Collecting Alan Moore's SUPREME

[daBronzeBomma]

I've long been intrigued by Alan Moore's interpretation of Rob Liefeld's Superman-pastiche Supreme. From everything I've heard, it's basically a non-ironic love letter to the Silver/Bronze Age versions of Superman. After a lot of hemming and hawing, I've decided to undertake the purchasing of Alan Moore's Supreme.

There's just one problem: What is up with the collected editions??

My understanding is that there are two collections, STORY OF THE YEAR and THE RETURN, that hold (most of?) the entirety of Alan Moore's run.

Yet I've heard nothing but bad things about the production value of these two Supreme TPBs. Poor paper quality, ink comes off certain pages. Real horrorshow stuff from a collector's perspective. Also, I've heard the art itself is wildly inconsistent from great to bad.

Are there other better editions I'm not aware of? Or a new edition coming out in the foreseeable future? Who is the publisher of Supreme (seen conflicting info)? The online prices for the TPBs also vary wildly.

Should I just pony up and try to hunt down the individual issues (my current LCS doesn't carry either tpb nor the issues), even though that may cost more and will definitely be harder to acquire? How many individual issues of Alan Moore's SUPREME are there in total? How much money would this endeavor potentially cost me?

[Dark-Flux]

Moore wrote Supreme 41-56 and The Return 1-6. This was an incomplete mini that had another 2 issues to go before Awesome/Maximum folded. In 2012 Supreme 63 was published using Moores last completed script, Erik Larsen then took over with 64.

The Checker trades collect 41-56 & The Return 1-6.

Its really up to you wether youd rather pay less for less quality or more for the issues.
I dont believe theres any plans for a reprint of the Moore stuff. Not sure on the rights situation.

[dbngaa]

I've had both, single issues and trades, and the trades are very hard to look at. They're readable, but it looks like it was printed by a cheap inkjet printer around 1997. The art itself is a mixed bag, but once Chris Sprouse shows up it is mostly excellent. I really like the series and would love for a cleaned up collection to one day materialize. I'm not holding my breath though.

[FanboyStranger]

It was the Checker editions of Story of the Year that had the bad printings. (I know because I own one.) The modern story pages are a mess, but the Rick Veitch pages are fine. I think they sent out a corrected edition, but I've never seen one.

There was no problem with The Return. (I own this, too.)

I don't think it's a rights issue preventing a reprint (unless the issue is with Checker), but that Moore and Veitch were unhappy with Liefeld when he did not return Rick's art to him.

[Diamond]

For what's worth, there is a very recent Spanish collection of Supreme, so there should be no rights issues, I think.

[Mixmaster]

The Checker trade paperbacks aren't as bad as everyone would have you believe. I've got both and I really enjoyed them. I also bought the two in hardcover. From what I understand, there were less than 200 printed of The Story of The Year and just a few more than that printed of The Return. The books were solicited and then at least a year went by and they kept getting pushed back or they were altogether cancelled and resolicited. One retailer told me that they were cancelled at first because they couldn't hit the threshold of 800 copies of the hardcovers. I was in contact with Checker officials at that time and from what I was told, I do not believe they ever reached the 800 mark with the print runs of BOTH the HCs. They are very rare.
But, all that aside, they are really great stories and feature some great artwork by Chris Sprouse, Rick Veitch, Gil Kane, Jim Starlin and many others.
Plus, there is another Alan Moore Supreme-related trade paperback: Judgment Day, which is pretty doggone good, too.
I think the trade paperbacks for all of these can be found relatively cheap. Don't let people on these boards to cause you to miss out on a great comic book experience just because they don't like the print quality, the paper or the binding.

[Peribanez]

For what's worth, there is a very recent Spanish collection of Supreme, so there should be no rights issues, I think.

Supreme was published in Spain twice. The most recently edition is composed by two books, collecting all the issues written by Moore (except that issue based in his script; it was published later in USA). It's a pocket edition, anyway. Some pages don't have a good reproduction because Checker, the company that have the rights, did a bad scanned.

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