Alan Moore at Awesome, Day 3: Glory

Welcome to Day 3 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on Alan Moore's time at Awesome Comics. You can read about this series here.

Glory

Not quite the greatest Wonder Woman story never told

Just as Supreme was Awesome's version of Superman, rooted firmly in the source character's Silver Age roots, Glory was supposed to be Wonder Woman, rooted firmly in the source character's Golden Age roots, which Moore must have deemed the most essential part of Wonder Woman's considerable history, as his entire proposal for Glory is based on it.

Here's the interesting thing about Moore's Glory "run," for me. After Awesome folded, the ideas and setup in Glory would quickly be revised and altered to fit Moore's new Wildstorm series, Promethea, which would go on to become my favorite ongoing series ever. That fact, combined with the fact that this utilized, at least on the surface, the same approach Moore used in Supreme, should have been a formula to ensure that I would enjoy Glory. But I didn't.

Alan Moore at Awesome, Day 2: Judgment Day

Welcome to Day 2 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on Alan Moore's time at Awesome Comics. You can read about this series here.

Judgment Day

Today, we focus on Alan's Awesome big event, Judgment Day. It's drawn by a variety of artists and utilizes a bunch of flashbacks in much the way Supreme does, to give the Awesome Universe a sense of history. It's kind of unusual for a big event, because it doesn't really involve a big supervillain brawl or threaten the world as we know it. Essentially, it is a courtroom drama featuring superheroes, and that's why it's called "Judgment Day."

Alan Moore at Awesome, Day 1: Supreme

Welcome to Day 1 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on Alan Moore's time at Awesome Comics. You can read about this series here.

Today, we focus on the first volume of Supreme, by Moore, Joe Bennett, Rick Veitch, Chris Sprouse, and a host of other artists!

Supreme: The Story of the Year
The Greatest Superman Story that Never Was

The first comic Alan Moore got from Rob Liefeld was Supreme. (At the time, Liefeld was running Extreme Studios under Image Comics and Maximum Press as a separate publishing line. Supreme was published under Maximum Press at first. Both companies would be consolidated later on as Awesome. I'm just going to say "Awesome" for the rest of it, okay?)

Anyway, Supreme was a 90s Superman analogue who at that point had a tumultuous undefined (and soemtimes contradicting) past. Moore decided to use this to his advantage, and when he jumped on the series with issue #41, that basic setup allowed Moore to pull his usual trick of rebuilding a character from the ground up. Moore had used it in the prior series where he took over an existing character, such as Captain Britain, Marvelman, and Swamp Thing, but in this case, he didn't have to tear down the already-existing foundation to build a new one. He just had to go with what was already there, and what he decided to go with was an homage or love letter to the Silver Age iteration (that's around mid-50s to late 60s/early 70s; there's not really a set demarcation) of Superman, as evidenced by the first page of his run.

The blurb, shaped like a scroll and starting with "Beginning a great three-part novel!!" is a distinct callback to the Silver Age, in which stories that spanned a full issue were divided into three parts and hyperbolically called "novels." There is also the use of the thought balloon, a device that Moore himself helped make archaic and outdated with his 80s work, and tried bringing back in his later superhero work, such as here.

Retrospective: Alan Moore at Awesome

For the next five weeks, I'll be doing a five-part retrospective series on Alan Moore's time at Awesome Comics. You guys might remember that I did a similar series on America's Best Comics, Moore's imprint at Wildstorm. That entire imprint came about because at the time, Moore was working at Rob Liefeld's Awesome Comics, which was a consolidation of Liefeld's two companies, Extreme Studios (which published titles such as Youngblood, Supreme, and Glory, all part of the larger then–Image Universe) and Maximum Press (which published titles such as Avengelyne, which were thought of to stand on their own).

At Awesome, Moore was working with artists such as Chris Sprouse, Brandon Peterson, Steve Skroce, and Liefeld himself to create a whole new universe of superheroes that would play off the classic archetypes. Supreme quickly became a riff on the Silver Age version of Superman. Glory was intended to be their version of Wonder Woman. There were analogues for the Justice League and the Avengers both. It was fun to spot which characters corresponded to which archetypes, but more than that, it was fun to see Moore try his hand at it and reading the stories that came out of it.

Then Awesome lost a bunch of money and pretty much folded its comic line, leading Moore and his collaborators to Wildstorm. He'd written, at the time, 22 (or 23, depending on how you counted) issues of Supreme, two issues each of Glory and Youngblood, and the miniseries Judgment Day, intended to be their "big event" as well as the laying down of the foundation for future stories. Awesome also published Moore's proposals for Glory and Youngblood.

Unlike ABC, I discovered Moore's time at Awesome after the fact, and I'll be talking specifically about the products I own (the two Checker TPBs for Supreme, the TPB for Judgment Day, and the single issues for Glory and Youngblood). I also don't have a universal love for it, but that's part of the fun. Here's the schedule.

January 17: Supreme: The Story of the Year, Awesome's Superman and how Moore found the right riffs and tweaks to make this work.
January 24: Judgment Day, Awesome's big event and the foundation for its universe.
January 31: Glory, Awesome's Wonder Woman, and why it didn't work as well as Supreme did. I'll also be talking about Moore's proposal for the series and its connection to Promethea.
February 7: Youngblood, Awesome's young superhero team, a la Teen Titans. I'll also be talking about Moore's proposal for the series.
February 21: Supreme: The Return, the rest of the Supreme series after his history had been laid out, and how it ends with a tribute to the King.

Let me know what you think in the comments section, via email or via the Facebook page!