Supreme #53

“19th Dimensional Nervous Breakdown!” – September 1997

Alan Moore’s Supreme is a metatextual masterpiece. Often overlooked, Supreme sees Moore adopting Rob Liefeld’s Superman analog and crafting a series of memorable mini-epics in which the aesthetics of the Silver Age and the 1990s Superman collide head on. Further, these are not simple “remember when” type stories, nor are they saying “comics used to better.” More often than not Moore is equally affectionate to both eras, providing a sort of constructive deconstruction of the genre that stands in stark opposition to his work on Watchmen and has a lot more in common with Tom Strong, arguably Supreme’s successor series in both tone and, of course, the use of Chris Sprouse’s terrific pencils. This particular issue sees Supreme fighting Omniman, the comic character he draws during his day job as a comics artist. Omniman turns out to be Szazs, the Sprite Supreme, a Mxyzptlk analog who Supreme has to defeat using a copy of the very same comic book we are reading. Meta! Amusingly, Supreme is more annoyed by Szazs than anything, but not for the regular Superman style reasons. “Earth has changed since the sixties,” Supreme shouts at a now giant Szazs. “Nobody finds this kind of stuff funny or appealing anymore.” To me, this reads like a statement of fact. There’s nothing wrong with a sixties Mxyzptlk story, but times have changed and the sort of comics that were great in the sixties just plain don’t work anymore.