The Lost Issues of...
Supreme

(cover art by GortAGoGo)
Article by Steve Johnson

Alan Moore is always a few steps ahead.

That's certainly true of his work with Awesome Comics. Although Awesome recently suspended publication of Supreme and Youngblood, Moore had both titles written for about a year past their sudden, unexpected end dates.

Issue 56, the last published issue of Supreme, shows the escape of Supreme's old foes from his Hell of Mirrors and the havoc they wreak on the world. Issue 57 would have shown the defeat of the Shadow Supreme (who didn't really kill Radar; that was just a Suprematon we saw at the end of issue 56) and the comeuppance of Optilux and Korgo, the Space Tyrant.

Issue 57: The Showdown

"Optilux has transformed about 200 members of a Bon Jovi audience into coherent light," Moore said. "Then he's captured them in the prism-world of Amalynth, and nobody cares."

"And we would have seen Korgo beating up Bill Clinton, because that's how space tyrants run things; he beats up Clinton, so he gets to be President. And he claims Hilary Clinton as his first wife, as part of the spoils. She changes her name to Hilary Rodham Space Tyrant.

"By the end of the issue, Korgo is begging Supreme to put him back in the Hell of Mirrors to get him away from this woman! 'I thought MY evil, unspeakable ambitions knew no bounds, but ...!' And by the end of 57, all the villains except the Slaver Ant are recaptured and returned to the Hell of Mirrors."

Issue 58: "A World of His Own" Darius Dax, Supreme's arch-nemesis who fell through time in issue 52B, is back. As Dax falls back toward Littlehaven, merging with the supremium meteor that ultimately wound up giving Supreme his powers, he feels himself fade out and merge with a blinding light.

When he wakes up, he's in a wonderful city, "wonderful from his point of view, that is," says Moore. "It's all dark, dirty, dangerous and disgusting." A group of people are trying to mug him, and each of them is a version of himself!

There's the bearded 1930s Darius Dax, dressed in gangster clothes, and the 1970s black pimp version called Delroy Dax, the Daxman, Darius Duck, the archenemy of Squeak the Supremouse, and a cyborg and plenty of other Daxes. They're inhabitants of Daxia, the place where all the versions of Darius Dax who have been revised out of the continuity end up. It's sort of a twisted mirror of the Supremacy, where all the old Supremes dwell, except that both Supreme and Dax are so egotistical, neither suspects the other place even exists.

The issue ends with Dax (our version) trying to return to Earth.

"Although this is against all the laws of space and time, and might well lead to the collapse of all reality for a Dax to return from Daxia, they all think that sounds pretty good. Universal chaos and armageddon. So he goes back, and takes up his old hideout in the Omegapolis Museum."


This is part one of a two-part article.  Unfortuntely, it appears that archive.org does not have a copy of part two.  Originally published on mania.com.


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