Comic: "Supreme: The Story Of The Year"
Published by: Other
Written by: Alan Moore
Artist: Joe Bennet, Rick Veitch

Reviewer: captain516 (Forum Profile)
Posted: 2/21/2010

Plot: Superhero artist Ethan Crane, a superhero himself, teams up with his crime-fighting friends to defeat his archenemy, Darius Dax.

Review: When you hear the name Alan Moore, you probably think of "Watchmen, or possibly "Miracleman", both very dark, very "real" books that deconstructed the superhero and made people see them in a whole new light. Supreme is the opposite of that. An homage to the Silver Age of DC, (The flashbacks in the story are cleverly drawn in that old-school style), Supreme: The Story of the Year let Moore take an uninspired Rob Liefeld character, reinvent him and in the process build a entire new universe around him.

The more you know your comics, the more rewarding this book is. Moore stuffed Supreme like a sausage with all kinds of neat little references and analogues. There's obvious things, like counterparts for Batman, The Flash, and so on. And then there's trickier, more obscure stuff, like a sequence that parodies Lois Lane's comic, which you wouldn't get unless you knew she had her own series. And that's just the beginning! I won't spoil it here, but there's a huge meta twist at the start that sets up the story.

Like I said before, the flashbacks are reminiscent of classic comics, and are part of this book's appeal. In fact, the art style even changes to accommodate the time period the characters are remembering. The amount of work and detail Rick Veitch put into these is astounding. Everything, down to the lettering matches the style. The art used for "the present" isn't the best, but to be fair, just about every comic in the 90's looked like that. It actually makes for a nice contrast.

If you love the Silver Age, and especially if you like Superman and the kind of comics Max Burbank talks about, this is a must read.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)