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Supreme:Story of the Year
written by Alan Moore
art by various artists
This is a trade reprinting the first 13 issues of Alan Moore's revamp of Rob Liefield's bad ripoff of Superman. Alan starts it off with a clean slate,and we find out that Supreme has been away in space for almost 30 years,and has huge chunks of his memory missing. Over the course of 13 issues we are introduced to the various people that are part of Supreme's world. In his secret identity Supreme works as a comic artist on the Omniman title for dazzler comics. Omniman seems to be a thinly veiled ripoff of Superman. We also meet the current writer on Omniman who is a British man. And who I think is heavily based on Grant Morrison. Moore leaves various little clues through out the first 5 or so issues in the collection on how this storyline will end. Things like mentions of various superheroes that Supreme teamed with back in the 40's,50's,and 60s that has disappeared without a trace. Or when Supreme meets his old high school sweethart that lives in his hometown,and runs a Supreme Museum. Throw away mentions of stuff like how Supreme's mortal enemy Daris Dox has died,turn out to be major clues to what will happen later. Moore also tries his best to work in all the corny stuff that was in the fore front of the silver age Superman stories. And unlike those corny ass Superman stories Moore makes them work. Like how Moore takes the concept of Superman/Supreme having a dog that has the same superpowers. Superman had Krypto and Supreme has Radar. But thanks to Alan Moore's writing talent Radar turns out to be a vital part of the story,were as Krypto seemed more like a gimmick. Moore has also through out this storyline had flashbacks to various adventures of Supreme from before he left for his journey through space. And all these flashbacks take on the form of comics,which are done in the style of comics of the eras the stories are set in. Moore also takes two other Liefield creations,Diehard and Glory,and turns them from one note hero/heroines and fleshes them out. Then in the last two issues we get the last parts of the puzzle,and can now see how Moore has been leading up to the final big conflict with one of Supreme's biggest enemies. Another aspect of the trade that I liked was how Alan Moore has thrown in subtle references to various comics artist of the silver age. The art is good to great,I still wonder why it seems no artist managed to stay on the book for more than a few issues. But even with the artist changing every few issues it is still well drawn,and the flashbacks look exactly like the eras they are supposed to have happened in. I give Supreme:story of the year a A.
