Supreme
Written by Alan Moore. Artwork by just about everyone you can think of.

Look, up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... hey, who the hell is that?

Once upon a time, there was this jolly British chap who went by the name of Alan Moore (and if you don't know that name by heart yet, you haven't been reading my reviews) who entered the world of comics in the mid-eighties and just happened to change everything in said world. See, DC Comics had this failing horror title called Swamp Thing that had morphed from a halfway profitable book into one that was, well, less than profitable. So they gave this Moore guy a chance at revamping it. It was pretty good idea, too -- he'd gained a sizable cult following writing for the English mag, 2000 A.D., a post apocalyptic book that featured a lot of scares and more than a few jokes. Sure enough, the decision to hire of Moore proved a sound one, and the book became so damned good that it won awards as well as a new fan base.

Could he do it again? Could Moore take lead and turn it into gold?

A few years later, a younger not so talented guy named Rob Liefeld came along. Now Rob, he wasn't as much of a thinker, but he could sense upcoming comic trends. He was a flashy penciller who took a job on a failing X-Men spinoff called The New Mutants for Marvel Comics, a company whose books had never been known for their story sense. He had a showy style that paid less attention to anatomy and good storytelling than bigger muscles, shapelier forms, and huge explosions. Rob got pretty popular, and, soon enough, he and a few buddies formed their own company. They called it Image. Rob created a few titles for the company, titles with names like Bloodwulf, Brigade, and Supreme.

But success couldn't follow Rob forever, and he was ousted from Image a few years later. He struggled to keep some titles going through his own newly-formed company, a company he had named Awesome. And he failed miserably.

Until he hooked up with genius writer Alan Moore.

I will never understand what possessed Alan Moore to take up writing duties on Supreme, Liefeld's Superman ripoff, but I'm not one to complain. Supreme may have begun as a riff on a thousand better ideas, but Moore had craftily re-imagined it into one of the single best comics ever to hit the stands. The story follows Ethan Crane and his dog Radar, a boy and his hapless dog who discovered a meteorite made of pure Supremium that endowed them both with uncanny strength, eyesight, and agility. Ethan, of course, grew up to be a superhero by the name of Supreme, while in his secret identity he made a living as a comic book artist.

The setup may be simple, but, powered by Moore's imagination, it comes off as a complex, multi-leveled story that is engaging to both long time comic aficionados and newcomers alike. Moore creates worlds within worlds here, playing with the ethics of being a superhuman while also granting a self-aware sly wink to the characters, who are beginning to get some inkling that they all exist inside the confines of a comic book. Take, for example, Darius Dax, Supreme's Lex Luthor-like nemesis, who wakes up after a vicious battle to discover that he's been propelled to an alternate world populated by various versions of himself. The clincher is that these other selves are all previous comic incarnations, from the psycho killer version of the gritty eighties to the well-meaning but demented scientist of the fifties to a mallardized Darius Duck that existed in a brief Disney-ized run of the book.

Supreme himself is a play on every incarnation of Superman, skillfully covering up his identity and simultaneously protecting President Clinton from roving space bullies who've come to Earth to duke it out with the president for the keys to America. From the opening pages, it's clear that this is not your father's comic book.

Moore has proven to be the master of the Midas touch. His writing is smooth, his dialogue crisp, his plotting unique enough for a million Marvel soap operas. The artwork, handled by different artists every issue -- talents spanning the range from Jim Starlin to Chris Sprouse to Rick Veitch -- fits the mood of each issue perfectly. This is a comic that's larger than life, and it's rendered suitably. The only drawback is the fact that Supreme is released so infrequently that it's hard to gauge when you'll find it on the stands. Mark my words, though -- it's worth the wait.

-- David Rosiak

Supreme, published by DC Comics, is currently available only through comic retailers.

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