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arbre_rieur (arbre_rieur) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-21 22:37:00

Entry tags:

char: supreme, creator: alan moore, creator: chris sprouse, publisher: awesome entertainment, title: supreme

Supreme 55: "Possibly The Most Controversial Story You'll Read All Year!" (in 1997)

One morning, Supreme notices that the world seems to be somewhat different this day...

Their flagship character, as it turns out, is a white-hooded character called the Klansman.

Supreme (who notices that people are calling him the Supremacist) travels outside of time to investigate what's going on. There, he bumps into his centuries-spanning teammates in the League of Infinity.

Basically, Bill Hickock fell in love with a Southern woman named Jessie Hazel. After she rejected him, he tried to prove his love by altering history so that the South won the Civil War.

That's League of Infinity member Achilles in the final panel background above. One thing I could never figure out: Where did the gun come from? The team's period clothes are a magical illusion Witch Woman conjured up.

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	kusonaga 2009-07-22 06:25 am UTC (link)
	Supreme was an amazing title while Moore had it. Are there any trades of it? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	aaron_bourque 2009-07-22 07:05 am UTC (link)
	There should be at least two, but I don't know if they're still in print. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2009-07-22 07:01 am UTC (link)
	On the first scan, that man called Diana his wife. And then she called him Daddy. That's either kinky or creepy. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	red_cyclone 2009-07-22 08:05 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, I picked up on that, definetely rather creepy. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	dreadedlurker 2009-07-22 11:36 pm UTC (link)
	I noticed this as well. creepy creepy shudder (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2009-07-23 12:21 am UTC (link)
	I believe it's an odd (to our ears) but idiomatic form of address, like husbands calling their wives "Mother." Not their mother, obviously, but a mother... (Reply to this) (Parent)

box_in_the_box
2009-07-22 08:19 am UTC (link)

*Sigh* There ARE other crux points in history for creating alternate timelines besides the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II and Kennedy's assassination, sci-fi writers. :/

No, this is not a failing of oversight that's unique to Moore, but then, that's kind of the problem in and of itself, isn't it?

When even a BRITISH writer winds up going where roughly sleventy baskrillion Twilight Zone episodes have already gone before, we're BEYOND Old!Meme territory.

Even as an American, one of the things I loved about one of the original series episodes of Doctor Who was that it showed the Master trying to fuck with Earth's history by preventing the signing of the Magna Carta. THAT'S an interesting divergence point, and one that HASN'T been done to death.

I mean, if your story about the South winning the Civil War exists simply to show us HEY LOOK BLACK PEOPLE ARE SUBSERVIENT AND OPPRESSED AND THERE ARE CONFEDERATE FLAGS INSTEAD OF AMERICAN FLAGS AND OMG ISN'T THAT TERRIBLE, you're not exactly charting any new courses of imagineering, writer-guy.

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	unknownscribler 2009-07-22 09:06 am UTC (link)
	In a medium such as comics where your story telling space is limited, using a familiar shorthand makes sense. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

box_in_the_box
2009-07-22 09:11 am UTC (link)

Yes, but that shouldn't bar you from exploring new ideas. It certainly hasn't stopped Moore (see also: Promethea). The fact of the matter is, dressing up your primary characters in outfits meant to reflect a world in which the Confederacy or the Nazis won is worth nothing more than a BACKGROUND art shot. The story itself had better contain an idea more interesting and original than, "Gee, maybe it's a bad idea to fuck with major events in the past."

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	box_in_the_box 2009-07-22 09:14 am UTC (link)
	Not meaning to sound like I was being hostile toward YOU, by the way. :) I get where you're coming from, but my point is, we've seen better work in this medium and genre on this score, and we've seen it from Moore himself, so ... (Reply to this) (Parent)

icon_uk
2009-07-22 10:56 am UTC (link)

Actually "The Kings Demons" is even more complete twaddle than this is, as AFAIK Magna Carta meant bugger all at the time, it was later centuries who ASSIGNED it a lot more value than it actually had because it suited them.

And given the main character here is called Supreme, I can imagine that the rest of the story might actually have been derived from the wordplay in making his new self "Supremacist", a word with singularly unpleasant connotations.

Plus I'd say the Confederacy winning really IS a background art shot, effectively, as the story has more to do with time, consequences and the implications of "Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff" (Thank you Stephen Moffatt) on a team which culls it's members from past, present AND future, and so have an intruigingly disjointed view on cause and effect (Whenever they show up in Moores run even their casual comments make my head hurt)

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greenmask
2009-07-22 12:22 pm UTC (link)

The AFAIK is the thing, though; if there's doubt there's possibility.

Plus, I haven't seen the episode in question, but even if it was later assignation of importance, the signing in question still needed to have happened for those people to give it said importance, so stopping it probably would have had Consequences, right?

The confederacy or nazis having won in changed timeline stuff is cheap and rubbish imho because it only technically results in the oppression of people who've really had enough of that sort of thing already. The story becomes at their expense, really, and not even their focussed-on expense. The oppression of me in the background is something I would object to quite heartily (that throwaway 'women, working? hahahaaa!' pretty much made me think OH WHAT IS THE POINT HERE?). Ro-Boy, how witty. Witty like a poke in the eye.

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icon_uk
2009-07-22 12:59 pm UTC (link)

I said AFAIK because I am no historian myself, but I have read reviews and commentaries on the episode by those who are, who have pointed out the problem with assuming Magna Carta was big deal at the time.

And, no, it probably wouldn't have had major Consequences, they'd simply have assigned the spurious importance to some OTHER historical event and keep right on going.

The Ro-Boy thing is absolutely cliché but is presented more or less in direct contrast to Supreme's usual setup, which has the self-aware but subservient robot Suprematons, which all look like Supreme, doing the donkey work in the Citadel Supreme. We've simply gone from latent narcissism to blatant racism!

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	greenmask 2009-07-22 01:17 pm UTC (link)
	they'd simply have assigned the spurious importance to some OTHER historical event Well, I suppose there's that. But that would still change history a bit. Plus it's far enough back that even tiny changes would/could have avalanched down into large changes to the modern world. (Reply to this) (Parent)

parsimonia
2009-07-22 12:11 pm UTC (link)

What also gets me about "what is the Nazis/the South won?" kind of stories, is that it seems to assume that if those wars had been lost, that all effective opposition stopped right there, never to regroup or be revived (until the hero from normal-time arrives, usually).

As if everybody just shrugged their shoulders and went along with it, or if there were no other path for rebellion against slavery or the Nazi regime could be found, other than the exact course of events in real history. It's extremely pessimistic.

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	greenmask 2009-07-22 12:23 pm UTC (link)
	That, too. :[. (Reply to this) (Parent)

icon_uk
2009-07-22 01:07 pm UTC (link)

It's pessimisitic indeed, but perhaps NOT that implausible, given that the regimes in question, particularly the Nazi example, were prediposed to removing the threats to stability by the simple expedient of having them killed without fuss or bother. They had proven to be effective in countries where they were dominant (How effective the French Resistance would have continued to be in a country where the Germans' weren't using it as a staging post to invade Britain, but were in control is an interesting one to ponder)

Read Robert Harris' "Fatherland" for a depressingly plausible look at a world where the Nazi's won.

Similarly the move to free slaves would have been not only derailed, but could have been effectively discredited as a political philosphy by a Civil War where the South won (Out of genuine curisity, after the Civil War, how many pro Slavery politicians were in positions of power?), and they were the ones establishing the new order of things. There may have been references to a resistence movement in this story, but I can't recall offhand.

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parsimonia
2009-07-22 01:15 pm UTC (link)

But my understanding is that slavery had been abolished in other places (like Britain, and thereby extension Canada) by that time. So there still would have been the idea of the alternative out there, and even in the days of perpetually sketchy snail mail, the US did not exist in a vacuum.

And I mean, other human rights issues became more and more prominent within the next fifty years or so of the Civil War, like labour and women's suffrage. I mean, I know there are unfortunately lots of people in history who want rights for one group but would happily see others kicked to the curb (one of the heroes of women's suffrage in Canada, for instance, was apparently a fan of eugenics), but I find it hard to believe those various movements would have no influence on each other.

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01d55
2009-07-22 01:27 pm UTC (link)

It's pessimisitic indeed, but perhaps NOT that implausible, given that the regimes in question, particularly the Nazi example, were prediposed to removing the threats to stability by the simple expedient of having them killed without fuss or bother. They had proven to be effective in countries where they were dominant (How effective the French Resistance would have continued to be in a country where the Germans' weren't using it as a staging post to invade Britain, but were in control is an interesting one to ponder)

Counterexamples: Roman Empire, Soviet Russia.

Hegemony decays naturally.

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icon_uk
2009-07-22 02:40 pm UTC (link)

Fair points, though didn't the Roman Empire take centuries to collapse properly (The American Civil war wasn't even 150 years ago), and Soviet Union was hamstrung by an economically non-viable philosophy from the get go, a slavery based economy was reprehensible in every respect, but how well did it actually work?

I'm sure a Confederated States of America collapse would have happened eventually, but I don't know how long it might have lasted.

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nezchan
2009-07-22 03:47 pm UTC (link)

Now wouldn't that make an interesting story? The point of view of a supremacist villain who went back in time, ensured the south managed to win its independence and seceded, only to come back and find out that now the Confederacy was impoverished and dependent on the more advanced countries to the north and south.

From what I've read, slavery was starting to falter as an economic system by the time the Civil War started anyhow, and probably would only have been viable for a few more decades as the market for cotton was dropping and the country was slowly becoming more industry-based. It'd make for an interesting what-if in any case, especially if you assume a siege mentality from the slowly less and less wealthy seceded states, stubbornly clinging to tradition.

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	ashtoreth 2009-07-22 06:55 pm UTC (link)
	Considering corporate robber-barons took the place of landholder feudalism, I doubt it would've changed anyone's mind. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

nezchan
2009-07-22 07:05 pm UTC (link)

Maybe so, but a story like that depends on its variables doesn't it? There's a lot you can change that would either increase the robber-barons' hold (maybe leading to open revolt?) or prevent it from happening in the first place, or direct it in a different way. The way the history runs from an event could be quite interesting, and I'd say that, say, continued slavery in the way the above comic puts it is one of the least interesting results you could come up with.

Still, the idea of a strongly bigoted villain coming up with an utterly unexpected and (to them) unpalatable result to their time meddling, such as colour no longer being an issue but some different prejudice taking its place, remains an interesting one.

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arilou_skiff
2009-07-22 02:39 pm UTC (link)

No, really not.

The britons had already been strangling the slave-trade, and just about all european nations had already abolished slavery itself, or were under severe pressure to do so. As had many (but not all) latin-american countries.

(Cuba and Brazil being the major exceptions)

The brits (and to a lesser degree the french) were doing everything they could to make slave-trading annoying and expensive (with some success) not the least because "stopping slavery" was a really handy excuse to intervene in the internal affairs of various african states.

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	icon_uk 2009-07-22 02:41 pm UTC (link)
	And this is why I'm damned glad I pointed out in an earlier post that I WASN'T a historian. Thanks for the info! :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

arbre_rieur
2009-07-23 07:45 pm UTC (link)

"There may have been references to a resistence movement in this story, but I can't recall offhand."

There was a mention of a "supervillain" called the Integrator who Supremacist's apparently fought in the past. I don't get the sense that Moore was even going for a realistic portrayal of alternate history, though. I mean, Supreme's citadel having the architecture of a Southern plantation? The Batman and Robin analogues becoming White Night and Dixie, and Star City becoming Stuart City? It seemed like he was going for something similar to when the Simpsons visit a foreign country, where it's more about playing around with and referencing pop culture ideas of the place than accuracy.

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	box_in_the_box 2009-07-22 04:00 pm UTC (link)
	One of the reasons I love the novel Fatherland is because it shows that, in the long run, WINNING WWII would have almost been the WORST thing that could have happened to Nazi Germany, not in the least because, if the Holocaust had been a SUCCESS, they wouldn't have had anyone left to SCAPEGOAT. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	dreadedlurker 2009-07-22 11:40 pm UTC (link)
	Agreed. It's one thing to say "OMG what if the nazis won and now it's 1952? What would life be like?" vs. "OMG what if the nazis won and now it's 2009 what would life be like?" I mean, I have no doubt life would be different, but to assume the nazis would still be in complete absolute power? I mean, it's a possibility, but... (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2009-09-06 01:58 am UTC (link)
	Read "In the presence of mine enemies" by Harry Turtle Dove, that's exactly what the book is about. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arilou_skiff 2009-07-22 02:34 pm UTC (link)
	Problem is that Magna Carta isn't really that relevant. It's one of about a hundred similar documents, it's importance is largely a measure of 17th century people digging up and taking it out of it's context. It's not really an important "turning point" in any meaningful sense (although say, the English Civil War certainly is) (Reply to this) (Parent)

halloweenjack
2009-07-22 03:32 pm UTC (link)

And Moore's motivation for coming up with some brilliant new twist on alternate history would be what, exactly, given that a) this fits well with a previously-established character (Hickock had already appeared with the League of Infinity), b) the whole point of Moore's run was to provide his own take on well-established Silver Age tropes, and c) it was work for hire for Rob Liefeld? I mean, it wasn't as if Moore hadn't already created the best take on alternate history in comics, ever; I think that gives him more than enough cred to justify doing his own take on Captain Confederacy. Chill out, man.

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	volksjager 2009-07-22 05:26 pm UTC (link)
	I tend to think the obsession with the Civil war in terms of divergent history is also due to the impact that would have on the 20th century and two world wars. Winston Churchill (who's mother was American) kicked off this theme in a short story he wrote for the times. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	majingojira 2009-07-22 04:52 pm UTC (link)
	Lee uses an Atomic Bomb to win the Civil War? OH COMICS! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-07-22 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	I am torn by the AWESOME and OHNO. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	This may make your decision easier, or harder tanetris 2009-07-23 11:18 pm UTC (link)
	The American Civil War took place in the 1860s. Well before modern aircraft, or most any weapon delivery system of sufficient range that I can think of. This suggests to me that the way the atom bomb was deployed involved setting it on a timer, getting on a horse, and riding away at full-gallop. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	blackdocs 2009-07-23 05:30 am UTC (link)
	yay! Chris Sprouse art! I recently bought the $1 After Watchmen Tom Strong issue and I must have MOAR! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	arbre_rieur 2009-07-23 07:30 pm UTC (link)
	I'm taking that as a request, just so you know. On it. Also, I'm surprised Tom Strong would be part of that After Watchmen thing. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a modern superhero comic less like Wastchmen. I'd go as far as to say being written by Moore is the only thing they have in common. Which issue did they use? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	blackdocs 2009-07-23 08:50 pm UTC (link)
	it was the "How Tom Strong Got Started" story. Very awesome, I never got the chance to read him before, but this issue told me what I needed to know, now I'm ready to find more! Plus I just love how Sprouse draws (Reply to this) (Parent)

psychop_rex
2009-07-23 07:36 am UTC (link)

Personally, I think that the League of Infinity is a brilliant alternate take on the Legion of Superheroes. I mean, considering that time travel was an integral part of the early Legion - it was, after all, in... the FUTURE! - it makes perfect sense to cut out all the aliens and whatnot, and just make it about time itself. (I always wondered just what era Witch Woman is supposed to be from, though. If she's meant to be from Salem around the time of the witch trials, then she's certainly messed up the dress code.)
Also, in regards to one of the points made in the posts above - yes, of course things would be more complicated if the South won than simply 'the blacks are all slaves and the flag is different' - but that's not what this story's about. The Confederates being in charge is simply a convenient way for Moore to point out that, hey, somethin' wrong here, folks - which leads to the League, and the whole time travel business, which is what the point is. If you want an alternate history that takes you step by step through to the present, look in the science fiction section of your local library - I recommend Harry Turtledove. That isn't what Moore's up to here.

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