Picking right up from the previous issue we open with the last remaining survivors of The Supremacy: Sister Supreme (the Black woman), “Original Supreme” (from 1920), 50’s Supreme (who, for some reason, is still stuck with a Lion’s head), Squeak The Supremouse, and Alan Moore’s Supreme (hereafter to be referred to as Ethan Crane) . They’re all powerless now, standing in the wreckage of the Citadel and all of the destruction around them caused by the fight between the Daxes and the Supremes. The military arrives and tries to take them all into custody, but Ethan tries to bluff his way out of it, acting as if he still has all of his powers.

Meanwhile Liefeld’s Supreme (hereafter referred to as simply SUPREME) is in orbit, considering the state of the world today, and how things have changed in his absence.

SUPREME swoops back down to the city, scoops up the Citadel and takes it to the moon. This shows the military that Ethan and the others are powerless, so they’re all loaded into a truck and taken away. But then SUPREMA shows up, with Diana Dane, and rescues the others. Ethan and Diana reunite, and when Suprema hears what’s happened she’s in shock and unsure of what to do. Meanwhile SUPREME goes to confront SUPER-PATRIOT, blaming him for accepting Ethan Crane as him, and not rescuing him, although Super-Patriot says he had no way of knowing what had happened to change SUPREME. After a brief battle, where Super-Patriot is left beaten, SUPREME flies off. When word of this attack gets back to Ethan and the others, they all feel helpless about being unable to stop him. But SUPREMA still has all of her powers, so she flies off to confront SUPREME. And then we discover that at least one Darius Dax survived the assault…

I was a little surprised by this issue. At the end of the last one, I assumed that this would be the last we’d seen of the Alan Moore characters, as Larsen focused on bringing back the original SUPREME. Yet this issue had Ethan and the others featured prominently, so it was clear that Larsen had some bigger plans for them. Plus, keeping SUPREMA around was an also an interesting move, as I thought he wanted to make SUPREME unique. And, of all the Daxes to keep around, he choose Darius Duck?!?

Also, if you think too hard about some of the details, the timeline is a bit out of wack. SUPREME acknowledges that 15 years have passed since he’s been locked up, which fits the real-life time between the last Alan Moore issue and Supreme #63, except that issue takes place immediately after the events of Moore’s last issue, so wouldn’t it still be around 1997? Really, I’m just not sure how that works. Likewise why SUPREME would expect Super-Patriot to have noticed any change in him, as all of reality had changed around him. So some of the story details are unclear, but I was still intrigued enough to be entertained and want to see where Larsen was going with this.

SUPREME #65 by Erik Larsen