Random Reviews- Supreme #65+66

Random Reviews

Supreme #65+66

See, as Supreme descends further into bloody violence, depressing bleakness and incomprehensible continuity messes. Witness as I give Erik Larsen far too much credit. Experience an intricate, carefully constructed mythos being discarded in favour of pointless carnage.

Introduction

You should know almost everything yo need to know about the actual comic by now, but I should probably talk about Rob and Erik themselves. Specifically, their relationship and the relationships between their respective creations. I think they're friends, quite good friends actually.

I've mentioned how Image in the early days was a loose alliance of creator owned studios. Despite Rob's position as CEO, none of the founding partners/studio heads were allowed any creative or administrative control over each other or their creations. Why yes, this was a charter drawn up by a bunch of artists with no managerial experience, why do you ask? This also meant that, since the studio heads and not Image itself owned the various characters, characters would only share universes for as long as their respective owners decided to allow it.

I mention this because two of Erik's creations, Super Patriot and Mighty Man (kinda Captain America and oh-so-blatantly DC's Captain Marvel), are actually old friends of Alan Moore's Supreme, even fighting alongside him in World War 2 and in a couple of superhero teams over the decades (well, not exactly with Mighty Man but that's a long story). Anyway, they appeared in four issues of the comic, but what's weird is that all these comics were published after May 1996, when the Image partners (including Erik), voted to fire him. Since they were able to bury the hatchet pretty quickly after a pretty serious falling out, I guess Erik and Rob are pretty close, which is how Erik got the job in the first place.

So, we know that these characters are important to Alan Moore's Supreme, but I don't know if they have any significance to Liefeld's Supreme. Since Rob and Erik are clearly buddies, I can surmise that they may have played a part in his backstory, but I really don't know. In fact, I don't know anything about Liefeld Supreme. At all. Wikipedia gives a brief overview of his biography, but nothing about the character himself. I don't know anything about him, and I suspect I'm not alone. 

I know Rob has his fans. I don't doubt some people have read his original run. I'm sure some people went back to read his stories. However, I'm sure that most of Supreme's relatively small fanbase, like me, only really read Alan's run and ignored Rob's, and like I said, Rob's run isn't exactly easy to get hold of.

The fact that Rob and Erik seem to be so close may explain why Erik is giving so much prominence to Liefeld Supreme, but I don't know how I'm supposed to react here. Is Erik celebrating Liefeld Supreme or condemning him? Is he building him up only to knock him down? In short- am I meant to take this at face value or not? Is this Erik trying to make his friend look good at Alan Moore's expense, or is it a clever commentary on recent and former trends in comic books?

Also, what year is this supposed to be taking place in?

Plot

Recap

As Supreme, aka The Ivory Icon lay in post-coital slumber, Darius Dax and his army of alternate duplicates destroyed the Supremacy, crashed the Citadel in a densely populated area, and slaughtered almost the entire supporting cast with insulting ease, racking up a death toll in the hundreds, possibly thousands. The surviving Supremes released a living WMD with entitlement issues, a lust for violence that would put most Batman villains to shame and delusions of heroism. This resulted in one of the bloodiest curb-stomp battles I've ever seen, and the surviving Supremes were stripped of their powers so Liefeld Supreme could be special and wouldn't have to share. He then left to rampage unopposed, which he'll be doing for the next four issues of this idiocy.

Issue 65

Liefeld Supreme flies off, leaving the other surviving Supremes standing around in shock. Just to recap, they are (clockwise from left): Fifties Supreme, Sistah Supreme, Golden Age Supreme, Squeak the Supremouse and Moore Supreme. 

For narrative purposes, I'm going to call Moore Supreme "Ethan" from this point on, and as for Liefeld Supreme, I don't want to call him "Supreme" even if he did come first, but I read a note on TvTropes comparing him to Superboy Prime, so I'm going to run with that. As of now, his name is "Suprime".

Anyway, Squeak completely loses it and starts screaming that they're all doomed, and Fifties Supreme starts freaking out that he's still a lion (he has an addiction to the effects of Violet Supremium that's this universe's equivalent of Red Kryptonite, and often exposes himself deliberately- hence the lion head; I usually wouldn't mention it, but it's important later). The army surround the ruins of the Citadel and calls Supreme out personally- why? Well, as the stock anti-superhero general explains, the collapsing Citadel has killed hundreds of people and, "From where I'm standing- You're responsible!"

Where are you standing by the way, Stupidtown? Here's a couple of pictures of the Dax army attacking the Citadel from issue 64.

Notice how many of them there are? How much chaos and destruction they're causing? Notice how one of them is a fucking giant!? How could anybody for a hundred miles with functioning eyes fail to realise what happened? This is idiotic, and that's ignoring the fact that it's now daytime, despite the fact that the last issue took place in the dead of night. So, not only are the army so dumb that they can't tell who's attacking what, but they took anything between four to twelve hours to mobilise to the site of a hostile attack on American soil, while the experienced superheroes stood around staring at nothing. Then again it might simply be a continuity error, but given that every single member of the production team is the same between issues, that'd make them incredibly incompetent.

Anyway, Suprime flies through space whining about how Ethan stole his destiny, and everything was better when he was Supreme, and I'm totally seeing the Superboy Prime thing. He also completely removes any hope of me taking him seriously by calling Obama a Muslim- handy hint; if you want your hero, or villain or whatever this loser is supposed to be, to have even a shred of dignity or presence, don't make him a Birther because people will laugh at him- those freaks have lost court cases to empty rooms. 

Also, why is Obama President now? Rob and Alan's runs on the book took place in the nineties, there were several jokes and references to the fact that it was the nineties, Clinton was President. If Obama is President, then this takes place at some point after 2009, I suspect it takes place in 2012, when this mess was published- you cannot bring a comic back after a twelve year hiatus and pick up the story exactly where it left off but bring it up to modern times, or am I supposed to believe it took Ethan and Diana twelve years to get to the second date? 

In a startling display of common sense Suprime decides to separate Ethan from the fortress, in case he finds a weapon that can harm him. So he flies back to Earth, lifts up the Citadel and lifts it up to the Moon. The remaining Supremes bail out and the General quickly puts two and two together and realises that they've all lost their powers, so he takes them in for questioning. Character's intelligence and competence levels fluctuate wildly in this comic. If I were feeling charitable I would say that this is a plot, rather than character-driven work. Since I'm not feeling charitable, I call lazy writing. As the Supremes are driven away, Suprema flies down carrying Diana and lifts the armored car into the air, dropping them in the middle of a forest somewhere.

From this point on, like issue 63, this issue has a two-storyline structure, which basically sets the tone for the remaining four issues of this trainwreck- Ethan is a whiny bitch, Suprime beats people almost to death and nothing is accomplished.

Staying with Team Ethan- Suprema tries to spring Ethan but he insists that he be taken in for questioning so he can explain everything. All of this is quickly revealed to be pointless however as Diana runs out of the bushes screaming his real name at the top of her lungs. Great superhero girlfriending there. Team Ethan receive new clothes from the military and they're all pretty ready to give up and let Suprime do his thing, totally demoralised by the loss of their powers. Given how many times Superman loses his powers in any given year, I find it difficult to believe this is the first time these guys have been powerless over the course of their lives, but whatever.

New lease on... You're a fucking lion!
Plus, you all seem to have gotten over the horrible deaths of your friends and loved ones pretty quickly

Suprime smashes his way in to an unnamed army base, screaming that "Nobody can stop me- Not every again!", like a stroppy teenager acting out after being grounded. He breaks into the... place where Superpatriot is, there's almost no backgrounds except for one panel, which just shows bare concrete walls- is this where Superpatriot sleeps? You think they'd treat him better. The actual fight itself is almost pointless except for the questions it raises. Suprime just brutalises the poor guy, tearing off his cybernetics and punching his face to a bloody mess, all the while ranting about how he was "abandoned" by his "friends". Because that's what friends do right- assault each other? Also, like I said before I'm completely flying blind on this character- what are his motivations? What's his relationship to Superpatriot? What purpose does this serve? This sequence tells me nothing about the character that I didn't already know- that he's a violent, entitled asshole. This is the unpopular, seldom-read version of the character, and it has been at least sixteen years since he last had a published story. I know the comic industry works on the assumption that every single reader has an encyclopedic knowledge of comics covering decades, but a little exposition or background would be nice please.

At first Superpatriot quite naturally asks Suprime if he's crazy, but then things take an odd turn. Just before he passes out, he claims that "We thought you had changed..." during his time in space, which makes absolutely no sense. This guy knows Ethan, the Alan Moore Supreme, as far as he knows his friend has just gone nuts, but this seems to imply that he is somehow aware on some level of the revision, that Ethan was once Suprime, changed over his time in space. The next issue will attempt to explain this by claiming that Suprime's presence is warping the universe back to a "grim and gritty" state, but that still doesn't explain what's going on here- Ethan has a backstory eleven issues in the making, Superpatriot is an important part of his past, and not once in any of the flashbacks did he act anything like Suprime, he's always been pure and heroic and decent. If Suprime's presence is altering the universe retroactively by replacing Ethan's backstory with his own, the shouldn't Ethan's recent history (indeed Ethan himself) be removed as well?

Gah, how can something so dumb be so complicated?

And, at the end of all of that, what does Suprime do? He just flies away, leaving Superpatriot comatose in a pool of his own blood, leaving the audience confused and with five pages worth of their time wasted.

Back with Team Ethan, a random citizen runs up shouting about how Suprime has attacked a military base and the Superpatriot. Given that this probably happened a maximum of an hour ago, how the hell does this guy know? You'd think the military would keep quiet that the World's Greatest Hero had beaten a supersoldier into a coma but whatever. Also, the people of Omegaopolis must be really used to weird shit happening, since he displays no reaction at all to the lion in a suit or the talking mouse wearing slacks. Ethan starts crying like a little girl about how he's powerless to stop Suprime. Then again, that statement is probably unfair, since the actual teenage girl- Suprema, decides to take on the near-omnipotent psycho single handed (spoiler alert: that doesn't work). I've got to admire her courage, but, as Squeak says "She could use some brains"- it's not like she's the only superhero left in the entire universe, she can ask others for help. I don't care how powerful this guy is, eventually sheer weight of numbers will bring him down.

Hey, would you like to know what the plots of the last three issues of Supreme: The Return were?

• Supreme: The Return, Issue 4- Radar fathers thousands of flying super-puppies which adorably run amok through the city, and eventually head off to colonise their own planet
• Supreme: The Return, Issue 5- pretentious comic book writer/Jimmy Olsen equivalent Billy Friday returns from the crazy house and merges with time-travelling supervillain, The Supremium Man, before heading back to confront Supreme as a teenager and kill him, leading to their first encounter back in the thirties, forming a closed time loop
• Supreme: The Return, Issue 6- Jack Kirby tribute/affectionate parody

You see what I'm getting at here? This is such an abrupt tonal shift it might as well be a different comic. I'm not saying that Alan Moore's Supreme was all light and fluffy rainbows and lollipops- there were serious moments, there were high stakes, Supreme had to make hard choices- he helped kill a lifelong friend for the sake of the world, but it was balanced with the fun, the goofy and the occasionally silly. I know that when a new writer takes over a book they like to place their own stamp on things and take the story in another direction, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, and quite frankly there are more graceful ways to do it.

Epilogue: Darius Duck is still alive.

Issue 66

Issue 66 begins with Ethan and Diana echoing the audience.

It turns out that, as I already explained, Suprime's presence has altered reality; meaning the comic book publisher they used to work for is now a coffee shop, Omegaopolis is a generic crumbling old city, and the apartment building Ethan used to live in is a vacant lot. Again, if reality has been altered to such an extent, why are Ethan, Diana, Suprema and the rest of them even still there? This is Larsen selectively enforcing the rules that Alan Moore laid out- he uses revisions to change the world to suit him, but ignores how revisions work- they're supposed to be quick and definite as opposed to the apparently gradual process that Suprime is causing, and they remove all traces of other Supremes- none of Alan Moore's characters should still be around, let them die with dignity already.

Ethan and Diana head up to Diana's apartment, only to find that in this world, Diana has a boyfriend named Ken and, as memories of their life flood back ti her, she callously tosses Ethan out. Again, this is not how revisions work, Diana shouldn't even be there, she should have been completely replaced by a different Diana, not have her memory altered as the universes changes around her, you cannot have it both ways Erik. 

Okay, to be fair, when I originally read this issue, I though I had been to harsh on Erik, and that this was all a clever commentary on the DC universe post-2011 reboot. I haven't actually read any of the Superman books, but from what I heard, it's a lot darker, Superman is acting outside the law, and he's not married to Lois anymore- instead he's bonking Wonder Woman, and Lois is sleeping with some loser whose name I can't be bothered to learn. I was wrong. This is just stupid

Anyway, Ethan head to the same comic book store Dax visited in #63, and my God that feels like a lifetime ago. The comic is much the same, only all traces of Ethan, Diana and the company they work for have disappeared. Also, the kids who were reading Ethan and Diana's issue of Omni-man are now reading an issue of Savage Dragon with huge smiles of joy- nice humility Erik. The store clerk does not recognise any of the names Ethan gives him until he mentions Omni-man. As such, the clerk digs out an issue of Invincible, the title character being the son of a different and unrelated character named Omni-man. He also mentions Image comics as being a real company in this universe, which makes the ending of this issue a mindfuck of truly epic proportions.

Meanwhile, Suprime encounters a group of reptile men robbing an armored van full of money, and promptly mutilates one and kills the other two, telling the survivor to spread the word that this is how he plans to deal with criminals from this point on. I really don't know how I'm supposed to respond to this guy, am I supposed to find him laudable or reprehensible- the fact that Liefeld Supreme was able to effortlessly walk through the Dax army, which had previously murdered almost every other Supreme (including the King of the Supremacy), as well as Team Ethan's total ineptitude seems to suggest that I'm supposed to find him cool, or at the very least, view him as superior to all other incarnations of Supreme and, by extension, the superiority of Rob Liefeld over Alan Moore. But at the same time he's such a colossal prick that it can't be unintentional. 

Suprime then goes to stand on a mountaintop and brood, stating how he plans to act as Judge, Jury and Executioner. Again, is this guy meant to be a hero or not, I'm familiar with the Designated Hero trope, but surely you can't show someone so vicious and psychotic and expect him to be liked. Suprema arives to try to reason with him, but when  he (naturally) refuses to listen. Therefore, we get the only three decent pages in this miasma of failure- Suprema smacks the guy around and knocks him into a mountain, declaring that if Ethan can't stop Suprime, then she will. Awesome.

But no, Erik Larsen can't allow characters to develop or show any kind of greater ability to his friends' precious Gary Stu, as Suprime bursts open the mountain and viciously beats the teenaged girl whilst screaming about how criminals will be punished, no room for mercy, how their way only leads to more evil, blah blah blah.

Anyway, as Supreme stands over her broken body and readies the killing blow, someone catches his wrist- it's Invincible's Omni-man, the guy confirmed as being a fictional character in-universe Six Pages Ago! I know I keep saying this, but what the holy flying fuck is happening in this idiocy!

You've been in an extra-dimensional prison for sixteen years.
How do you even know who he is?

Conclusion

This series not only gets worse by every issue, it also somehow manages to get both stupider and more confusing. Every panel just piles on new layers of idiocy, I feel personally insulted by this. If they wanted to write a conclusion to Supreme set in 2012, including the Rob Liefeld stuff, there are better ways of doing it.

Hell, I've got an idea right now- "Whatever Happened To The Ivory Icon". Have Diana Dane tell in a flashback the story of how Suprime escaped from the Supremacy and went on a rampage through the Rogue's Gallery. Ethan tries to take him on but gets his ass kicked, so he is forced to team up with Dax, and attack him using Supremium lasers. Dax is killed in the conflict and Ethan is forced to kill Suprime to save the lives of a prison full of convicts. Wracked with anguish over taking another life, Ethan exposes himself to Silver Supremium. We cut back to Diana and it turns out she's been speaking to the other Diana Dane's in the Supremacy; Ethan has been revised out and a new Supreme has taken his place. That might even lead to another run on the book with a new Supreme. Yes it's a total ripoff of Alan Moores' earlier work but it puts his run to bed while still honouring it, it strengthens the Superman parallels that Alan built his entire work around, and most importantly of all, put's Rob Liefeld's work in it's proper place- namely the grave.

Regardless of whether or not we're supposed to like Suprime, on the face of it, this entire run is a celebration of everything Image comics has spent twenty years digging itself out of- mindless violence with no rhyme or reason dealt out by self righteous jerks in the name of being "edgy". Who the hell thought this would be a good idea?

Not him, people that matter.

At the very least it is nice to see Suprema show some inner strength and come into her own once out from under her brother's shadow, but at the same time it's just a drop in the extremely stormy ocean, and totally wasted since she gets beaten almost to death for her troubles. Hey, there's another idea for a continuation- Suprema defeating Suprime, and taking her brother's place as Earth's protector. I think it would be really good- showing the scared, little girl sidekick becoming a hero in her own right.

 I just do not understand the thought processes that went into this- why does this even  need to exist? Who was asking for this? Why was it made? They decided to restart a cult series by removing almost everything that made it good. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? WHY!?!?

... Anyway, 

Issue 63- 4.0/5

Issue 64- 1.0/5

Issue 65- 0.5/5 

Issue 66- 1.5/5 (if only because Suprema actually acts pretty badass)

Average- 1.75/5