In 10 years time, the comics world is going to look back on Alan Moore’s ‘Supreme: The Story of the Year’ with the same regard as Watchmen (also by Alan Moore). And if it doesn’t, it should.
If you haven’t read Watchmen, stop reading this now, go and buy it, then come back. All done? Good. Wasn’t it amazing! And yes, it’s very depressing. And yes, Heroes did totally steal the ending (more on that in a later post). But Watchmen is also the greatest graphic novel ever. Rich characters, densely plotted, multilayered art, technically bold and inventive; it showed the world that comics could truly be an art form. It won the Hugo, and is on Time’s list of top 100 books (the only graphic novel on there). Anyway, enough about Watchmen. Let’s get back to Supreme.
Supreme was a comic series created by Rob Liefeld for Image comics. It was an overly violent, dumb, unoriginal copy of Superman. In short, it sucked. And then came Alan Moore. Moore had worked on a couple of other titles for Image (Glory, Youngblood, Violator), but he was basically paying his bills. With Supreme, he was to create something much, much more.
Moore took the idea that Supreme was essentially a carbon copy of Superman and embraced it, using the character to explore what comics were and could be, and brining a level of fun, imagination and inventiveness back to comics that hadn’t been seen since the Golden Age. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. There’ve been plenty of great comics since the Golden Age. But what Supreme did was to being all of this together with such style, brains and humour that it marks the pinnacle of a new dawn in comic history. Just as Watchmen ushered in an era of bleak, violent and angst ridden characters and stories, Supreme will bring, and is bringing, the light back.
The 12 issue ‘Story of the Year’ arc was so packed with ideas, Moore could cherry pick the best and turn them into an entire comics imprint (America’s Best Comics). The League of Infinity became the Extraordinary League of Gentlemen; the Supremacy became Promethea’s Immateria (mixed with New Jack City from ‘The Return’ and real Magic); The Allied Supermen of America became Tomorrow’s Stories; Supreme himself became split between Promethea (the notion of previous incarnations) and Tom Strong (inventor and with stories told from the character’s past, in retro style).
Supreme showed you didn’t need to make your protagonist a drug addict or psychopath to make him interesting; that whilst comics could show the gritty realities of the world, wouldn’t it better if they fired our imaginations; brought a sense of the wonderful and fantastic into our lives; made us believe the impossible could happen; showed us that goodness and light could prevail.
