Episode 141 - Supreme: The Story of the Year with Micah McCaw

Case and Jmike are joined by Micah McCaw to assess the Symbolism Supreme in Alan Moore's Supreme Story of the Year.

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Overview

In episode 141 of the Men of Steel podcast, hosts Case Aiken and Jmike Folson, alongside guest Micah McCaw, delve into Alan Moore's influential 12-issue run on Supreme, titled "Supreme: The Story of the Year." They highlight the comic's groundbreaking nature upon its release in the mid-90s, reimagining Supreme—a character initially created by Rob Liefeld and akin to Superman—by incorporating innovative storytelling techniques, such as in-universe “revisions” of the character and comments on comic book history. The discussion spans various aspects of the series, including its artistic evolution through different illustrators and the provocative themes surrounding superhero relationships and villains. Notably, the podcast emphasizes Moore’s ability to blend humor with meta-narrative elements while maintaining continuity amidst complex plotlines, ultimately positioning Supreme as a celebrated reconstruction of traditional superhero narratives. As the hosts reflect on its significance, they recommend further explorations of Moore’s work, ensuring listeners are left with a comprehensive appreciation for the series and its impact on the comic book landscape.

Notes

Introduction to Supreme (00:50 - 11:43)

• Case Aiken and Jmike Folson host the Men of Steel podcast with guest Micah McCaw

• The episode discusses Alan Moore's 12-issue run on Supreme, also known as 'Supreme: The Story of the Year'

• The comic was published in 1995-1996 and was considered groundbreaking at the time

• Supreme is described as a thinly veiled Superman analog with similar powers and characteristics

• The hosts discuss how the book remained cutting edge for 20 years but now feels more commonplace

‍️ History of Supreme (11:43 - 25:55)

• Supreme was originally created by Rob Liefeld as part of Image Comics' launch

• Before Alan Moore, Supreme was an amoral, extremely powerful character (a Superman analog)

• Moore took over with issue #41 and completely reimagined the character

• The comic features regular flashbacks to different eras of comics, parodying Superman's timeline

• The art style shifts between contemporary and classic/retro depending on the time period shown

Art and Creative Teams (25:55 - 35:04)

• Joe Bennett was the main artist, who would later work on Immortal Hulk

• Rick Veitch created the flashback sequences with distinct period-appropriate art styles

• Chris Sprouse joins as artist later in the run (only one issue in this collection)

• Alex Ross created promotional art and cover designs for Supreme

• The hosts note that the art quality is inconsistent throughout the series

The Revision Concept (35:04 - 45:50)

• The comic introduces 'revisions' - an in-universe explanation for continuity changes

• Supreme visits the 'Supremacy' where all previous versions of himself exist after being revised out

• The concept explains why comic characters change over time

• The hosts discuss the meta-narrative of comics existing within a comics universe

• Ethan Crane (Supreme's alter ego) works as a comic artist in his civilian identity

Supreme's Universe (45:50 - 57:54)

• The Citadel Supreme is Supreme's Fortress of Solitude equivalent

• The Allied Supremes of America is the Justice Society/Justice League analog

• Supreme has his own version of supporting characters like Lois Lane (Diana Dane)

• The book features extensive flashbacks to previous eras of comics history

• Issue #44 features EC Comics-style horror hosts challenging superheroes, explaining why heroes fell out of favor

Supernatural Elements (57:54 - 01:06:50)

• Supreme's origin involves exposure to a radioactive meteor (Supremium)

• The League of Infinity includes heroes from throughout time periods including Achilles, Bill Hickok, and Aladdin

• The book includes various dimensions including the Hell of Mirrors and Amolinth (a photo world)

• The creative use of Supreme's powers includes his 'consciousness expanding' rather than using telescopic vision

• Goral the Living Galaxy serves as a Galactus-type cosmic entity

Relationships and Romance (01:06:50 - 01:17:03)

• Issue #50 explores Supreme's dating life and potential relationships

• Three scenarios show why relationships don't work for superheroes: domestication, exploitation, or conflict

• Diana Dane is positioned as Supreme's potential love interest

• The issue offers meta-commentary on why superheroes rarely maintain stable relationships

• Chris Sprouse's art in this issue is praised as superior to earlier issues

Villains and Antagonists (01:17:03 - 01:26:08)

• Darius Dax is Supreme's Lex Luthor equivalent and main antagonist

• The comic features various counterparts to Superman's rogues gallery

• Shadow Supreme serves as a negative version of the hero

• Optilux is a living light being with significant powers

• The heroes face challenges they can't simply punch their way through

• ⏳ Time Loop Concept (01:26:08 - 01:36:03)

• The comic features a time loop where Darius Dax becomes the meteor that gives Supreme his powers

• Supreme sees his past self, creating a stable time loop

• The hosts note that while time loops are common now, this was innovative in the mid-90s

• The League of Infinity adds to the time travel elements

• The hosts discuss how Moore keeps continuity coherent despite complex timeline issues

Meta-Commentary (01:36:04 - 01:45:32)

• The comic constantly references and comments on comics history

• Characters discuss the structure of comic books while living in one

• The book reconstructs superhero tropes rather than deconstructing them (unlike Watchmen)

• Alan Moore is described as being on an 'apology tour' for how Watchmen changed comics

• The series acknowledges and pokes fun at comic book conventions while embracing them

Final Plot Developments (01:45:32 - 01:54:22)

• Judy Jordan and her 'granddaughter' Hilda visit Citadel Supreme

• The drawing created by Hilda is revealed to be part of Darius Dax's plan

• Dax transfers his consciousness into Judy's body through nano-dust

• Supreme is trapped in the Hell of Mirrors as Dax takes control of the Citadel

• The plot twist reveals the 'child's drawing' had been a Chekhov's gun throughout the series

Conclusion and Reflections (01:54:22 - 02:11:44)

• The hosts discuss the significance of Supreme in comics history

• The comic is positioned as a reconstruction of Superman after the deconstruction era

• The series is praised for its humor, creativity, and meta-approach to comics

• The hosts recommend other Alan Moore works like Tom Strong

• The podcast ends with contact information for the hosts and guest Micah McCaw

Transcription

00:00
Case
Where it's like they're getting married and it's like, oh, I can't wait to take Judy home and find a reveal to her that her husband is or her groom supreme is none other than softball Ethan Crane. It's like, of course the 50s version wouldn't like have that be revealed that early. Like, like we would wait until they're already married to have the secret identity you reveal.

00:19
Micah
But, but groom Supreme.

00:50
Case
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Jm. ike Folson.

00:57
Jmike
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show.

01:00
Case
Welcome back. Many happy returns indeed. Because today we are looking at a nostalgic work for me that is in itself an extremely nostalgic work about comics. And to have a conversation about this big universe that is contained within this 12 issue book that we're talking about today, we are joined from the Mccaw podcast universe by Micah Mccaw.

01:22
Micah
Hello everybody. Excited to be here. I've been, you've been wanting me to be on this show, but I've been too scared because my knowledge of Superman is not as much as I wish it was. But then this showed up in the mail and if that's not a way to get someone on the podcast, I don't know what is. So.

01:40
Case
Yeah. Yeah. So I am continuing to evangelize the series that we are talking about today. Because today we are talking about the first 12 issues of Alan Moore's run on supreme, also known as the Supreme Story of the Year or in this trade paperback, supreme the Story of the Year. But it is a, a 12 issue arc. It is not the complete run of the Alan Moore Supreme. And it actually occurred to me while I was reading this that many of the issues that I consider like the real standouts of his run are in the next volume, which is crap. I, I love this arc. And, and frankly this is a 12 issue complete story.

02:16
Micah
Yeah.

02:17
Case
So there is that and there. That, that's a big part about why I think it's great to talk about. And I think the, I think while individual issues all are part of this larger meta narrative that is going on and thus the bigger story is really strong. It just sucks. Is like, oh, but there are some really cool issues that are later and that means that we'll have to revisit the series again at some point. But the actual 12 issues here I just think are great for us to talk about on the show because it is such a commentary on Superman from the perspective of characters existing in a world of comics being real and then also it being, you know, a fictional universe. Like, this is why, like this is me. This is the bullshit that I go for all the time.

03:02
Case
And I will note that. So the two of you are coming into this cold. You did not read this before we were going into this. I will say this. So the comic in general was insanely cutting edge when it came out 30 years ago. Like this came out in 1995, 1996 era. And it is remarkable that in 2005 it was still cutting edge and in 2015 it was. It would be like what people were doing a lot of in comics at the time, your spider verses and things like that. And then five now it feels kind of old hat, a lot of the things that are going on in this. But 30 years ago, this comic was jaw droppingly cutting edge. It was groundbreaking in so many ways.

03:47
Case
But J Mike, so often when we talk about these kind of works that are ones that I'm bringing to the table, I often throw your direction to say, hey, could you try to give the elevator pitch for what this comic is about?

04:03
Jmike
Well, how could I describe this book? I want to say acid trip, but.

04:14
Case
Oh, no, it's not that. It's not Swamp Thing.

04:17
Jmike
It's not a swamp Thing. No, it's. It starts off like exactly like Enter the Spider. Which one was Spider Verse part two? That was Interrupters or Across Spiders. It starts off just like that where he like comes back into the this universe and he's like seeing double of everything. And then there's doppelgangers of him coming to greet him and he's like, I don't understand what's going on. And he's like, well, I guess I'll just punch my way out of this. And they're like, no, were friends. They take him to the Spider Society or the Supreme Society where they meet like all the other variations of the Supreme. And he's like, I don't understand what's going on. But sure, this seems kind of cool. They're like, don't worry, you'll understand. There's something called the revision that happened and it's messing with time across realities.

05:10
Jmike
And we all kind of like end up here for some reason. And they're like, cool, but we're going to send you back now because you still have stuff to do. And they send him back and he's a comic book writer. I, I was like, okay, I Didn't know anything about him. I didn't know he was a comic book writer, case.

05:26
Case
Comic book artist. I'll just correct you on that one just because that plays into so the.

05:31
Jmike
The important relationships for him, which was a weird arc. Yeah. He goes back and he's back in his comic book artist days. What happened next? I don't know. It was a bunch of stuff that happened after.

05:43
Case
We're going to go by issue. I'm just saying, like what's this, what's the, you know, the bird's eye view description of the series?

05:49
Jmike
It's like Superman, but with like a bunch of other things tied in. It felt like, honestly reading this felt like a version of All Star Superman where it has like 15 other time or storylines going on at the same time and they all dodge across different parts of his life. I want to say, because a lot of these are going back to like the 1930s and 40s and like, remember that one time when we fought.

06:18
Case
Yes.

06:18
Jmike
This person.

06:19
Case
So that is a key thing that you brought up and you brought up actually two points that I wanted us to address. One is a comparison to All Star Superman. Yeah. Which is that. So for me, as a. In terms of the Moore Morrison divide, like I would argue that this is Alan Moore's equivalent story. This 12 issue arc is him doing an opus on the nature of Superman. But it's through by way of this thinly veiled Superman knockoff that had been bumming around for 40 odd issues up until this point.

06:49
Jmike
Is it really thinly veiled? Because I feel like it's very heavy handed. Like, hey, this is Superman, but just another version of Superman.

06:56
Case
The thinnest of veils, we'll say. So I think there is a valid compar there in terms of like he's.

07:05
Jmike
Even got the parents in like little small town.

07:10
Case
There's no. Like it. This is just Superman. Like this is just Superman. Like there's no, there's.

07:15
Micah
I. Yeah. Okay, I gotta jump in here because I don't know how much you know about Pre Supreme. To me, this read a little bit like, you know, Alan Moore's kind of a goof. As serious as we all take him, he's kind of a goofball in his writing sometimes. And so there was a part of me that felt like all. Like he was taking things that maybe the original writer, and I'm guessing here, I don't know, like maybe the original writers were kind of thinly veiling as you Said J. Mike. But he was being like, no, let's be obvious about it. This is a knockoff. And here's what I have to say about it.

07:50
Case
That is exactly his take on how he came in to this book, because.

07:55
Micah
That'S how it feels to me.

07:56
Case
Yeah, so. So that's the thing. We'll talk a little bit about the. The history of the character. So supreme was a Rob Liefeld creation. Yes, that. That Rob Liefeld, the one with the. The Captain America picture. That is, like, weird proportions guy.

08:13
Jmike
Oh, that guy.

08:14
Case
Okay, cool. So is a Rob Liefeld creation who was introduced first in Youngblood, which was the. The teen book that he launched Image with. And by launched Image, I mean, like, was literally the first Image comic was Youngblood, but that whole group of, like, you know, Todd McFarlane with Spawn and Erik Larson with Savage Dragon and Jim Lee with Wildcats, like, Youngblood was Rob Liefeld's launchbook for that. And it was very clearly Teen Titans. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to indicate that it was a lot of stuff that Rob Liefeld had worked on as a Teen Titans pitch prior to going off to doing his own Image thing. And you can see comparisons with, like, Speedy Arsenal being God is a quiver. I'm blanking on the name of the Archer character. Shaft. Shaft is the character in Youngblood. Sorry.

09:01
Case
So it's all these, like, knockoff characters in it. And, like, Liefeld loves making knockoff characters. Like, if his little corner of Image Comics when. When he launched it was, like, loaded with, like, with Wolverine knockoffs and. And cable knockoffs and all. All these kind of characters that were just, like, things you'd already seen. And this includes Superman. And so supreme was his attempt at creating a Superman character, where he described in the foreword to the first issue that it was a Superman who was way, way, way more powerful than what had really been shown in the comics at this point, especially in the 90s where they had the depowered Superman. Liefeld wanted to go, like, way to the. To the point of, like, unbelievably, unstoppably powerful, but then also have him be amoral as fuck.

09:48
Case
And so the character was this sort of, like, asshole who was completely powerful. Like, he was as pretentious as his name would imply. And this. This version of the character kind of was a dick around the Image Comics universe for a few years, like, probably about 20 issues of that run. He fought the Image comic version of Thor and took his hammer. And that's why you see a bunch of Hammers of Thor in the Supremacy. When we see shots like that.

10:16
Micah
And you're saying this is in the 90s. He made this is the 90s.

10:18
Case
Yeah.

10:19
Micah
Okay. Okay.

10:19
Case
And so then there's a couple other runs. Keith Giffen is on for a while. There's a period where he's like a hyper religious figure. And that's actually when they have a crossover with Gladiator from Marvel Comics where he's like, okay, you know, he's like this, like the zealots kind of like. Like puritanical kind of preacher type character. You know, a supremacist, as it were. And so we have like, different versions of the character. He keeps getting revamped until they finally get Alan Moore to come on with issue 41. And that is a really interesting thing to me in the modern context of a series like this. This shows that, like, an ongoing series was worth it, that they wouldn't renumber the book starting at that point. You know, like, they wouldn't just do an issue one with Alan Moore coming on.

11:02
Case
It was like, no, it's issue 41 now. They would later. Because the book does get canceled. I think it's issue 56 is the last issue, and then it gets relaunched about like, three or four months later and as supreme the Return. But then I think they revert back to the original issue numbering at a certain point, and they certainly are on the issue numbering by the time the book gets canceled and then like 15 years later gets picked up by Eric Larson at Image again after it had gone off to its own publishing. Erik Larson writes his own version of the conclusion of the arc that Alan Moore had written a certain amount of, but had been left unfinished.

11:37
Micah
Oh, okay.

11:38
Case
So the series has like, this whole weird lifestyle or life beyond this. But like, it. It goes for a long time in that sense. Like, it. A huge number of years with big gaps in there. But it's still. It's like 70 issues is like the total run of the book and more comes on with issue 41 and runs for about 24.

11:58
Micah
Okay.

11:58
Case
With that first arc being this whole. I'm going to start from scratch and I. I'm going to take everything that was notable about this character and just throw it out the window. He does respect a lot of things. He, like the. He keeps the identity of Ethan Crane. He alludes to Loki several times in this, which was the villain of the previous arc. There. There are certainly, like, character names that are. Are referenced and. And adorned. And then in the first issue, we also see like, the supporting cast that he had around him at the time, which was K. Lady Supreme. Kid supreme is a character who was, like a Captain Marvel Jr. Type character. Like, he was, like, drawing power from supreme. And he's a straight up Superboy knockoff. Like you. Like, 90s Superboy knockoff with, like, the leather jacket and everything.

12:43
Case
He has a leather vest.

12:47
Micah
Man, that's so crazy.

12:48
Case
Yeah. And then lady supreme is like a future daughter version of Supreme. So, like, again, like, it's hard to talk about this character without getting into this, like, archetypal nature of everyone, which is what Alan more than plays into for the book. So the book, it goes from being. Here's a 90s extremist kind of commentary on Superman to being like, no, let's just do, like, a real Silver Age nostalgia piece and look at comics from the lens of the whole history of comics as if you were Superman living inside that world, aware that you're in a fictional world that's being rewritten constantly. And that's what I think is, like, so fascinating about this book, because even though there's all these elements that now, like, really don't hold up in terms of being a novel concept, we're all so sick of multiverses.

13:36
Case
We're so tired of seeing this many versions of the same character pop up, because now they're doing it at the time that wasn't the case. And I should note, yesterday I went to see across the Spider verse in concert at the National Theater with a full orchestra doing the soundtrack for it. And the whole damn time I'm thinking, man, tomorrow I am going to have to talk about how this movie is so similar to the comic that we're talking about.

14:02
Micah
Yeah, yeah.

14:03
Case
But I think that's. In broad strokes, I think that the actual comic itself, once we get into it, is more about the history of comics and. And this, like, deconstruction of that and reconstruction, this real embrace of, like, just how cool it all is. So I think there's a lot to talk about there. I. I think that the art is a mixed bag in this all. The main artist is Joe Bennett, who would go on to be an acclaimed artist on the, I believe, the immortal Hulk run.

14:28
Micah
Yeah, yeah. That run is insane and looks crazy.

14:33
Case
Yeah. But that said, he, I believe, has said some shitty things.

14:38
Micah
Oh, that's right.

14:39
Case
Yeah.

14:40
Micah
Yeah.

14:40
Case
But, like, he's. He's certainly trying to do the image house style at the time. In fact, what's. What's wild? And this is the thing that made me really go like, oh, it's weird thinking about the individual issues here because the. The artist that becomes the most associated with supreme only has one issue in this. In this collection. But after this arc ends, the artist going forth is Chris Sprouse, who does issue 50. The issue, like the date issue with Ethan and Diana, with the much more relaxed proportions or realistic proportions characters, that becomes the house style for the character going forth. And so the book becomes notable for having a really good pencilr working on it after that point. But that first 12 issues are all over the place in terms of art.

15:23
Case
There's different artists and almost every other issue fill ins in certain pages and. And all that was.

15:29
Micah
Was there a consistent artist on the, like, quote, old issues within the issues?

15:35
Case
No, because the creative teams kept on moving, like, over, like switching over and so forth. I'm not even sure if when Keith Giffen was working on it, if he was the pencil or if he was just writing. Like, I. Like, I'd have to look into it.

15:47
Micah
So they all just kind of did that style well.

15:50
Case
So there's. There was like this Rob Liefeld house style where, like, they were all trying to emulate Rob Liefeld's look in the early issues. I know it wasn't him. I know it wasn't Liefeld himself doing most of the penciling. And it was sort of like he had a team of people that were doing like, Liefeld esque drawings for the characters. And then at some point it switches over to then this. This sort of era of image style, which is a little bit different. It's, you know, this is. They're. They're aping more like an Ed McGinnis. And in some sense, you know, it's just what. What has become, like, the general style of the time has changed.

16:25
Case
And I've read interviews with Joe Bennett where he talks about how he was really being told what his art was supposed to look like versus what he wanted it to look like.

16:35
Micah
Oh, interesting.

16:36
Case
So I know that there was a lot of pressure if you weren't like a name artist. And so like Chris Sprouse, who would then become the main look for supreme for the remainder of the run and then would go on with Alan Moore to create Tom Strong, which is seen in a lot of ways as like, the continuation of Supreme. Like, that pairing is really strong, but they have, like, just a totally different style. Like, Chris Sprouse is a DC Comics veteran at this point. Like, he's instrumental in, like, the redesigns of the Legion of Superheroes. Ha. There it is. Made A reference in this episode, the Legionnaires era in the five year gap period. The SW6 legionnaires. He's a really good artist and he has continued to do really good stuff.

17:16
Case
And this was like a cool period where he was doing these outside books. The other thing that we should note is that this is a book that had a lot of attention from Alex Ross. The COVID to the volume that we're holding is an Alex Ross image. And I don't like it.

17:31
Micah
I don't like it a lot.

17:34
Case
I find it so strange that the COVID for both this and the second volume, the Return, uses concept art that Alex Ross had done for a proposed new outfit for supreme that never shows up in the comic. And thus that's why it's such a, like a weird look for the character.

17:50
Micah
Meanwhile, he's like balding too, which is strange.

17:53
Case
Meanwhile, he did actual promotional art for awesome Comics, which would become the imprint that this was being published under later in the run. And so he does like legit. He does a Supremacy shot with like all the Supremes. Like it's this huge super tall poster design that he did. Like he has several like images of supreme in his canonical costume. And then the actual published versions never use it. They use the stupid fucking like, concept work, which I gotta. The thing that is crazy. And hey, we're gonna reference Kingdom Come now. The Suprema design is the exact same costume he gives Brainiac's daughter in Kingdom Come, except the colors are different. That. So in that it's Brainiac's daughter with Supergirl. And so he, she is green skinned with yellow hair. So she's got green skin.

18:40
Case
And then it's like a light pink costume to look kind of like Brainiacs. But it's got the same S design shape that he loves putting in every character that he ever designs the costume for. Like I, I love Alex Ross's art, but like it you, if you are aware of this trend, you won't be able to unsee it, which is that when he is responsible for redesigning a character's outfit, he always makes the icon for the character, like super big and integrated into the main body of the suit. Like, he loves having just like the S for Superman as being a giant, just a giant sash that goes across indicating an S. Or like when the redesign for Kingdom Come, it's like just like the hourglass is just like the entire half of his torso.

19:23
Case
He loves integrating the symbol into like the overall chest of the character. And he's doing that here with Supreme. Again, this is a little mini rant just because it's just annoying. I love the Alex art that uses the canonical work. It's just so weird that they always just use this, like, this concept art that never went anywhere.

19:40
Micah
Yeah. And it kind of has like, your dad's friend that's like, kind of buff vibe to just looks. Yeah, I really. I mean, when I saw it, I was kind of like, what did he give me? What is this? I'm gonna have to look at this guy for, you know, 200 pages. But then when you open it looks fine. But yeah, also a bummer.

20:05
Case
That.

20:05
Micah
Very strange.

20:06
Case
There were a bunch of variant covers for issue 41, the. The launch of this and including one which is the actual debut of the design for his costume, which I actually rather like the costume. And we'll talk about that in a second. But it's by. By Jerry Ordway, who is like an acclaimed Superman artist. He did the. The Power of Shazam series that we looked at J. Mike, like, he's. He, like, he is the writer and artist on that, but he was. He did like those, like that awesome watercolor Power of Shazam series. And he did a watercolor version of. It's a. An homage to the original super or the Superman issue one, which is like the. The oval shape with like, Superman leaping over Metropolis image.

20:44
Case
And so it's him leaping out of that image, which I realize now that I'm saying it is very evocative of the style that the Men of Steel episode artwork looks like. So again, I am a hack.

20:58
Jmike
It all comes together.

21:00
Case
It all comes back. So it's a bummer that we had this great also painted cover that they could have used. That they didn't is just what I was getting at.

21:07
Micah
Very odd.

21:09
Case
Yeah. The art's a mixed bag in this whole series and is honestly the biggest detractor. It really messes with character designs. Like, there's a lot of characters that we see different artists takes on, and it is really all over the place. One area, though, where it isn't all over the place is the flashbacks in this.

21:27
Micah
Yeah, right. Yeah. That was the most. The most attention grabbing to look at, if not a bit cluttered, but still pretty fantastic art. And those were my favorite little vignettes. I was surprised at how. Well, I loved pretty much all of them. And the, like, rye British humor really sticks out, particularly in the. What. What's it. What's the one with. Is it lady supreme? Like, turns into The Devil or something like that. Oh, yeah, the Suprema and in Hades. I mean, that was like my favorite of the entire run because it was so hilarious and it was like perfectly balanced humor. And then the art was. Was kind of terrifying, but it's in this nostalgic old style. It was like that was where the book really sang for me, those moments.

22:18
Case
Every issue has at least one flashback with art by Rick Veitch or Veitch, who had collaborated with Alan Moore before on 1963. So they do really retro stuff together. And so he does all these retro pieces throughout. And so during. One of the cool things about the supreme story of the year, this 12 issue arc is that each issue has a flashback to the. The period of time in comics that we are discussing in the issue. And we see it from the lens then in this flashback with art that is done extremely well to be evocative of that particular period, including like the 70s period looking like the Polyester year Superman, like with like the. The sideburns and everything going for him, versus, like the, you know, the 50s style looking more like a Dick Sprang, you know, like.

23:07
Case
Or a Wayne Boring kind of thing or, you know, like more Kurt Swan when we're talking about, like, material. So it's. It's a really nice element there that is great at unifying a lot of the. The character designs, especially because, like, when you see some of them by other artists, they. They feel more like they are falling victim to the image excesses of the 90s. I'm thinking about Corgo, the space bully, slash space tyrant especially. But, like, there's all kinds of lines.

23:34
Jmike
This art does not do it justice. Now that I'm looking back on certain pages.

23:37
Case
No, it's a bummer because, like, the. If you ever see an Alan Moore script, like, he has like a page dedicated to every panel, basically, it is. There's so much description going into everything. It's just wild.

23:50
Micah
Well, and I also found that, like. Well, actually, I'll say a couple things about this element is I do feel like the action was confusing to read and to understand. But I also. It felt like it was deliberately obtuse, that there was not an intention for the action to be something that you followed and were excited by. But I don't know if you guys agree with that. That's just how I felt. Felt like Alan Moore was not interested in that.

24:22
Case
Yeah, I don't think many of the fights were really supposed to be that big. They have one spot that like, when they show the flashback to the hypothetical marriage of supreme with glory.

24:34
Micah
Yeah.

24:35
Case
And they have a shot in there which looks like a straight up homage to the end of his Miracle man run where, like, you see, like, people running in fear and it's colored very much like that sort of like, horrible shot of London with everyone, like, dead. Like, there is a little bit of an acknowledgement that, like, violence of superhumans is terrible. And so they do try to avoid having too many fights like that when they come up in the series as a whole. It's usually very much of supreme. Like, we got to get this out of the. Out of the way.

25:09
Micah
Yeah.

25:10
Case
Or it's like a single punch and then move on is usually how it goes for these characters. But I like that as an element of this all. When the series was coming out, we have to remember that this was the triangle era of Superman contemporarily So it was circa the death of Superman. And so that power level was the character where he was very much a superhero that was akin to what was common for Marvel and dc, just at the highest end of that spectrum. He didn't have the crazy out there Superman stuff that he had in the 60s. His power level was way more restrained. His Fortress of Solitude was way more sci fi explained by Kryptonian technology kind of stuff.

25:51
Case
He didn't have the pantheon of his animal menagerie or the backstory maybe of a mermaid love interest in college, or any of those things were stripped away from the character. So to have this be. This exploration of all the weirdness of Superman was also a big thing for me because at the time were. Weren't getting that. That is different in today's era, where a lot of the classic Superman stuff is. Is back in vogue. But. But this is one where it was very much trying to be like, remember all that. That weird shit. And one of those things that's included in there is that the power level of the character means that the fights themselves are, generally speaking, irrelevant. Like super. Like supreme is either fighting a thing that is outside of his ability to fight, like Goral.

26:38
Case
The living galaxy, or it is a thing that he's obviously gonna win.

26:44
Micah
Right. Right. It's interesting because I. I don't know that I. I think I picked up on that. I'm not sure that it totally lands the plane on it outside of being in the specific moment of when this comic came out. I think looking back on it, I do wish that not necessarily, like, more punches, but just clearer action would. Would maybe excite me a little bit more.

27:10
Case
I Think that's fair. I think that the art is not necessarily doing it justice in terms of fight choreography. And usually the fights are pretty fast.

27:18
Micah
Yeah, right. And I find it interesting that so. So when I was reading that, when I started reading this, like, if. If you just put Miracle man, which I also read the series Preem and Watchmen, and just story wise told me to read them and not look at the art. I mean, you have to. But for the sake of this experiment, I would think that this is like a warm up, and then Miracle man, like, takes the ball and runs with it, and then Watchmen, like, finishes the thing off. So I was very surprised to learn that this is, like, pretty later on in Alan Moore's career because it feels like, especially after just reading Miracle man, this felt like it's doing a lot of what he's doing in that book. But. And by the way, I liked this.

28:09
Micah
I enjoyed this quite a bit. I'm just talking about it.

28:11
Case
Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I realized we didn't give you, like, a Runway to be like, what were your thoughts? Like, we just, like, jumped into it. Sorry. I love this book. So it's, like, hard.

28:20
Micah
Yeah, yeah. But it did feel like this was just kind of a lesser Miracle Man. I have to say then. Then a lot of the things that you said that make it unique, I think just as a modern comic and movie watcher and stuff, are now things that aren't quite as unique, like the multiverse element and that kind of meta commentary. But I feel like the meta commentary is even in Miracle man with the way his character becomes who he is by keeping in canon all of his old issues and stuff. So that was interesting. I'm not even saying bad. Just it was interesting that this was the latest of those three kind of commentaries on comics taking old characters, revamping them that I know of. Alan Moore, anyway.

29:05
Case
Yeah, I mean, I think that this is coming. I mean, it's coming 10 years later and is doing it. What I would argue is that this is doing the reverse job of Miracle man because it's saying, okay, now we have embraced this world where we can see all the grim and grittiness and we can see the. The deconstruction of the. The tropes and that we can acknowledge that, like, yeah, the Superman is a terrible thing that will ultimately distance themselves from humanity and will destroy our. Our drive to even advance just by the nature of its. Of its existence. Like, there's this whole element of Miracle man where it's like, well, yeah, he kind of becomes a God and humanity kind of becomes irrelevant. This is trying to say, well, sure, but like, what if we're still having fun with the character?

29:50
Case
What if all of that is still not like, out of the question? This is argued as the reconstructionist approach to comics as opposed to a deconstructionist approach. So it's taking that the advancements that Miracle man and Watchmen did in terms of comic book writing have been addressed. And this is saying, well, now where do we go even further? And we go even further to the point by having it be a world where character is aware that revisions in comic books occur and that to a degree that he is not. He's not self aware like Deadpool or like she Hulk, but that the nature of his existence is very much like a comic book to him.

30:37
Case
And that the fact that he works as a comic book writer or as a comic book artist is relevant because then we have all this like, metatext of like his day job bleeding into the same things that he's doing. Or like the discussions of like, how the issues flow and things like that. I'm particularly thinking about the Diana Dane issue where like, they stop, they talk about all the story beats as it would happen and we're just like witnessing it, like live like you're practically reading the script, like as the whole thing goes. And, and there's a lot of that going on in the comic as a whole. I don't want us to like, take forever. So I do. But I do want us like hit each of the issues. So.

31:19
Case
So we're not going to go into like a full breakdown of each issue, but we will give our basic thoughts, like, here's a summary and here's our basic thoughts on each issue. Because I think there's a lot going on for each one. And I don't want us to overlook anything because there is really cool stuff even in the middle of it all. So starting with issue 41. So this is the start of the revisions of it all. And so as we've alluded, there's the supremacy, which is this like Valhalla for revised versions of Supreme. Yeah, and so that is one distinction. So it is not a multiverse story in the sense of they have their own realities to go home to. They do not have realities to come back to.

32:00
Case
There's this meta element even beyond this all which is that the character is the published Supreme. Like this is still the same supreme that had those 40 issues prior, even though his story is being rewritten at this point. This is still that Supreme. And so from the perspective of we, the audience, we are still reading Supreme. And that is why this character special in that regard. Like, he is not one of these, like, these myriad characters, like, original supreme, who is like. Like the original Superman who leaps an eighth of a mile, or Squeak the Supreme House, who is like Mighty Mouse. And God fucking damn it. Like, you gotta love Squeak the Supreme House.

32:39
Micah
I mean. Yeah, you can't. You gotta give it up. Yeah, he's. He's. You know, I found myself in my. In my little brain, you know, the inner dialogue. That's. That's the word. Anytime there was supreme labeled things, it was like a little mental gymnastic I had to go through where it was like, Supreme Suprematons. Suprematons. Suprematons. That's it. And then, like, Supreme House. And it's good and it's funny, and I actually enjoyed that element of it. But, oh, my gosh, there were so many things where I'm like, how do you. How do you pronounce this? How do you pronounce this?

33:16
Case
Yeah. So in this issue, we get all these, like, alternatives, possible versions of Supreme. And it's all references, for the most part, to Superman stories. There are some just, like, general comic references in there. There's, like, what appears to be the thing at one point when they show a crowd shot of all the Supremes. So there's a lot of different, like, types. But they set up this idea that, like, reality keeps revising itself and replacing the version of the character who is the main character of the story, effectively with updated ones. And that explains the continuity changes that we're familiar with from the comics perspective. So, like, Superman could originally just leap instead of fly. This is a story that explores that character existed.

33:57
Case
And then he gets written out along with all these, like, other changes to his version of his, like, timeline and so forth. Later we see that his version of Darius Dax, actually, who was just Dax, was bald with a red beard. To emulate the fact that Lex Luthor. Well, to emulate that Lex Luthor, what was a redhead initially in his first appearance and then later was a bald character. Everything is allusions to. To something in this all. I like how the art style does do a lot to at least have the more modern supreme versus the other characters look like different art styles. Like, supreme when he's right next to, like, the supreme or like, King Supreme. Like, the. The type of shading that is going on is like, Distinctly different.

34:41
Case
Like, and supposed to one look like a silver age character versus one look like, here's a modern 90s character. But the majority of the story is just him going to this Valhalla, him being told like, oh, but you're actually supposed to go back and then experience a new story. And that's the first time this has ever happened because it is the first time that this has ever happened in the world of supreme. Like in that comic. Like, this is the first time we're seeing the revision process happen and not just like picking up from scratch. Scratch. And it baits us for the next issue where he comes out and he's working at Dazzle Comics, which is obviously DC Comics.

35:14
Case
And yeah, we find out that his version of Perry White is Lucas Tate, this creepy editor who like tries to hit on Diana Dane, who is his Lois Lane character. She's the writer on Warrior Woman. And then his Jimmy Olsen is Billy Friday.

35:28
Micah
Well, and you know what? Here's. And, and I know you're an Alan Morris and I do really, I do love Alan Moore, but he has a trope in his writing that I was. He still got it in here. He still got it on the bingo card, but he didn't have an actual scene of it, which I was thankful for. And it is a mature warning here. But his stories always have a lot of rape in them and I was so relieved that this story did not. There was only mention of a comic book writer trying to write a scene with rape. And I felt like that had to have been him kind of acknowledging himself, I hope at least. Yeah, it's almost like a crutch, I think, to his writing.

36:11
Micah
Sometimes it works and I think often it does not work and is like way overused. But I was so glad it was not in this story because it would feel so out of place.

36:19
Case
Yeah, that's not the kind of book he's doing. I mean, he does have a character like Billy Friday who is supposed to be this British writer, arguably a composite of all the British invasion of the 90s. If you want to read into it might be more Diggs directed at Morrison, but that. But I think there's also like self reflective digs as well in that all. Like, you know, the fact of the matter is he's poking fun at his own work throughout this whole book. So it makes sense to me that Alan Moore would put a bit of himself in Billy Friday, even if he's also saying that like. Yeah, and all the other guys too.

36:55
Micah
Right. Well, and I did see, because I did a cursory glance because when I first read it, like you said, J Mike, I was like, where is this? Who is this character? So I did a cursory glance that was not as thorough as what you gave us, which helped a lot. But I did see that Alan Moore was interested in doing this because he didn't think it was good at all and wanted to do it. And then he also thought that he wanted to do something that was kind of against his type of taking something, making it really realistic, really gritty, really graphic, and he did not want to make something really graphic, which is incredibly interesting when everything I've read by him is incredibly graphic. I mean, that's his thing. Right. And so it was interesting seeing him do that.

37:38
Micah
And I think often successful and often not success. I mean, it's very. A mixed bag in this book.

37:44
Case
Yeah. This is arguably the start of the Alan Moore apology tour that would continue with this America's Best comics run, which was him looking at the state of comics post Watchmen and saying, whoops, I fucked up, or, sorry, it's more of a Whoops, I fucked up.

38:00
Micah
Well, yeah, I mean, it's like how he. From. From my understanding how he feels about the Killing Joke, where he's like, dang, I wish I hadn't written. Have written that because it, like, ruined comics.

38:09
Case
Right? Exactly.

38:11
Micah
Which was. It's always cool when you read something or when you experience something and you don't like it, and then you find out the artist doesn't like it, and you're like, oh, okay. Because I remember reading the Killing Joke and I was. Was so excited about it and. And then I finished it and I'm like, huh, I really didn't like that. And then, yeah, he's like, I don't like it either. And I wish I hadn't read it.

38:33
Case
Wrote it. Yeah, yeah. Again, Alan Moore is at this point coming off of. He, at this point had just done Wildcats, which is a really fun era for him. But he. That's another deconstruction of Superman archetype because he's dealing with Mr. Majestic as this like. Like, ancient warrior who has been celibate the whole time and is this, like, stoic figure and also kind of an asshole because he's so dedicated to his mission of being like, lawful on the lawful good spectrum. So, yeah, this is. Is him being like, we. We can have fun too. Like, we. We can have a gosh darn good time. And I Think that carries us into issue 42. Because issue 41 has this, like, launching point of like, the cool multiversal.

39:21
Case
All these references to Superman, which again, in 1995, weren't just inundated with the ability to research this stuff about the character.

39:31
Micah
Sure, yeah.

39:32
Case
Knowing that Superman had these different eras and permutations was kind of rare at the time as well. And so this was a real history lesson as much as anything else. But moving on to issue 42, that's where we get the real history lesson for the character. Where we see the analog for Smallville, which is Little Haven. We see the backstory for the character where he is exposed to the radioactive aura of a meteor that crash lands. And that is something that we're going to circle back to what. And that's what gives him and his dog superpowers. And he becomes a super boy type character called Kid Supreme. Oh, first the Supremeite, then Kid Supreme. He goes off and becomes the full named supreme, you know, circa World War II.

40:18
Case
And so this is a character who lives the entire of time between the start of comics up until then current 90s era. For the character we deal with, like, him having his equivalent to the Legion of Superheroes. We have his equivalent to, you know, to Lana Lang in Judy Jordan. We see. Oh, so, yeah, so we also are introduced to the old version of Judy Jordan and her granddaughter.

40:44
Micah
Oh, that's kind of important.

40:45
Case
Yeah, just. Just a little bit important.

40:49
Micah
Just a little bit.

40:51
Case
What did you guys think when you. When you first were introduced to her?

40:53
Micah
Yeah, go ahead.

40:54
Jmike
J. I was like. Because, like, they. They gave like hints. They're like, hurt from earlier on. And I was like, oh, I guess, because it's like the time thing. She doesn't remember him and he doesn't really remember her. So I was like, cool. I was like, but where'd the girl come from? Because she was never mentioned. And then later on I was like, oh.

41:25
Micah
Well, yeah, for me, I just felt like the first two, even maybe three issues, we're just kind of like looking back on his life and he's reintegrating into society. So I just thought, oh, this is sweet. Here's this person from his past. You know, it's just kind of like we're. We're catching up with him. At the end of the story, though, I'm like, I bet there were so many obvious hints that I should have picked up on.

41:51
Case
Yeah, it's a fun character who definitely, like, slips under the radar. If you're not really paying attention, but it's. It's really well inserted there.

41:59
Micah
Yeah, no, I. I liked that whole payoff and element a lot. I thought that was really great. Great.

42:06
Case
Yeah. I love that this issue starts off the. We'll just say this part out loud here, because we're now 50 minutes into the episode, the time loop part of this whole episode. Which reminder, this book came out before Superman Red Sun. It comes out long before a lot of these things doing this time loop. But we introduce it with the League of Infinity, where we see supreme in the future waving down at his past self. And it's like.

42:33
Jmike
You mean they have their own kid group from the future, right?

42:37
Case
Well, yes, of course. Of course. There is no question that anything is, like, supposed to be a nod to a DC comic staple of things. In fact, a lot of the things that are nods to DC comic staples of things are sort of like the prototype versions of what Superman would have. Like, the shadow supreme is like the negative Superman, which is the prototype of Bizarro.

42:58
Jmike
He has his own Phantom Zone projector, but it's like a glass that he can be flipped on the other side of. And I was like, what is happening?

43:07
Case
Yeah. This is a good time to mention that the trade paperbacks that were looking at, because only a couple of these issues are available on the Kindle app now. The first issues, 41 and 42. And then I think it jumps over to Supreme. The Return is the next issue that actually is on the app. The. The trade paperback sucks. Like, the. The printing is terrible. The color correction is really not very good, and it's missing a bunch of, like, side stories and stuff. So there we. There is a. Oh, really? We actually do see the origin of the, like, of the Hell of Mirrors. It is literally an Alice one, Alice in Wonderland, Mirror Dimension, or Alice through the Looking Glass. Pardon me? It's just a different section of. Of through the Looking Glass that he.

43:51
Case
He's, like, cordoned off to be his prism that he uses for space tyrants.

43:59
Micah
Man, that's interesting.

44:01
Case
Yeah. We also miss a baseball game that takes place in the Supremacy that features Evelyn Squeak, the Supreme House and grim eighties Supreme.

44:13
Micah
Oh, man, that feels like we really missed out.

44:16
Case
Yeah.

44:17
Micah
So maybe I should save this for the last issue, actually. But are we talking about the League of Infinity yet? Are we at that point?

44:26
Case
Yeah, we mentioned them just now.

44:29
Micah
Okay. I thought we did. So many words thrown out. So many nouns or adverbs. Yeah, this is another one. Another element when we're introduced to them, where I was like, okay, we are ripping and roaring because I just loved. I loved, loved the League of Infinity. I loved these insane concepts that they're telling us about, like, you know, all the time travel and all of this wild stuff while they're doing this, like, gee golly, mister, I hope we can use our awesome powers and all of that stuff. And the way that it's married together, I think is pretty fantastic. And. And was just like, oh, yeah, I am. I am on board during all of that kind of stuff. So. Good.

45:12
Case
Yeah. The way they use the League of Infinity as each one of them having a power that is relevant to emulating Suprem is really fun there. It's really fun. Like using Kid Achilles as the one that's flying around and which winch is controlling him with magic.

45:29
Micah
Yeah.

45:29
Case
Yeah, it's a lot of fun. This arc of supreme is the launching point of Alan Moore being allowed to, like, redesign Rob Liefeld's little corner of comics at this point, because Liefeld leaves Image after issue 42, which is one of the reasons why those are the only two issues that are available on the app. And so he then goes off and has his own publishing company for a stretch. There, there. So to keep it going, he tells Alan Moore, you can just design my universe. And that's why some of the story arcs happen in here. And it turns it into this homage to DC Comics for a little bit of time that has this much larger universe.

46:06
Case
They do a bunch of crossover events like Judgment Day, and there's a couple of books that he starts to work on that all kind of fall apart because of budget reasons. But, yeah, this is the starting point of Alan moore Rebuilding a grim 90s comic universe from scratch. Scratch.

46:22
Micah
That's crazy. So, okay, let's see. Are we. Are we at the. I think my second favorite issue is this. Chapter four. Are we. Are we at chapter four?

46:34
Case
Three. Issue 42, chapter three still. Okay, when. Well, so we're just coming to this. So this is when supreme, now, having been reminded that he has the Citadel supreme from the previous issue, right?

46:45
Micah
Yes.

46:46
Case
Actually goes back to it, and we see be living inside the Citadel Supreme. What is this, like, weird flashback of his life in Little Haven with his. His parents, and then, like, Judy Jordan, his Lana Lang equivalent, and him living this, like, happy Pleasantville style life. And it turns out that it's actually S1, his, like, main suprematon, his main, you know, his main Superman robot just acting out life as if he was supreme this whole time, which might be A way of justifying Supreme's appearances prior to issue 41 because he was a regular character in Image comics.

47:23
Micah
Oh, sure.

47:24
Case
Or you could argue that it's just the revisions sort of messing with people's minds. Like, Glory references it later. It's like, didn't we just have a team up when it's like, oh, I'm back finally from space. Yeah, yeah. Again, there's a lot of. There's a big don't worry about it, like, effect going on here because of the revisions. But you could argue that maybe the suprematons are the justification for it. We are also reminded that. That Ethan Crane is an artist for. For. For Omni man, which is yet another level of Superman illusions going on there. In some ways even more direct. Like, Omni man has a mermaid girlfriend, for example, which is just straight up Superman. Like that. That's just doing Superman right there.

48:02
Jmike
I mean, but supreme kind of dated that one girl who is angel.

48:06
Case
Yep.

48:07
Jmike
So, I mean.

48:08
Case
No, no, I know. Like, again, supreme is just Superman. Like, I'm just saying that there's a level of, like, where Omni man is even more just Superman. On that note, what did you guys think about the Citadel Supreme?

48:22
Micah
What did I think about the Citadel Supreme?

48:24
Jmike
I mean, it was interesting. I like the fact that he had to, like, charge up his hands with static. Static electricity to open the door. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool.

48:32
Case
Yeah, Yeah, I thought that was a cool part. Like, again, these are like, how do we take the, like, stuff from Superman and, like, do a twist on it and, like, for the Fortress of Solitude key, like, the giant key that Superman would pick up. I like, this is a different version where it's like, oh, his. His. His version of it is like, he has to have invulnerable hands that can rub it together at super speed to create lightning that opens the door. And like, that feels appropriately like Silver Age right there.

48:56
Micah
See? And. Oh, go. No, go ahead.

48:59
Case
And then, like, this is the issue that opens up, like, all the weird that's in the Citadel Supreme. Like the. The prison world of Amolinth or the. The. Well, I mean, everything, it's just like. It's a. It's a cool space.

49:13
Micah
See? And so I think that some of this. I mean, I think that especially hearing the way you guys are talking about this, I do think there's a lot of this book that, as someone who has read very little Superman. And by the way, I. I very much like Superman and want to love Superman I just don't have. I have a subscription to Marvel Unlimited, not dc. So, you know, gotta pay the bills. But having said that, you know, I would love. I'd actually love some recommendations of some good Superman runs from both of you before we get off for me to check out. Cause everything I've read I really enjoy. And he's like, you know, he's the original. But I do think some of this stuff, like the Citadel supreme and.

50:00
Micah
Well, I'll just speak to that because I can't think of anything else at the moment. I do feel like a little bit of the references and like the power of the reveal of that is maybe a lot more exciting if you are a Superman fan and know Superman stuff. So to me I'm just like, oh, yeah, he's got, you know, a base, a little fortress, whatever. So when you asked me how I felt about it, I was like, I don't know, I didn't really think, you know, I just. It's a place he was at for more plot stuff to happen. You know, it wasn't like, dramatic to me, really, in any sort of way.

50:31
Case
No, that's totally fair. And I think from. From where I am curious of J Mike's thoughts about it are from this experiment of us doing this podcast and exposing him to all this Superman lore over the years and how that is perceived. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the actual nature of issue 43, the main stuff is to just sort of do a classic reminder of back in the day when Superman had like, you know, robot duplicates of all of his friends and that he had this like crazy Fortress of Solitude and, you know, with all these like, funky things going on with it and the kinds of pranks that he and his. His friends would like, play on each other. Like the way that the Allies play it on him, like, it's all very retro themed.

51:20
Case
I think the only thing that's like a little bit off is that the Allies are like an active participant, which Batman, yes, like the rest of the Justice Society, would be unlikely to just pop up in a Superman book back in the day. But it's still fun to see this team, especially because this is before we get a formal introduction to the team. And they do that a lot in the flashbacks. We see a thing that will later get a better look at in the modern day stuff, just so that we're kind of aware of what's looping in. But it turns out that there's basically just this robot simulation of his life going on. Here. And it's kind of sad for everyone involved because S1 is, like, malfunctioning. He shouldn't behaving this way and have free will.

52:08
Case
And everyone else is, like, kind of just, like, sad to realize that the robots, like, they didn't realize it, and they were just, like, happily, like, in this sort of, like, simulation. And especially, like, the Judy Jordan one is, like, very upset about it all. I will say that there are dividends to this issue in the later part of the run, which neither of you are probably going to read, so I'll just throw this one out there, which is that the S1 and the robot Judy Jordan, which then gets the actual Judy Jordan's consciousness transferred into it, elope and set up a world of their own where they have robot babies.

52:45
Micah
Whoa. Wacky, wacky.

52:49
Case
There's a whole issue about it. But that said, I. This issue is mostly notable because.

52:55
Jmike
Wait, wait, wait. So they found her consciousness?

52:58
Case
Yes, they. They hint at it at the end.

53:01
Jmike
Did they do the Inception thing and have to go through, like, the different layers of thought, reality, Go pull her consciousness back to our reality?

53:10
Case
We'll talk more about it later. But, yeah, ultimately they did. And then from a practical standpoint, though, the most important part of this issue is that the drawing of supreme gets put up on his refrigerator wall in Supremacy or in the Citadel supreme, which.

53:27
Micah
I mean, looking back, another funny thing where it's like they keep showing this drawing the whole time, and I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's a reminder of, you know, that little girl and the innocence of childhood and what she means to him is what I'm thinking every time it's brought up. And, I mean, yes, I think that's part of it. That's what you're supposed to think the first time. But then you find out that Dax has put, like, his robot stuff on it to destroy supreme, and you're like, oh, okay. So you were. You were the whole time just showing us, actually a loaded gun throughout this whole book, and I had no idea.

54:03
Case
Chekhov's gun. Chekhov's. Yeah.

54:05
Micah
It's pretty cool. I like that. Chekhov's childhood drawing. That's the new. The new phrase.

54:12
Case
So next up, chapter four, we get the Golden Age nod, where we get to see. And actually, this is not even like a proper Golden Age, not so much as a transition from Golden Age to, like, the 50s, like, EC Comics era, where we get the. So we get a nod to the Justice Society coming together, and then we see in flashback, their last real mission, which is when they were visited by three horror hosts like the EC Comics horror host like the Crypt Keeper. So they do three EC comics parodies. So it's like A Crime Doesn't Pay parody, a Tales from the Crypt parody, and then a MAD magazine parody, which is a direct parody of the Super Duperman cartoon from the 50s in the form of Supreme Melvin, which is, it's so spot on perfect a nod to this MAD magazine.

55:00
Case
Like this famous Mad Magazine Superman parody comic. That it. Alan Morris is having a lot of fun here is. Is what I'm getting.

55:10
Micah
I absolutely love this issue. And I think this is another moment where the meta. Because I think there's parts of the meta ness of this comic that don't work for me. Mostly again because we've seen it so many times. So having the context of how you've put it, I think I give this comic a lot more grace than on this first read through. But this part, I just loved this whole idea where these horror icon, you know, prototypes are coming to the allied Superman and they're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you fought off all this stuff, but what are you going to do about like nuclear fears and the growing drug problem and like wives who are killing their husbands because they're tired of being, you know, the quote, lower, you know, sex, obviously, you know, women and men are equal.

56:05
Micah
But I mean, that's what the comic is, you know, hinting at and stuff. My gosh, all of this, the art is incredible. And then them just being like, yeah, we can't save, like, we can't save like moral depravity. We can't punch. I loved this.

56:23
Case
It's such an elegant explanation for why this group would fall apart. Like why superheroes like this would fall out of favor in the sense that like superhero comics fell out of favor during this time and were replaced by horror and crime comics. And so how do we, like, how do we make that make sense in a world where these stories are true? And it's that literally this world of grim and grittier books and so forth that the audience like was gravitating towards was too depressing for the people involved. Like, the superheroes are like, I. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Like the police chief is a KKK man.

57:05
Micah
Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. This is just like again, I've said this phrase, I think twice now. This is when the book's really singing for me. And it's just hitting on all cylinders, and I'm like, okay, I see. I see why this book was sitting on my doorstep. You know, this is. This is great. And again, the art. I just. I love the horror art of it and the just exaggeration. It's all so good. I mean, this panel where the kid is shooting up is unbelievable. What a wonderful panel. And his veins are, like, popping, and it's just this huge light source from below. Oh, my gosh. That's so good. That is so good.

57:51
Case
Yeah. What did you guys think about the. The Allied Superman of America as a Justice Society parody? I am assuming that you guys are not familiar with which ones were pre existing characters and which ones were invented for this, so we'll go down the list. Glory was a pre existing character. She was always a Wonder Woman knockoff. That part should not be a surprise. Mighty man is a pre existing character. Die Hard's a pre existing character. Super Patriot is a pre existing character. Doc Rocket and Alley Cat are invented for this, as is Storybook Smith and Jack O'Lantern and Waxy Doyle, which is my fucking favorite, because it's a Sandman parody, like the. The 40s sandman.

58:32
Micah
Oh, wait, which guy?

58:33
Case
Waxy Doyle.

58:35
Micah
Which page is he on?

58:36
Case
I'm forgetting he first shows up with Mighty Man. It's right before the Supreme Melvin page.

58:42
Micah
Oh, okay. I got it. I got to look. You know, I mean, hey, I love. I love me some Sandman.

58:48
Jmike
Yeah, because, like, he was like, yeah, what was I thinking? Trying to fight, like, villains with Wax.

58:54
Case
Right. Just as a nod to the. The 40s Sandman, which fought villains with knockout guys.

59:00
Micah
Oh, that's too good.

59:01
Case
Yeah. Oh, and then. And then Black Hand is also originated for this. And I love that idea of him having shadow puppet powers. Like, that's so cool.

59:11
Jmike
I feel like I've seen Glory somewhere else before.

59:13
Case
Yeah, Glory. Glory's pre existing.

59:15
Jmike
Very familiar.

59:15
Case
Yeah. She. She's pre existing, and she has gone on to be very popular separately. Like, there was a really big run about 10 years ago now that recontextualized her as this sort of, like, genetically engineered super soldier kind of character. It was a very interesting but, like, a very deconstructionist stance on the character where, like, the sort of, like, beautiful archetype is like, her legend as opposed to what she, like, actually looks like when she's in battle.

59:40
Micah
Now, unrelated to the comic, you guys notice that I'm just straight whipping out a yoplay over here. I mean, I did, but just yoplay In a banana. I mean, I had a late lunch, and I'm just thinking the audience would have no idea I'm eating a banana and yoplay. As long as I don't say anything.

01:00:03
Case
Moving on to the next issue. This is one of the ones that stood out for me, just because it was one of the early ones I actually bought. I should note, I have every single issue of this book.

01:00:13
Micah
Oh, cool.

01:00:13
Case
Every issue of the Supreme Run. This is one of the ones that I really went out there to collect. I started with the Professor Knight or Professor Midnight crossover issue, but then went through and seriously went from comic shop to complete my collection here. And this is an early issue that I had. So this is Billy Friday being brought in to the Citadel supreme to see it all. And we get to see more of the weird shit that they reference in here. We also effectively do a Red Kryptonite episode.

01:00:44
Jmike
Yeah. I was gonna say, like, people, like. Like, make fun of Superman for being unnoticeable in, like, regular society, but there's no way that no one has ever realized that this guy doesn't look like Supreme.

01:00:59
Case
Yeah. They make a joke about that at one point, and I forget if it's here or in a later issue later on where someone says, it's like, you really do look like him. It's like, that's the hair.

01:01:09
Micah
Yeah. Yeah. He.

01:01:10
Jmike
Yeah, I remember that his body proportions are, like, much bigger than Superman's.

01:01:16
Micah
Yeah.

01:01:17
Jmike
Especially, like, the first shot of, like, when Billy is, like, walking with him.

01:01:21
Case
Yeah.

01:01:22
Jmike
Into the fortress, and you're, like, studious. This is a tank.

01:01:29
Micah
This. This issue. I. I really enjoy it as well.

01:01:34
Case
And.

01:01:34
Micah
And I love. I love the idea that if superheroes were real. Real, like, the reporters of the world would be comic book writers who need to, like, go and research. Like, that's. That's pretty brilliant. That's a great idea. Yeah, I love that.

01:01:49
Case
I love Billy Friday in general. I love. Okay, so I love that he gets exposed to violet supremium, and that causes him to become Elaborate Lad, as opposed to Elongated lad. And in this case, it's this, like, fractal pattern, like, his arms, like, splitting off and his arms and legs, like, splitting off into all kinds of shapes. Shapes. It's so cool. But it gets back to the whole, like, it can't. Like, Supreme's challenges are not things he can punch.

01:02:14
Micah
Yeah. Yeah.

01:02:14
Case
And this. It's like, okay, we have an infinitely expanding thing, so how do we, like, stop it? Like, well, for one thing, we have to make sure it doesn't crack the hall of beers because the end is in there. A thing that we, you know, never really take in but is apparently a.

01:02:28
Micah
Big deal, is that come back in later issues past this run. The end.

01:02:33
Case
The end does not fully. But we get a little bit more of him over the course of it all.

01:02:39
Micah
Because we just had two panels of him.

01:02:40
Case
Yeah. If I remember, sort of set up as, like, a dark side type, but we don't really see much more of him.

01:02:46
Micah
And this. This would probably make you guys appalled. But my only experience with Darkseid is a little movie called Justice League.

01:02:53
Jmike
Oh, no.

01:02:54
Micah
So my experience with him is that he's, like, the lamest villain ever, but I'm assuming that that's just poor writing.

01:03:01
Jmike
It's extremely poor writing.

01:03:03
Micah
Okay. Okay.

01:03:04
Case
Meanwhile, the flashback. We get the supremium man story, which a lot of work is being done in this whole series to, like, set up, like, future plots, because the supremium man, the whole fact that there's two supremium mans is a thing that will pay off later. But in this one, we. We get the supremium man, and he's. He's violet supremium. So it's doing things like red kryptonite. This, you know, just like with Superman, like, transforming into alternate things for 24 hours. And this is a fun tribute there. It's also a good way of setting up why Sally Supreme's adopted sister gets superpowers as well, even though she was not exposed to the original meteor. Or was she?

01:03:49
Micah
So, okay, so now that. Yeah, I haven't looked back on this, now I know that this is Dax, right?

01:03:54
Case
Yep.

01:03:56
Jmike
Spoilers.

01:03:57
Micah
Cool. Well, I hope if they've made it this far, they've been reading.

01:04:01
Case
Yeah. We mentioned there's a time. The time loop. I love that we get this, like, middle issue where it's like, oh, yeah, this is a mid stage in Dax falling backwards through time as he becomes an inert rock.

01:04:13
Micah
Yeah, that's. That's cool. It is funny, that. So, okay, huge spoilers. To find out that Dax is this guy and then also then becomes the asteroid that first creates Supreme. I was. You know, I. I think right now, 2024, I get a little sick of how, like, anytime time travel is introduced, it has to be a loop.

01:04:41
Case
Yeah.

01:04:42
Micah
It feels like we need a new. Someone needs to come up with, like, a new storytelling device for that. But again, as you said, putting this into the context of nobody's really doing this is kind of mind blowing. You know, as a first time experience, seeing that time loop, seeing them wave at supreme, all of that stuff. I mean, I can imagine if you're reading this back then, you're just like, I can't. You know, it's like the first time you saw Inception or something when you were a kid and you're just like, what? No one's ever done this. Even though there's stuff that's like it. You know, so that's. That is way cool.

01:05:18
Case
Yeah. Yeah. We get a reminder of the drawing on the wall, by the way, in this issue.

01:05:25
Jmike
Yep.

01:05:27
Case
And they resolve. This sets up like a great background plot thread, which is the many tortures of Billy Friday. So he gets sent into the photo world of Amilanth, which is of course a Kandor reference, the bottled city, even to the point where there is an equivalent to Nightwing and Flamebird that we will later see in this all where supreme goes in and becomes. I forget. Exactly. It's like Dr. Dark or something. Like that is his like, code name when he's. When he's enamelant as a. As a shadow being that terrifies the criminals of this. Of this Light world. Oh, here at the end of the issue is when he says a lot of people. Oh, can't see that myself. Oh, it's. Maybe it's just the hair color. Plus he's obviously a lot taller than you, is what they say there.

01:06:11
Case
Anyway, so Billy Friday ends up on this, like, world tour of all the weird bullshit worlds that supreme has dealt with, like, including the Reverse Time Z, the Hell of Mirrors, and of course the. The Light world of Amolinth and the future. So he just keeps on like, getting bounced around, but we just keep hearing about it at this point. Like he's. We're not like, witness to his story. They just like give us updates periodically of like, oh, yeah, he now like, he up here and now he's over in this place. Now he's crashing on Zayla Zorn's couch or whatever. All those like, weird shit there. Next up, we've got the Suprema issue.

01:06:47
Micah
And this might be my favorite issue. And I don't know what that says about me, but I just found it so hilarious.

01:06:54
Case
It's a lot of fun. I mean, like the Satana crossover or like the.

01:06:58
Micah
Yeah, but like the. And even. I mean, all the comic descriptions are great, but this is cracking me up again. See the girl of our dreams humiliated by the hussy from heck as Suprema becomes Satana slave Supreme. And that's another element that really tickled me throughout this. This whole thing is. Is all the. Let me use my shout Supreme.

01:07:22
Case
Yeah.

01:07:23
Micah
Let me use my vision Supreme. And so to do Slave supreme feels like such a payoff from how many times they've been saying these. It's too good.

01:07:30
Case
Yeah. And it's funny because this is the issue that has probably one of my favorite looks at, like, super Senses, where when supreme is trying to track down Supreme Prima, he talks about how he uses his. Like, he doesn't actually have telescopic or microsite or any of these other, like, senses. His. His consciousness just expands. He knows.

01:07:48
Micah
Oh, yeah.

01:07:49
Case
Like, that's a. A cool sequence there. Also time loop scenario here because of when he go flies at faster than light speed to find Suprema, three little shafts of light fly by him, and he pays them no mind as he goes to hunt down Suprema. And that's on the first page of this issue or second page of this issue. But right before the Suprema flashback story, then we get this cool concept of Goral the Living Galaxy, which is, like, straight. I mean, obviously, it's a very Galactus style kind of thing. Or Ego, the Living Planet. I think it's a really cool concept where it's like, oh, you have to be light years away to even see him. Otherwise you just see the lights.

01:08:26
Case
Which is in its own way, a metaphor for comics where if you get too close to a page, the dots of the image, like, just become, you know, the individual. Like, you know, magenta, green, yellow dots that are in, like, four color printing, you know.

01:08:42
Micah
Yeah, that's great. And you. You. You finally mentioned two things I know about Ego, the Living Planet, and Galactus. Like I said, I have the Marvel Unlimited app, not the DC one. One of these days. So one of these days.

01:08:56
Case
But this is the issue that brings back Radar the Hound supreme, who I fucking love. Like, yes, absolutely. The decision to have him have speakers that allows him to project his thoughts is so good because he talks like a dog the whole time.

01:09:09
Micah
Yeah, yeah.

01:09:11
Case
Getting back into, like, the whole, like, Moore versus Morrison thing. If you're a fan of We3, there's certainly a comparison you can make with. With radar because it's very much leaning into, like a. What would a super smart dog think? Like, as opposed to what is a human intelligence on a dog look like?

01:09:28
Micah
How did. How did they resolve her being married here at the end?

01:09:32
Case
Oh, they'd, like, talk.

01:09:34
Micah
Enjoy that.

01:09:34
Case
But the whole situation, they, like, reason with him.

01:09:37
Jmike
We can't punch him let's use reason and words.

01:09:40
Case
So this is fun. On the edge of a black hole, they have this, like, planetoid that is where they're holding Suprema. And because the. It's on the edge of the black hole, time passes differently. And that's why she hasn't really aged in this whole period. Not to mention the fact that, like, apparently the Supreme Being things don't age in a noticeable way. Like, supreme is still, you know, looks fairly well in his prime, even though. Yeah, he's like, 70 years old.

01:10:04
Micah
Well, and if the COVID would have, you know, he's. He's. He's balding and.

01:10:09
Case
Right.

01:10:10
Micah
Looks kind of terrible. Not that being bald is terrible. People who know me know I'm a bald man myself. But, you know, I. I shave it. I shave it. I don't keep the little. The little A, you know, speaker from the guy at. In Bespin on Empire Strikes Back thing around my head.

01:10:29
Case
But, yeah, they reason with Goral, the Living galaxy, and they convince him to go try to find his. His peers, which are quasars. And that's, like, a really cool bit of this is. This is Alan Moore types of writing right there, which is that he loves, like, little bits of science toss in and be like, here's the thing that I read about, and it'll be a fun thing to allude to and how it could be, like, oh, it's actually the whale songs of galaxies, like, traveling far away from us. So that's pretty cool. Like, and we get reminded of how cool Goral is when he, like, travels away from them, where it's like, here's a red shift of light as all the stars, like, fly away from you until you finally can see this, like, galactic figure. And then they travel back home.

01:11:07
Case
They pass by supreme on his way there.

01:11:11
Micah
Yeah, yeah.

01:11:12
Case
And return home where Suprema is welcomed. And it's. It's very much a. Like, so, like, when. When Supergirl was first introduced, she was. Was like, Superman's secret weapon. Like, she lived at an orphanage and wouldn't go out in public. Being a superhero. She would train in secret with Superman. And so they had an issue which was, like, her cotillion or her quinceanera kind of thing, or sweet 16, where she comes out to the world and there's a big parade on the COVID of Superman. And it feels very much like that. The next issue is our world's finest issue. It's actually called the Finest of All Possible Worlds. And it. It. We. We get. We we get our Batman here. Finally we get Professor Knight and Twilight. And I love her by the way, as a Robin analog.

01:12:00
Case
You don't get too many like good Robin analogs. And here's a solid one.

01:12:04
Micah
Yeah. And. And this is where no, I guess we have been introduced to Darius earlier when he's in that. When the time that I think it's like issue two.

01:12:14
Case
Yeah. The second issue we see is flat. Yeah.

01:12:17
Micah
This is like a more explanat exploration of Dax here.

01:12:22
Case
Yeah. I also enjoy Jack a Dandy as.

01:12:25
Micah
Yeah.

01:12:26
Case
As the Joker equivalent.

01:12:28
Micah
Well, and you know what is another. I'm realizing through this book how funny Alan Moore is because again, I just don't think he really gets that much credit for being funny. And, and it's just like these names of the made up characters are so close to good names but also so laughably bad. Jack O'Dandy it seems like a name that someone would come up with, but it also doesn't. And I just feel like that is him so intentionally naming them just off. So it's just this goofy Jack a day. Jack O Danny.

01:13:04
Case
Yeah.

01:13:04
Micah
Well, it feels like silly. I love that.

01:13:06
Case
I mean so he looks like the, like he's designed to look like the cartoon from the New Yorker and the. All the side shot. Like there's all these like profile shots. Like this is the one that really looks like very Dick Sprang. Like who did a lot of like the art for like Batman stuff in World's Finest. And if you look at like the Dick Spring Joker, like there is also a similarly cartoony kind of style to the character. It's a different style of cartoon, but it is just as much like this like doesn't look like a real face kind of thing. And I, I think that it works really well at just being like. I just noticed he has a cocktail shaker in one of the shots when they're talking. I wasn't even paying attention to that.

01:13:50
Case
I, I think it works really well to have this like, you know, the, the, this similar like stylized character in the world of these superheroes. And so we have like a fun power swap story. And it's cute to see them like both have issues where it's like, oh, I'm leaping into the heavens, I can't turn off my heat vision. And like supreme having none of his powers and they're disoriented and yada, yada, sir.

01:14:14
Jmike
It is called Stare Supreme. Okay.

01:14:17
Micah
Yeah. Stair Supreme.

01:14:19
Jmike
Heat Vision is stair supreme, sir.

01:14:23
Micah
I was really surprised and I'm curious if you guys thought this as well, especially on your first read through case. But I would think if I was reading this, if someone told me about this, I would think that all of the old issues, you know, the flashback issues within the issues, I would think that I would want to like blow through those and just get to like the meat. But I found myself, I, I think upon reflection here, I think I on the whole enjoyed the flashback elements maybe even more than like the present day stuff.

01:14:57
Case
Like, I think that's well written. I think that's really fair because it is the satire of these older books with much more consistent art. Yeah, I think there's a lot of really cool stuff going on in each of these flashbacks and a lot of the story is being told in the flashback. Like again, Darius Dax is more important in flashback than we see at all in his main story. Like the modern day supreme stuff is for the most part him cleaning up the shit that he left behind when he left Earth. And meanwhile we see like the actual confrontation is like coming around in the background.

01:15:35
Micah
Yeah. And I mean, I think too it could be that, you know, I'm a. Even though this is a little later than what they're aping on here, but you know, I'm a student of like Jack Kirby, Stanley Steve Ditko. Those are, those are like. That's probably my favorite time period of comics because I'm an Amazing Spider man guy and we're not quite there with these. But I think there's something hearkening back to just when there was a little more simplicity and maybe that's part of the brilliance of this story too, where you have these really simplistic fun tales while some of the more complicated stuff up to this date in comics had been written is filling in the gaps. I don't know. That's. That's all, I guess as we're talking about it, I'm realizing I liked this more than I thought I did.

01:16:21
Micah
So you, you're achieving your mission Case.

01:16:24
Case
Again, I'm an evangelist for this book. So then we get this cool thing. So Professor Knight and Twilight are comatose. They and have been that way since the 70s, apparently without. They have not breathed or they have not needed to breathe, they have not needed to eat. They have remained the exact same way in this whole period. Period. And so supreme tries to enter their mind using what is kind of like an Inception thing, frankly. Yes. Yeah. And he goes in through, like, his thoughts into, like, communal thoughts, into the actual thoughts of Professor Knight and finds his soul is missing. And I, I thought again, this is the first issue of Supreme I ever read.

01:17:02
Micah
Oh, okay.

01:17:03
Case
And this is a, I think, a very cool issue in that regard. Like, like, we set up like a cool dynamic with like, this Batman type character. And then he's like, his mission is to explore the soul of him by way of entering through the dream time. Like, very cool stuff. Then they set up like, oh, well, it's. It's got to be a villain who probably isn't like, one of his, like, actual villains. It's probably like one of his villains from the Allies. And we introduce what is one of the weirdest little bits of trivia about this. The character of Hollywood Oliver Damek slash Ramik. And they alternate between the two throughout the entire. The rest of the book. They do not know how to spell this character.

01:17:44
Micah
Oh, yeah.

01:17:48
Case
And we get. We get the alliance of the. Or the re. The reunion of The Allies, the 60s version of the superhero team, which is very much the Justice League equivalent of it all. And in this case, these are all characters who are existing superheroes in the Image universe or. Or Rob Liefeld's awesome universe at this point, having spun off of Image. And by spun off, I mean everyone kicked Rob Liefeld out and he had his own separate studio. So Die Hard, Mighty. Mighty man is actually Eric Larson's character. He's part of the Savage Dragon universe, as is Super Patriot, who is the Captain America equivalent of the Savage Dragon universe. But Glory and Roman are. And Die Hard are Rob Liefeld characters. Characters.

01:18:30
Micah
Now this. These last two pages where he's on the phone and then the. The group shows up. If the whole comic. If the art was like this, and I'm not necessarily saying dark, but there's. This is much more striking than a lot of. A lot of the issues to me. And I don't know, maybe it's just because it is that contrast, but it just feels like this is so much more put together than a lot of the other models. Modern parts of the comic.

01:18:57
Case
Yeah.

01:18:59
Micah
And I really like that.

01:19:00
Case
Yeah, it's. This issue has pretty good art. I. I'm not going to deny that.

01:19:05
Micah
Who is. Who's on this one?

01:19:06
Case
Do you know JJ Bennett on that issue, which I'm not sure if that's Joe Bennett and just like for some reason they named him separately or if it's actually a separate person. I don't know.

01:19:17
Micah
Yeah, that's Weird. It's not on the.

01:19:19
Case
But this gets us into then our. Our tribute to the Justice League. And. And so rather than having flashbacks in this issue, this next issue that comes up, instead we see individual panels or rather individual covers of their issues, which is so great. I love these because the Justice League is one of those books where the covers are really well known. The first appearance of the Justice League, when they're fighting Starro the Conqueror, they do this parody of that with the Florax the Dominator.

01:19:49
Micah
What's that issue you referenced by Justice League? I just want to look it up and see Starro the Conqueror.

01:19:54
Case
It's not Justice League One. It is brave and the bold.

01:19:58
Micah
Oh, man. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Wow. That. That really makes this sing even more. Wow. That's really cool.

01:20:04
Case
Yeah. It makes me think of the article that Mark Waid wrote in the. I think it's the preface to the Squadron supreme where he talks about his relationship with Mark Grunewald. And he says that the game they used to play was that they would just, like, give issue numbers and then describe what was the story of that issue of Justice League. And this feels like that because we're. We're getting, like, all these, like, they're. They're talking about their memories of their respective, like, adventures as a team. And we're seeing that in the form of covers of the different. Of the different issues, which I think is so fun. Also weird when we get in there, I'm pretty sure that. That when they get attacked while they're in the mind space, that those are the weird squids from Watchmen.

01:20:46
Case
Like, they just, like, look so much like it.

01:20:48
Jmike
Is that what they were?

01:20:49
Case
They look a lot like it.

01:20:50
Micah
Oh. Oh. Well. And I. I just don't want to.

01:20:52
Case
I don't think they're. I don't think they're explicitly that. I think that the artist just, like, aped it.

01:20:58
Micah
I. I don't want us to overlook just this great line of dialogue from the second cover. Spread. Work harder, my super slaves. Now you belong to Hover Ramic, slave trader of the Spirit Realm. And then later you have when the. The guy is petrifying everyone and you hear the thunder. Thoughts of Choke. Once Mighty man has been turned to stone like us, the Basilisk will have completed his collection of the Allies.

01:21:28
Case
Yeah. Or Prismalo the painter. And it like, God. Each one of these, like, they're. They're such great tributes to different Justice League stories, but it's mostly like a travel montage.

01:21:41
Micah
Yeah.

01:21:41
Case
As they come up and we find like all these 60 superheroes are frozen in place inside this prison of Oliver Ramic slash Damic.

01:21:50
Micah
Well, and I, I do really love the idea of subconscious. You go in and at first it's like advertisements everywhere, like Coca Cola and all of that, where it's like, those are the things that we're seeing all the time in life. So they're kind of at our front. The first thing you have to penetrate, then they go deeper and you see like all these religious symbols and stuff, like the deeper part of. Of people. And then they go past that to let their subconscious. That is really a cool idea.

01:22:19
Case
Yeah, it was so cool in the issue prior and remains very cool to see it drawn out for these desperate characters. And then we get what is really fun, which is a reminder of a team that has both Superman and Captain Marvel would have a really effective front line if they go to war, which is like, you want to do the shockwave sandwich, which trick up there goes Whitey and Mighty. And they're just like ripping through everything because they're, you know, invulnerable, super strong, super fast individuals that can fly. Ramic Slash Damic isn't ultimately the main villain of this all. It's actually Optilix. And this is one spot where I really wish that we had seen Optilix in the flashback first.

01:23:05
Jmike
Oh, we saw the gun thing.

01:23:06
Case
We saw the gun, but we didn't see him. And I would have really preferred like the. Like, I don't mind him being drawn as just like this big thing of light, especially in the weird realm that they're in. But, like, I would have rather seen like the Brainiac looking, like, mirror reflection character that we would see in the later appearances.

01:23:23
Jmike
Yeah, that's what I say. We see, like, him before he converts himself to light much later here you're like, oh, that's what he looks like.

01:23:32
Case
Well, he's. He is living light there too. It's just like he's. He's drawn to look like Brainiac, but he's like being put like he's a hologram being held together by floating mirrors. And I think that's just such a cooler version than just like this ball of light that they use in this, the sequence here. Even though the lighting effect, despite the fact that the printing is shit, is like, fairly cool in terms of like early 90s gradients is all I'm saying.

01:23:57
Micah
And I think this speaks to earlier where it's like, I just don't. I don't think he's interested in that with. With the. That Alan Moore is really interested in those details of the fight or even some of the details of, you know, the villains and looks beyond these flashbacks that are. That are so detailed and have such standout imagery, a lot of the other stuff is just not. Not standout. And I know some of that does fall on the artist, but it does feel like an intentional writing stroke.

01:24:29
Case
Well, I mean, then we look at like. I mean, I. Micah, this. This next flashback should probably appeal a lot to you. Where supreme, the space years. Like, this looks like. I mean, there's some Steranko in here, but it also like, looks kind of Ditko esque.

01:24:42
Micah
Oh, yeah.

01:24:43
Case
It's certainly very like late 60s, early 70s kind of art. And I mentioned the reference to the polyester years with like the sideburns, but yeah, like this. Oh yeah, this has a lot of like Marvel version vibe.

01:24:56
Micah
Oh, totally. Yeah. This. I forget the Jacko Jack of Lanterns is. Is so like Dr. Strange. Steve Ditko. Oh my God.

01:25:05
Case
I mean, with. With the Spectre also rolled in.

01:25:07
Micah
But yeah, it's so good. But then I. It's interesting too how you have like the blood coming out of his chin when he's getting beat up and stuff, which gives it that weird like. Oh, but you wouldn't see that back then. Even though it's not that much blood, it's still enough that. That would have been like. I don't know if they would have done that back in the 60s, which I. I love. I think that gives it this weird kind of uncanny quality. And then this great spread that this. I keep saying spread, but this page, that's like psychedelic. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly where I was at. Yeah, it's so cool.

01:25:43
Case
We see Supreme's brain break and that's the in universe explanation for why he has like this amnesia and all these gaps and everything and like all the.

01:25:50
Micah
Oh yeah, all of that.

01:25:52
Case
But it takes a while to get there because it. The revisions are the main story and the thing that we're thinking about for a while. We don't really care when we get to the like. Oh yeah, there is an in universe explanation. Like the re. Like the reality is the. It's the. The meta explanation, like the narrative that is the thing that is compelling to us.

01:26:15
Micah
Well, and this is such a. This was something that really impressed. We impressed me with Marvel, man. Like, I. I was kind of mind blown when I was reading that and you were getting revealed of how this character had been dormant for so long, and you were seeing these flashbacks to original issues, like, recreated and stuff from. From my memory. That's what they were. And it's. It's just interesting that Alan Moore is so interested in, like, examining, deconstructing, reconstructing superstition heroes. But at the end of the day, he's not. He's not pulling like a Todd Phillips Joker kind of thing. I never saw the new movie, but thing where he's like, I actively don't like this stuff. That's what Todd Phillips is kind of saying. When I saw Joker 1, I felt like he was saying, I don't like comics.

01:27:03
Micah
I don't like this stuff. And people who like them are stupid. And Alan Moore isn't doing that. He's like, this rocks. I love this stuff. I don't know that he loves it anymore, but at least when he was writing it, he's like, I love this stuff and keeping it in universe and having these in universe explanations and not just being like, well, screw what the last writer said. I don't care. It's like he. He covers his bases. He does it all. So for those of us who are on podcasts talking about comic books, we can be like, okay, yes, that. That is checked. My brain is satisfied. I love that.

01:27:40
Case
Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And I love the. The clever ways he does things like the. The. So, like, Glory and Supreme are wandering through this, like, desert of this, like, light hologram that, like, optics has trapped them in, and they figure out where they need to be based on how their shadows are positioned because the light sources is different than what they can see because they're inside a hologram. And I think that's really cool. Meanwhile, I would say that this is an area where the art kind of doesn't live up to what probably the description of everything was. Like when supreme uses his shout supreme to free all the heroes. Like, that should be a really dramatic shot. And I think that this is probably an artist taking some easy passes on.

01:28:19
Micah
On it all.

01:28:20
Case
You can even. And I won't even say the pencil necessary because, like, you can see a lot of outlines of characters that are not colored in. And I just think that this is not an artist team that had a lot of time and they just kind of were rushing out initially issue and didn't put the. The labor into, like, having, you know, like, we see these, like, shattered tubes with, like, all these, like, out or like, yeah, you know, little. The silhouettes of, like, characters. And I. I get that they probably didn't want to, like, go super deep in drawing and designing all these characters because they're not pre existing characters. They're just references to 1960s DC Comics characters.

01:28:55
Case
Like Poly man is like clearly Plastic man, for example, but, like, you know, they're not going to invade, invent everything whole clothier and get zero credit for it because that's how, like, for higher comic writing or comic, like, artworks. So it's just kind of a bummer here because it's. It's one where you can imagine what the script looked like to describe, like. Yeah, you know, all of a sudden there's like this triumphant image of, like, all these heroes freed, you know, instead it's just like, all of a sudden Professor Knight's just standing in the middle of the room and like, out. And like. Yeah, it's not a very dramatic shot. Nor is it like the. Nor is like the fight against Optilux. I do like that the way they beat him is by supreme antagonizing him and then trapping him inside a prism.

01:29:36
Case
Like, again, supreme is a character who is super powerful, except, like, the only things that he can't fight are the things that he can't fight. Like, that no one could fight, because how do you fight light?

01:29:48
Micah
And then. Then we go to. I mean, right. This is the best issue, right?

01:29:54
Case
The date issue. It's up there.

01:29:57
Micah
I think this is. I think this. I mean, I said that the Satana supreme was my favorite. That's like my asterisk favorite. But I think this one is, like, the most well written and most interesting, and it's kind of the best one, I think.

01:30:10
Case
Yeah. So it's got the. It certainly has the best art. Chris Sprouse is so good.

01:30:15
Micah
Yeah. Yeah.

01:30:15
Case
And like I said, he becomes the regular artist going forward after this book. And for what that's worth, that's like five issues. There's like, a weird issue later on where, like, they clearly cut together, like, the last, like, three pages using, like, pre existing panels that Sprouse had worked on, like, from. From other issues. And I could, like, see it's like how they recolored characters. And I'm like, that character's wet. That's why their hair is that way. Why, like, why are they using this panel here? Because there were financial issues with this book. Like. Like, whoa. But, yeah, so there's a couple things going on in this issue. So Ethan Crane, supreme, is a comic book artist, and Diana Dane has been assigned to work on the Omni man. That Ethan is the artist for.

01:31:01
Case
And they have this really sexy planning meeting inside at Diana's apartment. And they're just. It's really flirty. It's also extremely meta commentary heavy. Like, they keep talking about, like, how they would structure the issue. And, like, then the issue just does the. That structure where it's like, oh, well, we would do flashbacks to, like, set this whole thing up. And then we'd have like a. A teaser at the end for the next, you know, for the next issue. That would be, like, right. Really ominous. And like, sure enough, that's what happens in this issue.

01:31:29
Micah
I. I really, art wise, I think this issue is, you know, like you said, kind of head and shoulders above the rest. And, and I'm always a fan of when artists can basically repeat panels and show changing action. So, like, when you look at the scene where they're on the couch and it's. It's a repeated, you know, setup. But then you see how she's moving around him and then his body and how he's, like, rigid as she grabs the script that's across from his body. Oh, my gosh, that's just great. That's good stuff. And there's so much of that, like, at the beginning of this issue, there's that she's on the phone, and the, you know, the camera, if you want to call it that, is like dollying backward as you see him streak by in the background.

01:32:16
Micah
I mean, all of that stuff that's just like, slam dunking on the artist right there. Or they are slam dunking on us.

01:32:23
Case
And on shots like that, where we see, like, a, like a tighter shot on a character. I often, like, will look at, like, things like hair or, like, where the details would be most likely to be them. Just like, copy pasting the previous. The previous panel. And Sprouse is not doing that here. Like, if you look at Diana's hair, it is different wavelengths or, like, different, like, waves of hair as we, like, zoom in on her.

01:32:44
Micah
Oh, yeah, you're right.

01:32:45
Case
Which is very cool. Again, this is the quality of the art that will be representative of, like, the later part of the run, which is just. It's just a bummer. That is not the rest. But the good news is Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse do Tom Strong together. And that book looks fucking amazing for their entire time working together. And that doesn't have the financial issues. It runs their entire story. Oh, cool. That's a book. We will talk about that at some point. J. Mike. Because it is. Well, because it's the Doc Savage story. And it's like a very. It's like trying to do Superman without superpowers.

01:33:22
Micah
Oh, that sounds good. I might have to. I might be waiting for that to show up on my doorstep. I'm just kidding.

01:33:30
Case
So inside this, like, this date that is going on, this, like, planning meeting, they have these, like, flashbacks to what was a, like, projection that supreme uses, like, his, like, computer to, like, illustrate. And there are straight up Superman books that do this. J Mike, you still have my copy of the greatest Superman stories ever told. Hey, bingo card punch, that one. But you still have my copy of the greatest Superman stories ever told. And in there is the Futuro story where Superman does analysis of what it would look like if he had never left Krypton. And if Krypton hadn't blown up. And we see, like, this whole world, like, this whole story of his life. If Krypton. If Krypton never blew up. And it's just the end of the issue is just Superman with Batman and Robin being like, huh, that's pretty weird.

01:34:18
Jmike
It's like that Futurama bit where they look at the TV and they see. They see different scenarios of things. I forgot what that stupid thing was called. But they do something like that to Futurama.

01:34:28
Case
I mean, it's a sci fi trope to have a computer that can sort of, like, predict the future and show, like, future possible stories for the characters. So that part it, like, again, this is very trope heavy, like, invoking of just classic comic book kind of fare and showing off these three different projections of, well, what would these relationships look like? And they're all so fucking misogynistic. But then Diana comments on how misogynistic they are. So it's like, so inside Baseball this issue, or rather Inside Baseball this episode is going to be dropping right after the episode where we did the table read of the radio play that I did.

01:35:08
Case
And in that, I'm doing kind of a similar thing where there's, like, specific elements of misogyny and then people calling it out as a reference to the era being like, well, yeah, there was that misogyny in. In that material. And we're acknowledging that it existed and we're poking fun at it as on purpose kind of thing.

01:35:26
Micah
Yeah, I mean, if you. If you read this book and you were like, yeah, I agree with that. I mean, you're nutso.

01:35:35
Case
So. So we see supreme go through three different possible mates and his first one is Judy Jordan, and it's terrible.

01:35:42
Micah
Yeah, she Just wants to keep up with the Joneses. That's like, the only thing that. That she's concerned with. So he has to, like, get a house because she doesn't want to live in Citadel Supreme. He has to get a car. He keeps having to help the neighbors out, which I really loved. This guy. What does he say? Hi, Judy. Listen, our lawnmower is busted. We wondered if your hubby could bioengineer a strain of grass that doesn't need cutting. Sure thing, Henry. Right after he waxes the supreme mobile.

01:36:13
Case
It's great. And, you know, speaking as a suburbanite dad these days, like, I certainly relate to this existence of being stripped of all of your ability to go hang out with your friends and everything because you've. You've got your. Your responsibilities to attend to.

01:36:32
Micah
Oh, man. And you know, the other thing that I really liked about this issue, and I'll. I'll have a little thing to say here is that. Boy, what a bad sentence I just constructed. But this. This reminded me a lot of Mary Jane and Peter Parker. That this is my expertise because I read Spider man all the time. Time. And throughout the publication of Spider man, there. There's always this, like, this push and pull where there's fans that think he has to be with Mary Jane and there's fans that think he doesn't have to be with her. And you get into this weird zone where, like, he gets married in the 80s, I think. And then everyone's like, all these writers can't figure out how to just not make Mary Jane at home always worrying about him.

01:37:21
Micah
So then you have, like, 10 years of her just doing that. Maybe 20. And then they have to, like, undo it with Satan. That's. That's how they get out of that one. And so then they get him back to basics. And then now you have, like, what they've been doing for the last, like, two years where they dangle this weird carrot in front of us for this, the most recent run, which I've really not enjoyed. Some of it's been good, but a lot of it hasn't where it's like, she's with this other guy. And. But they're dangling it. Like, of course they'll break up and she'll get with Peter, but then they're not doing that. And then Peter's not moving on. And it's kind of like, okay, guys, you gotta figure something out. Like.

01:38:00
Micah
And so I love how in this, we're seeing them in Universe supreme, you know, saying that they're Discussing how he can't be with women. But then he's also noticing, like, well, I could never do it because I'm a human hero. And so in universe and meta commentary about comics, it just works so well. And that's another reason this issue, like, really spoke to me. Because it's like, you know, the Office, when Jim and Pam got together, the show just wasn't quite as good. It's the classic, like, sitcom trope and comics are like that.

01:38:32
Case
Yeah. So we, so we really, like, explore, like, okay, well, maybe it doesn't work with one thing I really love in the. This, like, flashback version where it's like they're getting married and it's like, oh, I can't wait to take Judy home and find a reveal to her that her husband is. Or her groom supreme is none other than soft spoke Ethan Crane. It's like, of course. The 50s version wouldn't like, have that be revealed that early. Like, like, we would wait until they're already married to have the secret identity you reveal.

01:39:01
Micah
But, but groom Supreme. Come on.

01:39:05
Case
So then we set up that. All right, well, maybe not a normal woman as, like, as his paramour. What about something that's like, kind of like, crazy? And so they do the, the Lori Limmeris version of the character. In this case, it is a, angel who is a hypothetical concept that they make real. And it's horrifying what happens to her.

01:39:30
Micah
Yeah, she eats chips and dies, basically.

01:39:33
Case
It's like that episode of Futurama again, referencing Futurama. But it's like that episode of Futurama where Binder becomes human and he dies by, like, eating himself into oblivion. Which I believe is one of that projections. Yeah. So it is straight up doing that.

01:39:46
Micah
Okay.

01:39:47
Case
Wow.

01:39:47
Micah
Yeah.

01:39:49
Jmike
Because at first, like, she's all happy about everything, and then she goes out in the public and like, people are like, she's angel. She can grant our wishes. She can. She can heal us.

01:39:57
Case
Yeah. Everyone wants a piece of her. Yeah.

01:39:59
Jmike
Yeah. And he's like, maybe you should just stay home. Here's a TV and the couch. You should relax for a while. And then he goes off and does his superhero thing as he comes back and his robots are like, oh, this is a bad idea. This is a very bad idea.

01:40:12
Case
She's literally eating herself to death. Yeah. Which the one thing that I thought was, like, kind of funny is that explains why it wouldn't make sense for supreme to date his impossible angel. Girlfriend. But the actual conversation that they're having about Omni man, that doesn't work. It's a different circumstance with his mermaid girlfriend. That isn't the same. The reasons why supreme doesn't get with angel are different than why Omni man shouldn't get with a mermaid also. Yes, it is. Omni man is the character in the comic that he's working on that is a Superman parody. It is not the Omni man from Invincible, for the record, even though Superman and that Omni man would have a fight later on.

01:40:54
Case
Anywho, lastly, they explore, well, what if it was, like, a Wonder Woman type character and this one ends with them just, like, getting into a terrible fight. I couldn't stop listening to supreme in this flashback, specifically sounding like Peter Griffin to me, only because certain other persons that threw. Throwing a tantrum stormed home to their mother goddess.

01:41:19
Micah
Yeah, yeah. Now I gotta reread it, like, thinking.

01:41:25
Jmike
About, like, what was that? There was that whole arc, and it was a new 52 where Superman and Wonder Woman got together.

01:41:29
Case
Yeah.

01:41:30
Jmike
And people were like, we like it, but we don't like it because it's not what we're used to seeing. And it feels weird.

01:41:36
Case
Well, in this, they get into a terrible fight. And like I said, at the end of that fight, like, look at that last panel of their fight. It looks like that. That panel from. From Miracle man where, like, after Kid. Kid Miracles Man.

01:41:47
Micah
Yeah, you're right.

01:41:47
Case
Like, it's the only time that we see, like, truly the effects of a superhero fight in this whole universe. And it is horrifying. And then we get this, like, wonderful, extremely sexy, like, they're about to kiss moment. And then it's like, oh, but then it wouldn't work. Why? Because it'd be a lie. Yeah, I guess it would be.

01:42:07
Micah
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, there's that meta commentary where it's like, comic book writers can't figure out how to get people together. I know someone could do it, but you just have to be prepared for people to be upset, which I. It seems like, is not a possible thing anymore because of too many deaths.

01:42:26
Case
So they do actually explore their relationship further, which is. Is cool. We. We see them, like, actually get together, and then it gets weird when Eric Larson comes in. So we do kind of explore it. And a later series that is a Supreme book. Supreme Blue Rose by Warren Ellis is Diana Dane is the main character of that.

01:42:44
Micah
Oh, cool.

01:42:45
Case
Which is actually really fun, I think.

01:42:48
Micah
I think the problem lies when you have a character that's like 30 plus years old. That's when. That's when they're certain. Yeah, you have to make it new, but also not make it.

01:42:56
Case
Oh, for real. Speaking of making something new, we. We cut over to Judy Jordan and her. Her granddaughter Hilda, who wants to draw a new drawing of Supreme. So Citadel. And it's like a blueprint.

01:43:10
Micah
Yeah.

01:43:10
Case
And she does it, like, instantly. And that's like the ominous thing that they hinted at would be at the end of this issue earlier on.

01:43:18
Micah
Well, and then this. This next issue, you know, that I'm gonna. I. I have to give this one high props because they say, great, Kirby cigar. And then when he punches Cyber Zeke, he says, here's your no prize. Here's your no prize.

01:43:32
Case
Yeah, that feels like just such a commentary. Like all the Image villains of the time.

01:43:37
Micah
Oh, yeah.

01:43:38
Case
Like, it feels like just like all the. Like the Spawn villains of the day. And I'm sorry I cut you off there.

01:43:43
Micah
Oh, no. That was it. That was it. No, I was just agreeing with you. I mean, I don't know much about image comics beyond this, but I'm just going, oh, okay. Yeah. That's just kind of a nameless. I don't know. There's nothing really to remember him by. And I just love that he points out a continuity error in Omni man, and then he says, well, here's your no prize. I mean, that's great.

01:44:10
Case
Then we have a nice little moment of supreme talking to Diana, and then that leads into a nod to those old Superman's girlfriend, Lois Lane comics, which is a gap in my research. I need to read those at some point, because it's surprising to me that ran for as long as it. It did. That there was just like, yeah, Superman's girlfriend, Lois Lane was its own book for. For a real long time.

01:44:33
Jmike
And remember that one thing that happened, guys, it is.

01:44:37
Micah
I mean, I mean, I'm sure it's more that, but especially with them mentioning Kirby and the Stan Lee thing. This does kind of remind me of Fantastic Four, this little issue in between.

01:44:46
Case
I think that's fair, but I think that's because Fantastic Four, I. I think that 60s Fantastic Four is a continuation of, like, the. The super science concept that Superman has. And there is more crossover between those two books than people I think realize.

01:45:06
Micah
Okay, yeah, like Kirby.

01:45:08
Case
I mean, Kirby doing Fantastic Four, like, that's that sort of out there, like, look how big this universe is kind of book, which is what the 50s Superman book was also great, expansive, really creative Types working on it. So we get a look into the rogues gallery of supreme, which is kind of fun just to, you know, reassess all the characters. We see Darius Dax. We see Stupendo the Simian Supreme. We get Immortus the Reverse supreme from a different mirror or from a mirror timeline dimension. Gorgo the space pirate. Zaz the sprite supreme, who I love as being he can only exist in prime numbered dimensions is his whole deal.

01:45:46
Micah
Yeah, that's fun.

01:45:47
Case
Which means he can work in a comic book because the comic book is three dimensional, but a comic book is not four dimensional. So he couldn't actually exist in our dimension because it's not prime numbered. The televillain is fun. He becomes important in a later story that where he, like, arranges for a breakout from the Hell of Mirrors. So it's good to have him. It's good to set up the two different supremium men. I think that will again be important. But also it's good to remind us about the supremium man, because that's going to pay off in an issue from here. And then we get the Shadow Supreme, Imrapus sort of like pulling a prank, and it turns out to actually be S1 and S2 with makeup on, which is the kind of dick move that, like, super.

01:46:31
Case
This is the Superman is a dick. Like, kind of like.

01:46:34
Jmike
Yep.

01:46:34
Case
Like, you know that the COVID of that would be on that website, super dickery.com and we see all these, like, variations of Juju Jordan, and many of them are references to other characters besides just like, Lana Lang and Lois Lane, because we get the giant turtle and we get the, like, stretchy arms, like, elongated lad. So there's, like, clearly some Jimmy Olsen in there. But all those transformations of, like, those classic comics are represented here, which is rather fun. And then we cut to the meat of the story, which is Judy Jordan and Hilda flying up to the Citadel supreme and destroying all of the suprematons.

01:47:07
Micah
Yeah, yeah.

01:47:08
Case
With no trouble.

01:47:10
Micah
Yeah.

01:47:11
Case
And then supreme being surprised and trapped in the hell of mirrors, and Judy saying that this is not Judy that you're talking to. Bum, bum. All right, so how did you guys feel when you got to this point?

01:47:29
Jmike
I was very confused.

01:47:32
Micah
That was exactly what I was going to say. I was like, I know we're going to. We're going to explain it. But I was like, you know, I couldn't guess. I mean, one thing I've realized is I can't guess what an Alan Moore comic is going to do. Even when it's following tropes, it's like, I know there's going to be a big battle, but I don't know how these people got here or who they are. He's always unique in that. I. I don't know who could guess his. Where he's going with his stories because, like, when.

01:48:02
Jmike
And even when they explained it took me back to. I don't remember case, but there was this Teen Titans episode or after Slade died, Robin was going through his stuff, and Slade, like, had, like, some dust that had almost exactly the same thing that Dax did with his little microchip dust.

01:48:25
Case
Again, this is. This is before that in terms of the comic or comic versus the show.

01:48:31
Jmike
He was just like. Even after he died, he was like, no, as long as you live, I'm going to be the thing to haunt you in your nightmares even after I'm gone. And he was just beating the crap out of Robin from beyond the grave. And that's what this reminded me from. Reminded me of.

01:48:48
Case
Yep.

01:48:49
Jmike
I was like, how the heck did he pull this crap off? I was like, oh, wait, comic books.

01:48:55
Micah
Yes.

01:48:56
Case
Yeah. So I thought that this was a genius plot twist.

01:49:01
Jmike
Oh, yeah, it's great. It's great.

01:49:03
Micah
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's great.

01:49:04
Case
The. The. The. I. I thought that setting up, like, the Lana Lang type as this, like, old grandma and then revealing that it's actually like Lex Luthor has having taken over the brain is so cool. And it, you know, we. We deal with, like, the cancer stuff with the supremium, like, giving. Giving Darius to ax cancer. We. We deal with, like, the copying the brain into. Into Judy by way of the. The nano dust. And then the. The. The wax having nano. Nanoparticles for the tracking information. Like, it's so cool. Like, the setup for, like, what this master plan of Darius Dax is. And then we get a callback to the. The allied Superman, like, the 40s issue because he brought Magno over, like, the enemy of, like, the rope, like the Amazo equivalent robot.

01:49:52
Case
And that becomes his body that he uses for the rest of the issue once he slips into something a little more comfortable, I think is what he says, while grandma finds something decent to wear is what she says.

01:50:04
Jmike
Yeah, there you go.

01:50:05
Case
And so this is fun. I mean, like, we have a lot of stuff come together. We have the Citadel being revealed, and the Citadel has been a very big part of the story. So it's. It's good that there is a payoff to what I think three issues are all about the Citadel Supreme.

01:50:17
Micah
That sounds about right. Yeah.

01:50:18
Case
Which is a lot when you consider this is a 12 issue Superman story, like 3 issues. Being about the Fortress of Solitude would feel excessive. And it's important here because it's like, oh yeah, it is this impregnable floating citadel that has all of these like, space guns from super villains on it floating over like one of the biggest cities in the world. So it shows off like just how terrifying a Superman would be with just to have it like the mask, like, ripped off. You know, in this scenario, it's like, oh, yeah, well, you had this like, you know, it's. It's just like the Justice League cartoon where it's like, wait, you had a space laser, like this whole time?

01:50:58
Jmike
Was it the Dark Heart episode where they have to like, use the laser on the end of the space station?

01:51:07
Case
Oh, yeah, yeah. When they actually. When they have to use it as opposed to when it gets hacked later on and like, Sean Jones has to like, rip it apart to like stop it from firing on Earth.

01:51:15
Jmike
Yeah, but that little girl is terrifying. Yeah, little cyborg kid has been terrifying.

01:51:23
Case
Yeah. I love the Shadow supreme also. I think he's very cool as this like, devoted servant type character. It's a very different style of copy of Superman from Bizarro. And it's. It's rather nice.

01:51:36
Jmike
I do have a question, though.

01:51:37
Case
Sure.

01:51:37
Micah
Oh yeah, go ahead.

01:51:39
Jmike
Who is the guy in the throne on the. Who's sitting on the throne?

01:51:44
Case
Oh, that's the end.

01:51:45
Micah
Is that the end?

01:51:46
Case
Who is supposed to be kind of like a dark side style, like master villain type character?

01:51:53
Jmike
Like, hey, we brought you supreme. And he's like, I don't care. Get out of here.

01:51:57
Case
Yeah, yeah. I think it's really clever the way that Suprema calls in reinforcements by way of love that.

01:52:05
Micah
Yeah.

01:52:05
Case
Saying the exact date and time on a news broadcast so that Zayla Zarn would come back with, with her reinforcements. And we also get the rest of the allied Superman or the allies. Pardon me, Professor Knight and Twilight. We get all of them showing up, which is great.

01:52:20
Micah
We. We get the return of what's his name? Billy Friday.

01:52:24
Case
Yes.

01:52:24
Micah
And then he gets the whole cycle starts over for him.

01:52:27
Case
Oh, not this again.

01:52:31
Micah
It is funny though, how he starts where he's like, oh, really? Look, hey, look, I told the. The convention organization last time. I'm not judging any more fancy dress up. And so. Wait a minute, don't I recognize that glowing rock in Your hand. Isn't that the rock that turned me into. Oh, no.

01:52:45
Case
Yeah.

01:52:47
Micah
And then he starts morphing in the next page.

01:52:50
Case
Yeah. And it's great because the reason why he shows up is that he was with Zarn in the future prior to this. So, like, his whole sequence of events led him here. Full circle. Yeah. No, I love that. I love the. I love magno. Like, absorbing the supremium and turning into the Supremian man and falling through space time. Like, that's so cool.

01:53:12
Micah
Yeah. Well, now that you've mentioned that, this is kind of the first book to do this. I like this a lot more than the first time or then when I was reading it earlier.

01:53:23
Case
Yeah. You know. Yeah. It's so ahead of its time in that regard. But now it's 30 years later, so it just doesn't feel that way. I love the. The. All of the things that loop back. The fact that we get the wave back to his younger self there. I love that we get this time loop going on with the supremium. I get. I love that the. I love that we get a little bit more of the League of Infinity. One thing I think we haven't talked about is how cool, as a concept, heroes from throughout time brought together is like, Bill Hickok was a real person. Like, there. There's a hand in poker called Dead Man's Hand named after Bill Hickok because he supposedly was holding aces and eights when. When he got shot in the back. Like, that's a real person.

01:54:06
Case
Achilles is a figure of history. Aladdin.

01:54:09
Micah
Yeah, Aladdin. That just. I love that one. The.

01:54:13
Case
The caveman is a lot of fun. Which wench or which woman in her later appearances? Also, I like that.

01:54:20
Jmike
The 50s.

01:54:20
Case
The very 50s sexist thing. It's like the Invisible Girl becoming Invisible Woman over time. Yeah. Again, like, a lot of this is a conversation about comics moving forward. So I really like the. The League of Infinity that. I think that's a really fun take on the. The. You know, the Legion of Superheroes. And then. Yeah. So Judy's body is fine, and so her brain is in there somewhere or her mind is in there somewhere. So supreme is able to reconstruct her personality is the. Is. Is what ultimately occurs. And he puts it inside a Judy Jordan suprematon.

01:54:52
Micah
Cool.

01:54:52
Case
Yeah. But, yeah, so this is supreme, the story of the year. And it's.

01:54:56
Micah
We did get through it.

01:54:57
Case
Yeah, we got through it.

01:54:58
Jmike
We. We.

01:54:58
Case
We went past. Because I knew I. Because, like, each issue, there is a lot that Happens, but a lot of it's in the flashbacks.

01:55:05
Micah
Okay.

01:55:05
Case
And then there's the bigger stories.

01:55:07
Micah
That's true.

01:55:07
Case
We. We. We move pretty fast on that one. Again, I really like this. I think that the series as a whole is like, my favorite issues are not in this chunk of the story, but it is the. It is a really good, solid story. You know, over the course of 12 issues, like, telling this. This big looping narrative about a Superman type. You know, it's a complete closed loop for. For that, like, time travel element. And spoilers. Most of the time travel elements are kind of closed loops, and where they're not, we find out how they work in such a way that they should be.

01:55:40
Micah
Yeah, okay. Yeah.

01:55:42
Case
Which will make sense if we ever actually, like, come back here. I don't know. But. But closing thoughts, because, like, I. I have a lot. And I. I have talked a lot on this one, and I'm sorry for. For dominating a lot of the conversation. J. Mike, what are. What were your thoughts when you read this? What. And now that we've had a chance to talk issue by issue, what. What are your takeaways?

01:56:04
Jmike
I mean, I. I was very confused at the beginning, but the more. More I read through it, the more fun I had. Especially with, like, the end. Especially at the end where, like, everything gets revealed. You're like, oh, that makes a lot more sense now. And then you see, like, the Supreme. Oh, I forgot to do his name again. Supreme man falling through time and space and everything. Everything lands the way you're supposed to be. You're like, oh, that's pretty freaking cool. That's pretty cool. I can't believe that it happened. But yeah, like the Darius Dax. Hilarious, hilarious name, but very smart villain. I love it. Like, yeah, he really. They really, like, hit the nail. That's very much Lex Luthor. That's something that right there is something that Lex would do.

01:56:51
Jmike
And I'm pretty sure he might have done that, something like that before.

01:56:53
Case
He's done similar things, but it's definitely very 60s Lex Luthor, you know, like, that's the other part with which is that when this comic came out, were like in. In the throes of businessman Lex being like the. The status quo. And to do like, just like straight up Mad Scientist Lex, like, as a character is like, a lot of fun.

01:57:10
Jmike
I mean, I feel like it's kind of close to the things he was doing in All Star Superman or he was just playing the. The extremely long game. Yeah, the extremely long game. And in the end. He kind of screwed himself over because of his own ego. But yeah, like, this is. This is a great story. Story. All the Superman but not Superman story beats the Justice League, but not Justice League. What's the group called again? The.

01:57:41
Case
The Allies. The Allies and the League of Infinity. And yeah.

01:57:49
Jmike
Yeah, even the kids groups were there. What are they called? I forgot their name again. From the kids from the future.

01:57:54
Case
The League of Infinity. The Legion of Superhero.

01:57:56
Jmike
Yeah, there you go. You got Legion in here. And I was like, oh, man, that's so cool. This is why Case loved his book so much. All they're missing is Shazam.

01:58:05
Case
Well, and they've got that because they've got Mighty Man.

01:58:07
Jmike
Oh, true. There you go. That's all your favorite things in one book. I understand. Now, this is a cool story, Micah, how about you? I liked it.

01:58:17
Micah
Yeah. I think I've said mostly what I've thought of it as went along long, but I would say as we discussed it more, a little more perspective, a little more reflection. I think it. I think I bump it up a little bit more than I. I already liked it, but I mean, again, not to focus on the negative, but if the art was better, I mean, this thing bumps up like 20%. Yeah, I mean, it's just like. But I. I think funny enough, having read Miracle man in the same year, kind of shot this book in the foot a little bit.

01:58:50
Case
That's fair.

01:58:51
Micah
Because that one just hit me in such a way where I was like, what? You can do this? Even though. Yeah. I mean, that book, like, really blew me away. And also a book that showed up on my doorstep courtesy of Case. And so, yeah, you know, it's just one more. One more interesting story written by Alan Moore. I mean, in the forward of this, I really, like Mark Thompson said, I don't think Alan Moore could write a bad comic. But you take all those factors in the stuff of legends as the ingredients, which unfortunately had a hard time getting notoriety. That is a special. Okay, nevermind. That's just the one thing he said there that I meant. I don't think Alan Moore can write a bad comic.

01:59:32
Micah
And he proves once again from the stuff I've read that it's pretty difficult for him to write a bad comic. So, yeah, it was. It was quite the enjoyable thing. Fun to dissect it all. And I appreciate getting another glimpse, you know, into at least Krypton adjacent world.

01:59:54
Case
Yeah, I mean, it's not doing, strictly speaking, Superman. Like the serial numbers are filed off, but this is getting the character of Superman very well, very much right. And I think that especially at a time where the character was not lost, but was definitely a particular flavor at the time, this was going back to sort of like Coca Cola classic. If post crisis Superman was new Coke, still good, still sweet and great. But this was trying to do something with that, like, here's that classic flavor and here's some, like, interesting comments about the industry that he's part of and the, in the medium that he's a part of. So, yeah, again, I, I'm an unabashed fan. I, I, I do recognize that it has aged over time, that it is a, an older work than.

02:00:54
Micah
Than.

02:00:54
Case
Even some of the other things that, like, Alan Moore has written that came before it. Like, it's just stuff has caught up to what this was doing, but it's still, I think, a really strong entry in that sort of pantheon of dissection of characters by way of multiple versions of them and all that jazz kind of stuff.

02:01:14
Micah
Yeah, and one last thing about it too, is I was just like when you sent this to me, and I'm like, are you telling me that. I mean, it's like when you find out some old base band and, you know, like one song and then you get their greatest hits and you find out, you know, like 20 of their songs, that's kind of Alan Moore, where it's like, I keep on, I get like a new thing and I'm like, I didn't know that he was also famous for this. And then you read it and you're like, this is also great. What? And so you send me supreme. And at this point I'm like, okay. I feel like I've hit besides Swamp Thing. Besides that, I've hit like, his greatest hits, is how I thought.

02:01:53
Micah
And I know that this is a maybe a lesser work in the eyes of the public, but I'm still reading it. And I'm like, but this is at least, like, this is probably, like, it probably hit number two on the charts somewhere as far, you know, if we keep the metaphor of music going, it's like, what? How did he do it again? You know, he did that with a B side.

02:02:10
Case
What?

02:02:12
Micah
Yeah. Yes, exactly.

02:02:14
Case
Yeah.

02:02:14
Micah
It's like a Martin Scorsese, you know, you just keep on making hits and it's like, how do you do that? How do you, how do you stay relevant and keep writing relevant stuff for so many decades? It's crazy. So I was impressed even just at that alone.

02:02:31
Case
Yeah. It's certainly an impressive collection of work for Alan Moore's entire career. It's an amazing thing and this is a lesser known one. It is a stepping stone between his image work and him doing America's Best Comics, which is. Is a really good time for Alan Moore fans. That was my high school period and that was just fantastic as a huge fan of his stuff. But this series was a lot of fun and it got a lot of good critical acclaim. I jumped onto the series because wizard magazine did a really big profile on what Alan Moore had been doing with it. So that's why I had to collect all the issues, not just buy them as they were coming out because. Because I came in really right after this arc had concluded and then went back and found all the issues.

02:03:21
Case
So, yeah, it's a great work. I hope someday a good release of it comes out, especially a digital one. I think that would be really nice, especially one with the backup features that were omitted. They're backup storage with like Squeak, the Supreme House, like, Saving the Day in the Supremacy and like, you know, other Tales. So I wish that those were around and, you know, it's. It's a story that then goes on, doesn't get. Doesn't get finished. Alan Moore writes several issues past where the. Or he writes an issue past fully and like outlines what he was going to do with the series past, like the point where it gets canceled because of financials on the Planet book. And then Erik Larson picks it up like a decade later and does a version of.

02:04:12
Case
He does the last issue that Alan Moore wrote and then takes on and does his own story from there. And it's fine, it's different. I enjoy it quite a bit. But it is a pivot from what this book was and it recognizes that the book was no longer what it. It was just comics had moved on between that time. Yeah, you know, this is a precursor to things like the Authority or like Invincible, which are like, you know, wonderful looks at, like using the Superman archetype in fun, interesting ways. This is just a precursor to all that. It's a stepping stone for the medium as a whole, coming off of like, what was the 90s, post crisis, you know, deconstruction kind of movement. And how are. How are we coming out of that? How are we starting.

02:04:59
Case
Starting to embrace the silly again and have fun with comics again? And this was an early work in that because Alan Moore is very much on the forefront of whatever he's working on. But it's a really solid one and I think that it's worth checking out. So, guys, thank you for coming with me on this journey. It means a lot to me to be able to gush about this book for two and a half hours.

02:05:22
Micah
It's a blast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Micah.

02:05:26
Jmike
Thank.

02:05:26
Case
Thank you for. Especially for allowing me to tie you on to just like. Yeah, let me just strap you to a chair and we're just gonna just exposit at you for all this time.

02:05:37
Micah
Well, it's in. Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you.

02:05:40
Case
Cool. Well, Micah, so we kind of jumped into it without really going too deep into who you are and where can people find you? Who are you? Where can people find you? What do people know you from?

02:05:50
Micah
Okay, well, this is perfect because this is good timing. I have something pretty wild coming out and by the time this episode comes out, I'm sure it will be out. I am a musician and I came out with a live concert album, concert film on November 15th. It's called Go Fire yourself and it is. Earlier in 2024, me and a six piece band, we got together and we perform my 10 year anniversary of my first album. So we played every song from my first album, we updated it, we changed it, and we shot the whole thing kind of. I mean, we're talking low, low budget, but were, you know, got some inspiration from Vulfpecks Live at Madison Square Garden and stop making sense. And I'm really proud of it. It's really awesome.

02:06:45
Micah
You can watch it for $15 on my website, which is michaelmaca.bandcamp.com but the album is streaming everywhere. So if you got Spotify, if you got Apple, you can at least listen to it. And then if you want to watch it, you have to pay for it. But listen to the album and say hello to me on anything else. And then I do have a podcast with my wife. The McCaw Podcast Universe case has been on it. So go check out dawn of the Planet of the Apes or Low Logan as jumping off points. Yeah, but go listen to. Go fire yourself. Do it.

02:07:19
Case
Yeah, everyone should definitely go do that. Like, please check it out. My guy is awesome.

02:07:26
Micah
It's. It's real. I'm very proud of it. It's. It's really, really good. So yeah, check it out.

02:07:32
Case
Yeah. And can you give your socials.

02:07:34
Micah
Oh, yeah. On Instagram, I am at out underscore of Underscore Micah out of Micah. On Facebook and Twitter, if you just type in Micah Macaw, you'll. You'll find me.

02:07:47
Case
Nice yeah, well, people should find you, follow you check out your. Your album and your. Your movie. Like, that's amazing.

02:07:55
Micah
Yeah.

02:07:56
Jmike
So cool.

02:07:56
Case
Yeah.

02:07:57
Micah
Yeah. And it's on. Hey, it's on letterbox. It's on IMDb. So afterward you can click a rating, you can log it, you can do all that jazz.

02:08:05
Case
Nice.

02:08:05
Micah
Or. Or I should say rock and roll, baby.

02:08:10
Case
Yes. Well, everyone should go rate it and you know, check it out because it will be long after it has dropped when this episode comes out. So. Yeah, because we are always recording a little bit ahead of time.

02:08:22
Micah
That's perfect.

02:08:22
Case
But yeah, so everyone should go check that out and I'm sure it's a huge hit by the time you're going to check it out. But let's continue to, like, keep that momentum going.

02:08:28
Micah
Keep it going, folks.

02:08:32
Case
Well, keeping that momentum going. J Mike, where can people find you and follow, are you.

02:08:36
Jmike
Oh, gosh. I am trying to get away from the X app. I'm trying to move over to the butterfly app. So for right now, you can still find me on Twitter @jmike101, but I am also on Blue sky at J5blueSky Social. What? What? I'm over there too. So hit me up. I'll respond as much as I can.

02:09:01
Case
Yeah. And likewise, I think we're all just kind of. Of kind of being done with.

02:09:07
Micah
Yeah, yeah.

02:09:09
Case
Like, I'm still there. I'm still k. I'm still at Case Aiken there. I'm also at case aiken@bluesky. Otherwise you can find me on Instagram @quetzalcoatl5 because I'm holding on to my aim. Screen name for Dear Life.

02:09:20
Micah
Yeah, we love to see it.

02:09:23
Case
You can find J Mike or me on the Discord server for Certain pov. We've got links in the descriptions for our website and in the descriptions of the episodes. Check them out. Come, come interact with us. It's a great time there. We have a ton of fun chatting with everyone on the Discord. It's so much fun. You can also interact with the hosts of all these other great shows on the Certain POV network, such as I'm Going to Shout Out Books that Burn, which is a really great show that takes the perspective of the characters as rational actors that have trauma inflicted upon them by the Authority authors and does analysis of that. It's a great show. I really recommend it. Check it out. Like, that's awesome. It's part. You can find it@ certainpov.com along with tons of other great shows.

02:10:06
Case
The link to our Discord and us. And you can come back for our next episode. But until then, stay super man.

02:10:24
Jmike
Men of Steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are Jm. ike Folson and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Sofia Ricciardi. Our logo is by Chris Bautista and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our theme is by Geoff Moonen.

02:10:46
Micah
Alright, Josue, let's go through our new comic stack.

02:10:48
Case
We have a lot to review. I know.

02:10:50
Micah
Maybe we've gone too far.

02:10:52
Jmike
Let's see.

02:10:53
Micah
Marvel, of course. Dc.

02:10:55
Case
I got Image, Dark Horse, Black Mask, Boom. Idw. Aftershock, Vault, of course. Mad, Cave, Oni, Valiant, Scout, Magma, Behemoth.

02:11:08
Micah
Wow, that's a lot.

02:11:10
Jmike
Oh. All we need now is a name for our show. We need a name for a show.

02:11:13
Case
About reviewing comic books every week.

02:11:16
Micah
Something clever, but not too clever. Like a pun. It's kind of cheesy.

02:11:21
Jmike
Yeah, it's something that seems funny at.

02:11:23
Case
First, but we might regret later on.

02:11:25
Micah
As an impulsive decision. A few dozen episodes in. Yeah, we'll think of something.

02:11:29
Case
Join Keith and Osway for we have Issues. A weekly show reviewing almost every new.

02:11:32
Jmike
Comic released each week.

02:11:34
Micah
Available on Geek Elite Media and wherever.

02:11:36
Jmike
You listen to your podcasts. Cpov.

02:11:42
Case
Certainpov. Com.