A Retrospective of Extreme/Awesome Comics (Part 1)
After several months, I finished a write up summarizing every single Extreme comic to help others catch up. It's readable in full in the Image Fandom Wiki, but I'll be publishing in parts here.
The Early Extremes
The original version of the Extreme Universe features a single superhero named Supreme, who is born in 1920, obtains his powers in 1930 and fights evil in Omega City, with his romantic interest being one Judy Jordan and his arch-enemy being known as Dax, a crime boss. Their reality lasts until it is Revised (Extreme's term for a reboot) in 1941.
The second iteration of the universe, lasting through the 40s, replaces the grounded mob criminals with Nazi mad scientists.
The Revisions of the 50s feature characters such as Squeak the Supremouse, Supremite, Fat Supreme, Supreme-of-the-Future and a cowboy Six-Gun Supreme.
The 1960s revisions introduce King Supreme, who, upon being exiled to limbo after his reality is revised away, builds a giant city called the Supremacy to house himself and all previously discarded Supremes. Their foes, transported to a separate limbo, build an analogous city, Daxia.
The 70s revisions introduce a Black, female Sister Supreme, while the 80s Revisions have Supreme being gritty, his girlfriend being traumatized and his Darius Dax being a grim, tittering transvestite serial killer.
In 1987's Revision, the main hero isn't Supreme, but a super-hero government task force called Youngblood. One of their members is Sonik, and member Psi-Fire's real name is Derek. Their training program is called the Youth Brigade, and includes one Thumbelina. After an unseen incident with someone in the Youth Brigade named Copycat, Youngblood decides to host open auditions for new members outside of the Brigade, but when they reject a prospect named Tinker, he swears revenge on the team. Sonik and Tinker and have not appeared in any other Extreme Revisions, but Liefeld turned Thumbelina and Copycat into Marvel characters during his New Mutants run.
In 1992, the world was Revised yet again, retroactively giving place to Rob Liefeld's Extreme Universe.
Rob Liefeld's Extreme
This iteration of Extreme shares its creation myth with the Bible, and the Christian God is its canonical God. In the early days of Earth, aliens called The Keep infect the environment with a virus called the Nu-Gene, planting the seed for modern humans to develop superpowers, for eventual harvesting as slaves to The Keep.
World War II: Supreme, Glory, Prophet, the Allies
On the eve of World War II, Germany citizen Jonathan Prophet is turned into a super soldier by Doctor Horatio Wells, who is looking to create assets capable of freeing the world from the looming threat of alien tyrant Darkthornn, who has conquered Earth in the future of 2050. When one of Darkthornn's agents reprograms Prophet to kill Wells, the Doctor sends him through time to different eras so that with each lifetime lived Prophet can gain experience that allows his mind to re-develop. To shape his moral psyche, Wells uses the one thing he knows can give Prophet all the answers he will require: the Bible. Eventually, Prophet ends up in the present day of 1992, an amnesiac.
Back in the 40s, with Prophet gone, Wells turns the American son of a Priest, Ethan Crane, into a super soldier as well, birthing the super hero Supreme. Another team put together by Wells to fight Darkthornn is the Berzerkers.
Meanwhile, the Nu-Gene creates the race of the Amazonians, who reside in the dimension of Amazonia. The immortal Glory, daughter of Amazonian Lady Demeter and Lord Silverfall of the underworld, feels at peace in neither world, and when her violent streak product of her father makes her too unruly to be among the Amazons, she searches for her own path in Europe.
In 1943, Supreme and Glory join Roman of the underwater city of Neuport, Diehard, SuperPatriot, Mighty Man and Battlestone to form the superhero team The Allies during World War II. Supreme battles his arch-rival, Zachariah Grizlock, and grows arrogant and bloodthirsty. Some months after Hitler's suicide, he begins an argument with his mentor, Father Beam, and accidentally kills him. Full of grief, Supreme flies to space and exiles himself from Earth. In there, he makes enemies such as Khrome.
In the 70s, Battlestone's father, Michael, becomes the radical terrorist Quantum, declaring war on humanity for opressing Nu-Genes. He's stopped and imprisoned by a team of heroic Nu-Genes known as the New Men. Unknown to the heroes, they're being led by a servant of The Keep, preparing the Nu-Gene individuals to be harvested when his masters return.
The present: Youngblood, Bloodstrike, Brigade, Operation: Knightstrike
After Lucifer is dethroned in Hell, he escapes back in time, landing in the year 1980. He adopts the human guise of Alexander Graves and rises in the ranks of the Pentagon, creating the government task force Youngblood so that they'll defeat his opponent for the throne of Hell when the time comes. The core team is composed by Vogue, a Russian defector who escaped her country's version of Youngblood, Redblood; the Katellan alien Combat and the Acuran alien Photon, whose planets are bitter rivals; a new Diehard, replacing the one who fought in World War II -- mostly mechanical, but still capable of becoming Vogue's lover; brutal, HIV-positive assassin Chapel; Cougar, son of a human woman and the king of Jakkaria, a tribe of cat-people hidden in the depths of Zaire; Sentinel, an inventor who built himself a suit of armor, and Badrock, who drank an experimental serum in his father's lab at age 16 and his hide turned to rock, making him immortal. Their team leader is Bloodstone, until a mission against Iraqi forces makes him snap under pressure and fatally strike an underling from a group of support cloned troops. Bloodstone is dishonorably discharged and replaced by Shaft, an ex FBI agent who uses a bow and nothing but his human skills to keep up with the rest of the team, despite having an apparently dormant Nu-Gene.
Other task forces pop up in quick succession; unlike in the previous Revision, Youngblood's training program is not named the Youth Brigade, but Bloodpool. In it, agents work to graduate into Youngblood, but after budget cuts disband the program, the Bloodpool become an independent force.
Operation: Knightstrike handles off-the-book military deployments -- members include Battlestone, his brother Cabbot, a woman named Yuki, Chapel and his best friend Al Simmons. When Al develops a conscience, CIA boss Jason Wynn orders Agent Jessica Priest to murder him, sending Al's soul to Hell, where its inhabitants manipulate his memories and Chapel's to make both men believe Chapel was Al's killer.
After Cabbot dies through unrevealed means, he's ressurected via the government's Project: Born Again and made leader of Bloodstrike, a team of fellow undead soldiers. Besides Cabbot, Deadlock, Fourplay, Shogun and Tag round up the roster. The division is briefly directed by Leonard Noble before he's found out as a Covenant of the Sword spy and killed.
Bloodstone strikes out on his own to form Brigade, which repurposes characters from the previous Revision's Youth Brigade. Unlike all the other teams, Brigade are vigilante superheroes working outside of the law, originally motivated by Battlestone wanting to expose Project: Born Again's cruelty and the fact that it uses superhumans as test subjects to eventually make it viable for human politicians, until all of the government can become one big sham.
Supreme returns; the next wave of heroes
These heroes, with all their shades of gray, battle villains such as The Four, Prince Genocide, rogue Youngblood member Psi-Fire (whose real name is David in this Revision, instead of Derek like in 1987), Cybernet and the Brotherhood of Man.
In Space, Supreme is attacked by Loki, the Norse God, who wants to kill the hero to bring about Ragnarok; Loki targets Supreme and his legacy simultaneously, involving his descendants from the 30th century, including the descendant named Probe. The mysterious other-dimensional being called Enigma rescues Supreme and places him in the orbit of Earth in 1992, but the move leaves the hero an amnesiac, and he must discover how to fit in the modern world, gaining a sidekick in Kid Supreme along the way.
Awakening at the same time, Prophet undergoes a similar journey, while facing his evil clone Crypt, created by Darkthornn.
When the angel Avengelyne questions God and tells Him that humans are undeserving of His love, she's exiled to Earth, to walk naked among humans and ponder His judgement until the moment they speak again, living in the world of street-level vigilantes such as Cybrid, Knightmare and Priest. After being seduced by the demon Kyle Wagner, Avengelyne gives birth to the half-demon Magog, prophesised to bring about the end times. Later, she teams up with Glory to stop Zeus and his Gods of Olympus in trying to dethrone the Christian God.
In outer space, the bounty hunter Bloodwulf travels the cosmos.
The immortal Troll, the mysterious Knightsabre and Cybernet defector Dutch join Youngblood. Another key member is Riptide, granted powers to control water from an entity in an underwater cave called the Sea Witch.
Shaft's dad, Colonel Bravo, travels through time, popping in and out of the timestream in order to keep Earth safe like others such as Link, the New Man and Jeriko.
Lori Saunders is trained by the Ancient to become Maximage, destined enemy of The Keep.
Extreme Prejudice, Extreme Sacrifice, Extreme Destroyer
Eventually, Quantum escapes prison and murders most of Bloodstrike, with Cabbot being the only member left; he takes on the name of his team as his new codename.
Chapel splits into an evil alter called Lord Chapel, is revealed to be the demon who dethroned Lucifer, and must be stopped. He defeats Supreme, but, wanting the kill for himself, Loki swaps the hero with his future daughter Probe. She acts as Supreme in a male body until she recovers her memories and takes on the name Lady Supreme, performing amazing feats such as delivering the killing blow to Darkthornn.
Brigade is raided by the government and Bloodstone is arrested and brainwashed into serving the government again; while the rest of team are licking their wounds, Crypt brutally murders most of them.
The Keep arrive on Earth, and Quantum surprisingly defeats their leader, taking over the role and accepting the heavy responsibility of leading them away from the planet.
Following the ultimate defeat of Loki by the returning, real Supreme, a Revision happens, erasing this continuity. This coincides with the reality-dissolving attack of Entropy, who shatters the Extreme population away from the larger Image population, but whether this triggers the Revision is not explicitly stated. After being vanished to the Supremacy like all his predecessors, Liefeld's Supreme is imprisoned by his fellow Supremes for being far too aggressive.
Despite the revision occuring in the year 1996, we do have a recorded history of what was fated to occur in the future. The year 1997 would have seen the adventures of Doom's IV, the Cyberpunx would appear in the year 2000, and Sword and Stone in a distant future. At another point of the timeline, the fallen Angel Micah, who manipulated Avengelyne into doubting God and being cast out from Heaven, would trigger Armageddon, a 100-years-war between Angels and Demons, one which would even cause the death of Satan and of Avengelyne's half-demon son, Magog. Ultimately, Micah would try to go back in time to Eden to destroy God's creation in its inception, but Avengelyne would follow after him and sacrifice herself to stop Micah from harming Adam and Eve. God intended all this to happen from the moment he cast out Avengelyne, and for her sacrifice He will bring her back to life, empowered to destroy Micah, and ending the War of Armageddon.
For a period, there were lingering memories and remnants of Youngblood's existence in the original Image Universe. For instance, Youngblood Headquarters still existed, but, after it was bombed during a Martian invasion, the general population believed the team missing in action. Officer Dragon was tasked with putting together a taskforce to replace Youngblood, and created Special Operations Strikeforce. Not long after, however, these memories were "painted over", leaving a few select people, such as Shaft's girlfriend, Shelly Price, reeling, and believed crazy for insisting Youngblood and her boyfriend ever existed. Shelly formed a cult around people with memories of individuals who disappeared after the Shattering of Entropy, and eventually learned to traverse to different realities, learning of the Shattering. As part of the painting over, any memories where Youngblood used to be now featured a replacement team, Blood Squad Seven. In 2024, the aged members of Blood Squad Seven put the team back together again, having brand-new adventures.
To be continued...
Posted Mar 28, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC