I was amazed today to finally find a comics series that actually approaches The Watchmen in terms of sheer comics excellence -- but of course Alan Moore is the writer behind it, too.

The series is Supreme, collected in two wonderful trades (The Story of the Year and The Return). It's nothing less than Moore's epic take on the Superman mythos, crammed with subtle and not-so-subtle references to Superman characters and continuity, including supremium (kryptonite), Suprema (Supergirl), Radar the Hound Supreme (Krypto), Darius Dax (Lex Luthor), Optilux (Braniac), Judy Jordan (Lana Lang), and Diana Dane (Lois Lane). As Backwards City's resident Superman nut, I loved it.

It may in fact be the best comic I'd ever read, though a fairly weak ending probably keeps Watchmen safely to the top position. Regardless, Supreme is fantastic.

Despite all the work I was supposed to get done tonight, I wound up reading through both books instead.

Moore's work on Supreme is unrepentently postmodern. After returning to Earth after a long absence, having failed to discover the meaning of life in the far reaches of space as he'd hoped he might, Supreme discovers the planet on the verge of a "revision" -- a shift in continuity as the character is retconned. He avoids danger by escaping into The Supremacy, a place where alternative versions of Supreme go to die whenever the series is reconned, revised, or cancelled (pictured left).

Afterwards, Supreme returns to Earth, finding himself unable to remember huge chunks of his personal history. (Because, of course, it hasn't been written yet.) The next few issues take us through the Supreme origin story through flashbacks, which Moore and Sprouse depict in Golden and Silver Age artistic styles, as Supreme "remembers" events which are actually being made up by his creators on the spot. In the new continuity, Supreme finds that during his absence the world has moved on without him: Supreme's nemesis, Darius Dax, is long dead, as are his parents; his Littlehaven girlfriend, Judy Jordan, is now a sixty-year-old grandmother; his adoped sister is missing and presumed dead; and his allies are retired and largely forgotten. How does Supreme, with his campy robot duplicates, absurd inventions, and massive floating Fortress of Solitude Citadel Supreme, fit into this new world?

Moore's Supreme, among other things, is a biting critique of superhero comics in the post-Crisis Dark Age: much of the run of the series details Supreme's (and, of course, Moore's) attempts to bring back nostalgic elements of that lost age, with often unhappy results. Everything in the book is a self-referential Möbius strip: Supreme's alter ego, Ethan Crane, even works at "Dazzle Comics" as an inker on the superhero title Omniman, which is also undergoing a period of rapid revision, gimmick issues, and ill-advised editorial interference. (When The Story of the Year opens, they're just putting the finishing touches on the "Death of Omniman" mega-issue.)

The sole disappointment is, as I said, the last few issues of the Moore run, connected in The Return, which are not as themetically unified as the stories in The Story of the Year and seem too much like filler. (A perfect example is the final issue, "New Jack City," a story in which Supreme meets God as played by Jack Kirby. This would have been fine anywhere else in the series, but makes little sense as an end for the series as a whole.) Overlooking this one blemish is not difficult, though, because Moore does here what he always does, which is transform superhero comics from disposable junk culture into art. And he makes it look easy.