A Retrospective of Extreme/Awesome Comics (Part 3)
Blue Rose Extreme
This revision, perhaps more than any other, requires an introduction. It first appeared in the issue of Supreme immediately following the end of Alan Moore's Revision, 2012's Erik Larsen's Supreme #65. It was part of a publishing initiative that relaunched a number of Extreme titles, including Glory, Bloodstrike, Youngblood and Prophet, with only Bloodstrike referencing the events of Supreme in any way. This was simple enough to follow until the publication of 2014's Warren Ellis' Supreme Blue Rose, which presumed to be a new direct sequel to Moore, with both Larsen and Ellis claiming to show what happened to the character of Alan Moore's Ethan Crane. As a reader, one must read both series as if they counted equally.
Things got really chaotic with the release of 2019's Brigade #1, which revealed the 2012 publishing initiative to have taken place in an alternate Earth. Because the narrative of Larsen's *Supreme (*and 2012's Bloodstrike by proxy of referencing Supreme) follows immediately from Alan Moore's Revision, they can't be part of the alternate bubble the 2012 titles were secluded off to.
What follows is an attempt at reconciling the narratives of Larsen and Ellis's Supremes as best as possible.
Backstory
The backstory of this new Revision combines elements of both Rob Liefeld and Alan Moore's Extremes; on one hand, you have Liefeld-exclusive characters appearing such as Khylund, Prince of the Jakkara tribe of cat-people in Zaire, or the street-level vigilante Knightmare, but you also have Moore-exclusive elements such as the World War II superhero team being named the Allied Supermen of America, and these separate elements are intermingled for the first time.
Some elements are brand new: Cabbot Stone used the name Slingstone, fighting enemies such as the Gecko and the Lacerator in 1967 before joining a team called the Young Americans with Skipper, Suprema, Twilight and Kid Achilles. They fought enemies such as Doctor Moth, Quasimodo, and Dober-Man and his Dog Soldiers. Suprema is revealed to have had her first kiss from Twilight in a moment of experimentation.
Cabbot led Bloodstrike after his death and resurrection via Project: Born Again. Unlike in the Alan Moore Revision, his death did not come from the Hieropanth, but from taking a bullet meant for someone else in a selfless act during the year 1983.
Nu-Genes are no longer called Re:Gexes, and are sometimes called by a new term, "H.E.s" (Human Enhanciles).
The menace of Mean Supreme
The violent trigger that caused this Revision creates a damaged reality, with time being an unstable bubble whose radiation, if mapped out, forms the shape of a blue rose. Due to the error, several individuals from the Alan Moore Revision still persist here, including Suprema, Supreme, his girlfriend Diana, his foe Televillain, and his Allied Supermen teammates Jack O'Lantern, Doc Rocket, and Storybook Smith. Supreme attempts to save civilians from the falling debris of the Supremacy, but after failing to save everyone, he lashes out in grief and locks his Ethan Crane persona away, secluding himself as he feels a white guy who doesn't know anything shouldn't be an interventionist god for the world. He hides with a Judith Jordan from an unidentified previous Revision.
The few survivors of the Supremacy from older Revisions - the original Supreme, 1950s Supreme, Squeaky the Supremouse, and 1970s Sister Supreme - have to wrestle with finding a place in a world that is not their own, especially after they're depowered, and even as they have to stop Rob Liefeld's Supreme, who goes on a violent rampage across the world. Dubbed "Mean Supreme", he fights famed hero and father of Invincible, Omni-Man, as well as Khromium, somehow the son of his old enemy Khrome from the Rob Liefeld Revision. After Mean Supreme brutally beats Suprema, her memories of the Alan Moore Revision fade away and she's replaced by her Blue Rose counterpart, so she abandons the cause of defeating Mean Supreme and seeks comfort from her trauma with her old Young American teammates.
At Bloodstrike, Cabbot is joined by a new Fourplay (bisexual woman Kennedy Marx), Deadlock (Samuel Christopher Hicks), Tag (a woman who believes herself to be Ventura Valentina Vlasco, but who has repressed memories of Youngblood members Shaft and Task, hinting at a buried real identity) and Shogun (Andre Xavier Lord). They fight enemies such as Cybernet, the Memphites, Quantum, The Quanta, followers of Quantum's ideology led by Synthesis; Hippo, the Black Bride, the Urban Knight, and a returned Doctor Moth, which prompts a reunion of the Young Americans. Meanwhile, the original Fourplay resurfaces after being believed dead and Project: Born Again's monopoly on the resurrection business is threatened by Leonard Noble, former Director of Bloodstrike.
The search for Ethan Crane
Fresh from the Blue Rose Revision, Darius Dax is reimagined as a Black man and CEO of a megacorporation, while employing individuals such as Alan Moore's Televillain and the Blue Rose Twilight, her superhero background seemingly overwritten by that of a normal, Black civilian. Lady Supreme is reimagined as Doctor Chelsea Henry, a lesbian physics professor at a New York University, and Doctor Wells as her Black colleague. Professor Night exists as a mere fictional TV show character, Khrome is not an alien, but the name of an Omegapolis hotel, and the headquarters of the Allied Supermen of America become a bar named Always.
Four months after the Supremacy's fall, the Blue Rose Darius finds Alan Moore's Supreme and kills him using a Sci-Fi gun found in the ruins of the Supremacy, triggering a new Revision.
Avatar Press and Arcade Comics' Extreme
In this era of sporadic publications, the Allied Supermen of America are renamed as the Liberty League and Fighting American is replaced by the Free Agent.
Operation: Knightstrike exists before Youngblood instead of simultaneously, and the leak of Knightstrike's black-op assassinations to the press forces the Pentagon to create Youngblood in an attempt to improve their public image and distract the public. Once again, Alexander Graves is human rather than a disguise of Lucifer, and he gets the name for the team from catching a song in the radio from the real-life band The Youngbloods. Riptide's granter of powers is renamed from Sea Witch to Witch of the Green. Several core moments from Rob Liefeld's Revision, such as Battlestone snapping during an Iraqi mission and killing a clone soldier, or Quantum's escape and defeat by both Youngblood and the New Men, are simplified, with both happening in the span of a few days in Youngblood's first year. The cloned troops are reimagined as regular humans deployed so that troops wouldn't feel inadequate in the "age of super-humans", and Quantum's attack is his debut, not a return. In this iteration, Johnny Panic sleeps with men, and Psi-Fire and Sentinel never turn to evil.
In the present time, Avengelyne teams up with Avatar Press's Pandora, Coral, Onyx and Shi, fights the group of vampires known as the Ravening, is transported through time to 92 AD's Rome, where she opposes Emperor Domitian and the demons Beset, Vulcan and Nero, and visits the world of sword and sorcery known as the Dragon Realm. The Coven's Spellcaster faces Avatar Press's Scythe and her evil sister, Eden. Meanwhile, Coven member Fantom fights her evil brother, Darkwolf, and her evil ex, Stalker.
Eventually, super-teams quickly multiply, super-powered body parts became readily available for sale and crime is almost wiped out. Heroes descend into debauchery, losing themselves in party and riches, wondering how to find their ethical inspiration again. No longer teens, the former Youngblood members are surprised when the gravy train they had at 16 stops going on, and Badrock tries to keep a middling acting career afloat. Shaft is forced to work for a company run by Troll where he manages dozens of capes and pays them in exchange for getting to be credited as the savior of each heroic act in the news. They soon hear Alexander Graves is putting a new Youngblood team together. A legion of old members show up to the meeting, where Grave announces they'll be doing Multiversal missions in an initiative coordinated with the Youngblood teams of 999 parallel realities, but they've only got room for one new member, and the old heroes must kill each other until only one remains to prove their worth. In short succession, Knightsabre murders former Brigade member Seahawk, Badrock kills Photon, Twilight kills Troll, and Suprema kills Johnny Panic, Combat, and Twilight. While this is taking place, Mean Supreme takes over the Supremacy, turning the Supremes to evil and triggering a Revision.
Like in previous Revisions, this erases events that were fated to happen years in the future; in this case, the United States was going to begin annexing other countries as new States, slowly becoming an Empire, and this Empire's Youngblood was going to clash against their United Kingdom counterpart, The Crown. In this future, Diehard and Vogue had two children, Mikhail and Anastasia.
Even further into the future, Kaboom's Brigade team was going to be corrupted by The Zang, and the teen heroes would have renamed themselves Nitros, taken on villanous, new personas, and attempted to take over the world, clashing with a plethora of heroes from the Multiverse, among them Lady Supreme, the League of Infinity, the Cyberpunx, Sword and Stone, Joanna Prophet, and Jeriko.
To be continued...
Posted Apr 2, 2026, 11:15 PM UTC