The Supreme Power books are another of those series that I remember being really excellent when I first read them years ago, and which on a second reading have got both better and slightly worse.
That's all down to the core concept. Reading Supreme Power for the first time, I didn't catch the fact that it's a pastiche of the Justice League, a concept that's so stunningly obvious that only the fact that I didn't read much in the way of DC when I first started reading comics and so didn't catch analogies to Green Lantern and Aquaman, who at that point were still obscure enough to not be a superhero I would recognise.
On reapproaching the series then there's al ot of extra depth in the story of Superman in the real world, a concept that's been done to death, but rarely so comprehensively or as well as it is here. The genius of Straczynski is in linking everything to Superman (Hyperion) arriving on earth - the emergence of a Godlike figure leads to the creation or revelation of others.
It's easy to draw parralels from this to the rise of cape comics in general, as Superman was one of the first comics to move away from the pulp action hero genre into full superheroics, and can be seen as the first great comic run, even if it wasn't the first superhero comic
Every other hero (and villain) stemming from the emergence of Hyperion is a nice way of representing this, and it adds an extra layer to a character who is at his best when inspiring others to greatness. It's further layered on by the fact that the majority of the action of humans in the comic are resolutely imperfect - they aren't inspired to do better, but to more horrendous actions.
It's a wonderful flip on the Superman mythos which usually just involves Superman 'turning' bad, either in reaction to tragedy - as in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, or Injustice: Gods Among Us - or simply being raised wrong - like in Red Son. The alternate version here is still a man with a strong moral compass, who still inspires, albeit one who is confused and lost, abandoned and persecuted by the Government that raised him. He is, in fact, a man who is raised without truth, or justice - the realpolitik American Way.
Anyway, this is a series that by this point is twelve issues in and has just had the first few team-ups between the Justice League analogues. It's a Superman book, in all but name, and anyone expecting much in the way of a team will be disappointed. Of the six superheroes shown only three ever interact at a time, and mainly for a few pages. In nearly every case they fight.
That's one of the issues - it's a team up book that doesn't contain much in the way of a team up. The second is that the last ten years have seen so many edgier, darker takes on the high-profile superteams of the Marvel and DC universe that it's hard to make an argument for this one more than any other. Millar's Ultimates, Ellis's The Authority and Planetary, even Garth Ennis on The Boys - all deconstructed the idea of superheroes and rewrote the rules of what superheroes could and couldn't do.
This is hardly pushing the envelope in terms of this; it's a realistic take on Superheroics, putting it into a context of what would happen rather than asking how far we can push these characters into darker pursuits.
Still, Supreme Power is well worth picking up if you like your comics grand in vision. It's a book that takes a while to take off, but when it does, it soars.
Also Try:
Mark Millar, The Ultimates
Grant Morrison, All Star Superman
Warren Ellis, The Authority
