Awesome Entertainment collapsed and Alan defected to WildStorm; Rob bounced around doing freelance work for Marvel and publishing his magnum opus Youngblood under yet another company- Arcade Comics, I think Suprema, Supreme's sister was in Youngblood for a while but I've spent enough time and money on this already so I'm not going to check. No further issues of Supreme were published for years, but Rob was left with the copyright, and that's really where it should have ended.
However, it wasn't- in July 2007, the executives at Image decided to forgive Rob of his transgressions against them and allow the prodigal son to return home, bringing Supreme, Youngblood and his other creations with him. At first Rob had no interest in continuing Supreme, but in 2011, he announced that Supreme would restart with Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, resuming the numbering at #63, retroactively rebranding Supreme: The Return as Supreme 57-62, Alan Moore would have no involvement whatsoever in the project. I labored long and hard over whether to include issue 63, since it is technically an Alan Moore comic. Apparently, when Awesome Entertainment collapsed, Alan had the script of Supreme: The Return #7 all written out, but it was never published after the collapse and remained Rob's legal property.
Larsen's mercifully brief six (or five) issue run was an absolute violation of the mythos Alan Moore had built up, and a total betrayal of anyone who had liked Alan Moore's Supreme or comics in general. Larsen decided try to find a compromise between both versions of the comic, pre- and post-reboot. I would remind you, Liefeld's Supreme is the comic, that nobody liked enough to steal. In effect, to blend Alan Moore's work with Rob Liefeld's; which is akin to blending fifty year old scotch with stagnant, cholera infested sewer water.
So, without further ado, let's see how one of the absolute worst ideas any comic book writer ever had turned out to be just as bad as it sounded.
The comic trundled along happily until March 2000, with a pretty erratic release schedule. In May 1999 it was retitled as "Supreme: The Return" and restarted the numbering at #1, but continued the story exactly where the original title left off. I mean literally carrying on from the cliffhanger of the last issue of "Supreme" so what the holy hell?
Anyway, Supreme: The Return ended on a high note; it tied up a few loose ends, left the door open for future issues by resurrecting Supreme's arch-enemy Darius Dax, and ended with an issue-long tribute to Jack Kirby. And that was the end of it; Awesome Entertainment collapsed and Alan defected to WildStorm; Rob bounced around doing freelance work for Marvel and publishing his magnum opus Youngblood under yet another company- Arcade Comics, I think Suprema, Supreme's sister was in Youngblood for a while but I've spent enough time and money on this already so I'm not going to check. No further issues of Supreme were published for years, but Rob was left with the copyright, and that's really where it should have ended.
However, it wasn't- in July 2007, the executives at Image decided to forgive Rob of his transgressions against them and allow the prodigal son to return home, bringing Supreme, Youngblood and his other creations with him. At first Rob had no interest in continuing Supreme, but in 2011, he announced that Supreme would restart with Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, resuming the numbering at #63, retroactively rebranding Supreme: The Return as Supreme 57-62, Alan Moore would have no involvement whatsoever in the project. I labored long and hard over whether to include issue 63, since it is technically an Alan Moore comic. Apparently, when Awesome Entertainment collapsed, Alan had the script of Supreme: The Return #7 all written out, but it was never published after the collapse and remained Rob's legal property.
Larsen's mercifully brief six (or five) issue run was an absolute violation of the mythos Alan Moore had built up, and a total betrayal of anyone who had liked Alan Moore's Supreme or comics in general. Larsen decided try to find a compromise between both versions of the comic, pre- and post-reboot. I would remind you, Liefeld's Supreme is the comic, that nobody liked enough to steal. In effect, to blend Alan Moore's work with Rob Liefeld's; which is akin to blending fifty year old scotch with stagnant, cholera infested sewer water.
So, without further ado, let's see how one of the absolute worst ideas any comic book writer ever had turned out to be just as bad as it sounded.
Plot
To understand the story you need to know a little about what came before. Supreme's universe revolves around the conflict between Supreme and Darius Dax, and the universe frequently undergoes "revisions", where the entire world and history changes and updates to the then-modern era; with only a few constants such as Supreme, his friends and family, Dax and their conflict. When a revision occurs, the current Supreme and Dax are shunted into two inter-dimensional voids called "The Supremacy" and "Daxia", along with the important people in their lives, their "supporting cast" for want of a better term. As well as the major versions of Supreme and Dax, there are also "secondaries"- Supreme's sidekicks, successors or alternate versions of him; such as Squeak the Supremouse.
It is quite possibly the most meta thing in comics since Animal Man spent a whole issue hanging out with Grant Morrison, and a little difficult to explain, but it's an idea that's been used before, especially by DC comics with their "Comic Book Limbo". All I can really explain it as is this: when a comic is cancelled, or rebooted or is a standalone/limited alternate universe story that just ends, where do the characters go? Answer- the Supremacy.
Alan Moore's run was designed to completely retcon away everything that came before, and he decided to make that an important part of the story and Supreme's mythology, but the comic was always a little unclear about exactly which Supreme we were looking at- was he a brand new Supreme, or the original Liefeld Supreme having undergone a massive personality shift after having his backstory rewritten- for instance, in Alan's first issue, he recognises several of the Liefeld Supreme's supporting cast despite supposedly having only come into existence a few weeks prior. Adding to the confusion, these characters were never mentioned again, despite being the Liefeld Supreme's protegé and clone daughter respectively, and we never saw the Liefeld Supreme in the Supremacy. They had a sort of half-parody of him, the Grim Eighties Supreme drawn in the style of Sin City, but that was about it.
To catch up on Supreme himself: his real name is Ethan Crane, he works as a comic book artist on a comic called Omniman, the writer is a woman named Diana Dane who is also his girlfriend and has recently learned his identity, he has a girl sidekick named Suprema- his adopted kid sister Sally, and a super-powered dog named Radar the Hound Supreme. Dax is alive but he doesn't know that, and he doesn't know about Daxia. Supreme, Suprema and Radar have recently returned to Earth after being lost in space for various reasons since the early seventies. The local equivalent of Kryptonite is Supremium, which has a variety of effects; white Supremium harms him, violet Supremium has random effects, etc.
To catch up on Supreme himself: his real name is Ethan Crane, he works as a comic book artist on a comic called Omniman, the writer is a woman named Diana Dane who is also his girlfriend and has recently learned his identity, he has a girl sidekick named Suprema- his adopted kid sister Sally, and a super-powered dog named Radar the Hound Supreme. Dax is alive but he doesn't know that, and he doesn't know about Daxia. Supreme, Suprema and Radar have recently returned to Earth after being lost in space for various reasons since the early seventies. The local equivalent of Kryptonite is Supremium, which has a variety of effects; white Supremium harms him, violet Supremium has random effects, etc.
Issue 63
Since issue 63 is technically the last issue of the Alan Moore's run, it deserves to be looked at separately. However, although Alan is listed as the sole writer, and Erik is only credited as the artist, I'm not sure how much of his original story survives and to the best of my knowledge he's never made any official statement on it.
Anyway, it's pretty good as you'd expect. There are two plot threads side by side: in the Citadel Supreme, the floating equivalent of the Fortress of Solitdue, Diana Dane wanders around in a state of total shock, as indeed you would if you discovered that your friend and colleague was an ageless superhuman demi-god. It doesn't help that in her journey she finds a room displaying windows into a higher stage of being inhabited by mythological creatures (including Supreme's ex-girlfriend who happens to be an angel), and briefly talks to Suprema, who tells her how she was married to a sentient galaxy for about twenty years (long story there). It's actually some well written dialogue and the characters behave pretty believably- Suprema starts out acting confident and confrontational towards Diana, before inadvertently revealing just how nave she is about modern relationships or anything outside the life of a superhero, and quickly reverts to a vulnerable young woman with low self-confidence.
Now, this is a woman who basically slept through the seventies, eighties and early nineties- almost everyone she knew, hell, her entire world, is gone or has moved on without her; it makes sense that she'd want to protect her brother- he's pretty much all she's got left; and he self-confidence issues and inability to see past heroics also works. She's a lost, innocent girl who, from her perspective went to sleep as a fresh-out-of-high-school young woman in the clean and happy world of the Silver Age, and woke up in a world inhabited by Youngblood. Her parents are dead, her friends and boyfriend have grown up without her, and the world has changed almost beyond her ability to understand. All she has left is superheroics, and she doesn't even fit in there- apparently the antiheroes make fun of her.
All joking aside, this is why Alan Moore's Supreme is so good (alongside the camp and endless comic history references), everyone feels like a real person, the heroes are relatable and sympathetic and it's just a damn good read. Bear that in mind as we go ahead. Anyway, Supreme takes Diana on a tour of the Citadel, showing her all his incredible toys and souvenirs, which results in them doing the nasty, when you have a viewscreen on your bedroom ceiling that shows live footage of a galaxy being born, there's really no way else it can end.
Meanwhile, Darius Dax buys the latest issue of Omniman, written by Diana and drawn by Ethan, the story is based on Supreme's own origin and the story of the Supremacy, which Ethan told to Diana in a brainstorming session. In the background two children comment on the metafiction of the story, which is itself based on the extremely meta issue 41 and my head hurts. Dax takes the comic back to his lair and reads through it, noticing that the "Omingarchy" in the comic to Daxia. He decides this is too big of a coincidence, especially given that Ethan Crane is a known associate of Supreme. He comes to the conclusion that either Supreme must therefore know of Daxia, or alternatively, there is an equivalent dimension for the various Supremes. He travels through a dimensional portal into Daxia and assembles the various Daxes in a massive assault through the portal and into the "real world" in an assault on the Citadel.
Issue 63 is a pretty good comic and, since it's not unintentionally silly, there's no real jokes I can make about it, I can only make fun of things that are stupid or make me angry, but it leads in to one of the worst endings for a series ever.
Issue 64
Issue 63 was great. It developed Ethan and Diana's relationship, gave the character of Suprema some greater depth, and ended in an exciting cliffhanger with an army of Daxes converging on the fortress. Erik Larsen was basically handed the lead-in to a good story on a platter by Alan Moore. And managed to completely shoot himself in the foot by completely dismatling virtually every single thing that Alan Moore added to Supreme's universe, in short, everything that made it different and better than Rob's original run.
The first page is an unnecessary full-page passport photo of a naked Supreme looking slightly stoned, a narration caption (presumably his inner monologue, but I don't know because it's the only one in the entire comic) in the upper left corner says, appropriately "And that's when it all went to Hell".
Indeed it did, Supreme (having lost all competence), flees from the Citadel, carrying Diana to safety. As he flies off like a wuss, the Dax army brings the Citadel down right on top of the city, and Supreme is chased off by three Daxes (Golden Age Dax, Sixties Dax and Darius Duck) in a flying car with Supremium bullets. Dax and his new girlfriend (long story) fly into the ruins of the Citadel to raid Supreme's arsenal, but are intercepted by Supreme and Diana opens the gate into the Supremacy to summon help. However, Suprema flies down screaming that that's just what the Daxes want. How does she know that? I don't know, I'm not even sure where she's been since her scene is issue 63. Was she just hanging round the Citadel while her brother had sex?
The Daxes fire two rockets into the Supremacy at the giant golden city where the non-powered supporting casts are stationed. These rockets are A. apparently powerful enough to destroy something the size of a small planet, and B. too fast for an army of super-fast and invulnerable people to stop. What the hell? Oh, by the way, take a look in the corner of the panel, and you will notice Thing Supreme, well done treating those deaths with weight and dignity.
Dax's girlfriend vaporises Radar, the Krypto equivalent, with a gun she finds in the wreckage, and the rest of the page is just Daxes killing Supremes with weapons found in the wreckage. You know, if I was a superhero, I don't think I'd keep a pile of weapons that could instantly destroy me in my home. Golden Age Supreme drags Supreme back into the Supremacy and leads him to a hidden vault, containing Liefeld's Supreme (or "Mean Supreme", as he is called here). Both agree that releasing him would be extremely stupid given his total craziness, but since he's the strongest of them all (because pure heroes are weaklings apparently), and most of them are dead, they don't really have a choice. Mean Supreme flies around blasting people with his heat vision and punching them into red smears while shouting "Die ! Die! DIE!" like a kid playing a video game. It is extremely gratuitous, gruesome and actually disgusting.
Anyway, when the dust settles, the only survivors and Mean Supreme, Fifties Supreme, Sistah Supreme (a blaxploitation female Supreme from the seventies), Squeak the Supremouse and Golden Age Supreme. Suprema and Diana are nowhere in sight, but don't worry because spoiler alert: they're not dead. The comic ends with Mean Supreme picking up a box of Silver Supremium and exposing the other survivors, permanantly robbing them of their powers, and leaving him the one and only Supreme.
So, let's review: the hero and several supporting characters are depowered, the talking comic relief animal has been obliterated, the main villain is dead, the Citadel has fallen leaving dozens of innocent bystanders dead, the Supremacy has been destroyed leaving potentially hundreds more killed and a nigh-omnipotent petulant psychotic is loose in the world with no-one and nothing to stop him. In short, Rob Liefeld's original grim, dark and miserable status quo has supplanted Alan Moore's fun, happy and hopeful one, because when you blend sewage with scotch, the taste of shit tends to overpower.
Since issue 63 is technically the last issue of the Alan Moore's run, it deserves to be looked at separately. However, although Alan is listed as the sole writer, and Erik is only credited as the artist, I'm not sure how much of his original story survives and to the best of my knowledge he's never made any official statement on it.
Anyway, it's pretty good as you'd expect. There are two plot threads side by side: in the Citadel Supreme, the floating equivalent of the Fortress of Solitdue, Diana Dane wanders around in a state of total shock, as indeed you would if you discovered that your friend and colleague was an ageless superhuman demi-god. It doesn't help that in her journey she finds a room displaying windows into a higher stage of being inhabited by mythological creatures (including Supreme's ex-girlfriend who happens to be an angel), and briefly talks to Suprema, who tells her how she was married to a sentient galaxy for about twenty years (long story there). It's actually some well written dialogue and the characters behave pretty believably- Suprema starts out acting confident and confrontational towards Diana, before inadvertently revealing just how nave she is about modern relationships or anything outside the life of a superhero, and quickly reverts to a vulnerable young woman with low self-confidence.
Now, this is a woman who basically slept through the seventies, eighties and early nineties- almost everyone she knew, hell, her entire world, is gone or has moved on without her; it makes sense that she'd want to protect her brother- he's pretty much all she's got left; and he self-confidence issues and inability to see past heroics also works. She's a lost, innocent girl who, from her perspective went to sleep as a fresh-out-of-high-school young woman in the clean and happy world of the Silver Age, and woke up in a world inhabited by Youngblood. Her parents are dead, her friends and boyfriend have grown up without her, and the world has changed almost beyond her ability to understand. All she has left is superheroics, and she doesn't even fit in there- apparently the antiheroes make fun of her.
All joking aside, this is why Alan Moore's Supreme is so good (alongside the camp and endless comic history references), everyone feels like a real person, the heroes are relatable and sympathetic and it's just a damn good read. Bear that in mind as we go ahead. Anyway, Supreme takes Diana on a tour of the Citadel, showing her all his incredible toys and souvenirs, which results in them doing the nasty, when you have a viewscreen on your bedroom ceiling that shows live footage of a galaxy being born, there's really no way else it can end.
 |
| Oh my |
Meanwhile, Darius Dax buys the latest issue of Omniman, written by Diana and drawn by Ethan, the story is based on Supreme's own origin and the story of the Supremacy, which Ethan told to Diana in a brainstorming session. In the background two children comment on the metafiction of the story, which is itself based on the extremely meta issue 41 and my head hurts. Dax takes the comic back to his lair and reads through it, noticing that the "Omingarchy" in the comic to Daxia. He decides this is too big of a coincidence, especially given that Ethan Crane is a known associate of Supreme. He comes to the conclusion that either Supreme must therefore know of Daxia, or alternatively, there is an equivalent dimension for the various Supremes. He travels through a dimensional portal into Daxia and assembles the various Daxes in a massive assault through the portal and into the "real world" in an assault on the Citadel.
Issue 63 is a pretty good comic and, since it's not unintentionally silly, there's no real jokes I can make about it, I can only make fun of things that are stupid or make me angry, but it leads in to one of the worst endings for a series ever.
Issue 64
Issue 63 was great. It developed Ethan and Diana's relationship, gave the character of Suprema some greater depth, and ended in an exciting cliffhanger with an army of Daxes converging on the fortress. Erik Larsen was basically handed the lead-in to a good story on a platter by Alan Moore. And managed to completely shoot himself in the foot by completely dismatling virtually every single thing that Alan Moore added to Supreme's universe, in short, everything that made it different and better than Rob's original run.
The first page is an unnecessary full-page passport photo of a naked Supreme looking slightly stoned, a narration caption (presumably his inner monologue, but I don't know because it's the only one in the entire comic) in the upper left corner says, appropriately "And that's when it all went to Hell".
Indeed it did, Supreme (having lost all competence), flees from the Citadel, carrying Diana to safety. As he flies off like a wuss, the Dax army brings the Citadel down right on top of the city, and Supreme is chased off by three Daxes (Golden Age Dax, Sixties Dax and Darius Duck) in a flying car with Supremium bullets. Dax and his new girlfriend (long story) fly into the ruins of the Citadel to raid Supreme's arsenal, but are intercepted by Supreme and Diana opens the gate into the Supremacy to summon help. However, Suprema flies down screaming that that's just what the Daxes want. How does she know that? I don't know, I'm not even sure where she's been since her scene is issue 63. Was she just hanging round the Citadel while her brother had sex?
The Daxes fire two rockets into the Supremacy at the giant golden city where the non-powered supporting casts are stationed. These rockets are A. apparently powerful enough to destroy something the size of a small planet, and B. too fast for an army of super-fast and invulnerable people to stop. What the hell? Oh, by the way, take a look in the corner of the panel, and you will notice Thing Supreme, well done treating those deaths with weight and dignity.
 |
| You're an asshole |
Dax's girlfriend vaporises Radar, the Krypto equivalent, with a gun she finds in the wreckage, and the rest of the page is just Daxes killing Supremes with weapons found in the wreckage. You know, if I was a superhero, I don't think I'd keep a pile of weapons that could instantly destroy me in my home. Golden Age Supreme drags Supreme back into the Supremacy and leads him to a hidden vault, containing Liefeld's Supreme (or "Mean Supreme", as he is called here). Both agree that releasing him would be extremely stupid given his total craziness, but since he's the strongest of them all (because pure heroes are weaklings apparently), and most of them are dead, they don't really have a choice. Mean Supreme flies around blasting people with his heat vision and punching them into red smears while shouting "Die ! Die! DIE!" like a kid playing a video game. It is extremely gratuitous, gruesome and actually disgusting.
 |
| He'll kill you He'll kill you to death |
Anyway, when the dust settles, the only survivors and Mean Supreme, Fifties Supreme, Sistah Supreme (a blaxploitation female Supreme from the seventies), Squeak the Supremouse and Golden Age Supreme. Suprema and Diana are nowhere in sight, but don't worry because spoiler alert: they're not dead. The comic ends with Mean Supreme picking up a box of Silver Supremium and exposing the other survivors, permanantly robbing them of their powers, and leaving him the one and only Supreme.
So, let's review: the hero and several supporting characters are depowered, the talking comic relief animal has been obliterated, the main villain is dead, the Citadel has fallen leaving dozens of innocent bystanders dead, the Supremacy has been destroyed leaving potentially hundreds more killed and a nigh-omnipotent petulant psychotic is loose in the world with no-one and nothing to stop him. In short, Rob Liefeld's original grim, dark and miserable status quo has supplanted Alan Moore's fun, happy and hopeful one, because when you blend sewage with scotch, the taste of shit tends to overpower.
Conclusion
I promised myself I wouldn't turn his into a personal attack, but Erik Larsen is a filthy liar. This is not "marrying" Rob and Alan's work, this is about as close to a total usurption of Alan's work by Rob's as it's possible to get without simply ignoring everything Alan had spent 24 issues building up, and quite frankly that would have been more respectful to it's legacy. This is the same complaint I had with The Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe- it just wipes away what came before without regard for logic or even making it entertaining, just kill as much as possible as fast as you can so you can make your murderous bastard of a protagonist look cool. It's a bit less enraging because it's not just one guy with a handgun taking out the Hulk without really trying nor does it have some idiot constantly defending Mean Supreme's actions, or an evil old guy cheering him on and saying how great he is. On the other hand, I cared a lot more about Supreme than I did about most of Marvel.
I guess another problem I have with it is simple- I like action, but I'm a little squeamish about graphic violence. Like everyone else on the Internet I'm a huge fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I absolutely loved all the fight scenes, but if I'd ever seen someone get crushed with a rock, set on fire or take a knife to the throat, that would have completely turned me off. Some may say that my aversion to the more visceral or "realistic" depictions of violence means that I'm childish, or cowardly or feminine; and while (to a greater or lesser extent) all those things are true, they're also unrelated- dark, violent and bloody do not automatically make a good story, that attitude is what lead to Rob's rise to stardom in the first place. I'm not going to turn this into an anti-violence tirade, I don't mind violence if it's relevant and proportional to the story, you can't make a comic that's just bloodbath after bloodbath and expect a "mature" story- it's not intelligent, it's not adult, it is juvenile and vapid, this is the kind of superhero story you get from small children too young to understand death and teenagers going through the 15-17 angst phase. Rampant death and destruction does not make a story more substantial, there needs to be more than just that.
At this point I should probably be questioning why the creator of such a classic comic as Savage Dragon would spawn (heh) such an abomination, but quite frankly I don't really like Savage Dragon. I'm sorry but it just does nothing for me. I haven't looked at it in a while but I really didn't see what made it better than anything else around at the time. The whole "superheroes as cops" thing has been done before, ironically enough by Alan Moore in the excellent Top Ten series. Larsen said he decided to do what he did because if he'd simply kept making stories in the Alan Moore style, then he would be nothing more than a pale duplicate and people would be calling for his blood. Fair enough, nobody want's to be the act that follows Alan Moore, but at the same time, he didn't exactly come up with a fresh new spin on the character, he just recycled Rob Liefled's crap. It's not like he didn't have a perfect opening to do that, he didn't need to draw and publish Alan Moore's last script and leave himself with a cliffhanger to resolve, but he wanted to anyway because he likes Alan Moore's work. Erik Larsen seems to have left his creativity at the door, just throwing together elements from two other creators and letting the worst dominate. Did he really think this is the kind of crap people wanted to read in 2012? Yes, he probably did. Unlike Garth Ennis, who was trying to make people laugh/piss them off, this seems to have been made in an atmosphere of total innocence- the belief that Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld are in some way equals, no offence to the man, but rob Liefeld is as far below Alan Moore, as the aeomeba is below us. Next time, where the story starts to get a bit of plot behind it, you can see how I was baffled by, and overanalysed issues 65 and 66 respectively. But in the meantime, I hate this comic, I hate the idiots responsible, and Rob Liefeld is really bad at his job.
I award issue 63 a 4.0/5
I award issue 64 a 1.0/5
Average: 2.5/5, and believe me, it's gonna get worse.
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