History Comicbook / SupremePower

* HeelFaceDoorSlam: [[spoiler: At the end of the most recent mini, Hyperion (whose location has been revealed) is offered a chance at becoming the premier US superhero in order to stop a genocidal supervillain in another country. He accepts, kills the villain, and tries to pick up where he left off. But the President rejects the deal, fires the general that made it, and has a restored Doctor Spectrum capture and detain Hyperion.]]
* HumanAlien: Deconstructed. People who interact with Mark are often unconsciously weirded out by him; even though he looks perfectly human, there's just something ''off'' about him. When he wants to go to school with regular kids, the government sets up a special school using their own relatives, since they still feel the need to absolutely control Mark's environment. It's left ambiguous if they were genuinely picking up something "not quite right" about Mark or if they were all scared because they'd all been warned to keep their distance because he's dangerous. The Blur and Hyperion get on very well pretty much from the first moment they meet, and Nighthawk needed no other reason than skin color to dislike Hyperion on sight, but reactions to him run the gamut from near-worship to utter hatred, which may or may not be just a reaction to his limitless power. [[spoiler: Eventually it's implied that he's not a HumanAlien at all, but rather something with a vague outline of a [[Franchise/{{Alien}} Xenomorph]], somehow disguised by some high-tech {{Glamour}}.]]

* IJustWantToBeNormal: [[spoiler: At the start of the latest series, after all the events of the previous one, Hyperion has settled deep out in the woods in a cabin with a random woman who does not recognize or know of him. [[CantStayNormal This doesn't last]]. ]]

* LifeOrLimbDecision: [[spoiler: The most recent mini deals with Ledger, having become the America's main Government-sponsored hero, slowly lose control of the PowerCrystal which begins to act out in deadly outbursts and take over his body. He's eventually forced to cut off the hand fused with it.]] This had previously been mentioned as [[spoiler:the only way to get the crystal off him.]]
* LoyalPhlebotinum: The sentient PowerCrystal that powered Hyperion's ship. [[spoiler: Despite being bonded to Doctor Spectrum, it is loyal only to Hyperion and urges him to conquer the planet, as he was sent to do.]]

* RecruitingTheCriminal: [[spoiler: The US Military decides to recruit superhuman mass murderer Redstone in order to have him sent to other countries that are not cooperative with the US Government. While there, Redstone would murder large scores of people and destabilize their governments to make them more susceptible to American control and then move next down the list.]]

* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler: Journalist Jason Scott]] is one of the first people to clue into the existence of Hyperion as well as suspect the broader existence of superpowered individuals, and is the first to break the story about Hyperion's existence and his extraterrestrial origins. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, both stories are broken only with the government's help, as part of their plans to control Hyperion and his public image.]]

* WrongGenreSavvy: Whiteface, the Nighthawk miniseries' ArcVillain, seems to think he's the Joker in a Batman comic, saying he's ready to go back to jail once Nighthawk foils his plan. [[spoiler: He isn't; Nighthawk rips the grappling hook embedded into Whiteface out, killing him. No JokerImmunity here!]]
** [[ManipulativeBastard General Alexander]] seems to believe he exists in a world similar to "[[ComicBook/TheBoys The Boys]]", where supes are reliant on good public relations to function and regular humans can use that to keep supes on a leash. He's very, ''very'' wrong. [[spoiler: Hyperion]] ends the first series by demonstrating just what real power is (e.g., [[spoiler: [[PersonOfMassDestruction the ability to cause a massive tectonic cataclysm by going into orbit and slamming back down at top speed.]]]]

Okay, stop us if you've heard this one before: On a quiet night, a Midwestern couple drives past a cornfield. Suddenly, from up in the sky, an alien ship falls to Earth and crashes. [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Inside is a lone child. The couple takes it home to raise him as their own.]] And then shortly afterward [[WellThisIsNotThatTrope a team of government agents show up to take the child]], as the U.S government tracked the ship that fell, investigated, and quickly tracked down the couple in question. After some debate, it is decided to study the child and the technology from his ship, and turn both into weapons serving the United States.

Mark Milton (alias Hyperion, Marvel's main pastiche of Franchise/{{Superman}}) is sent to Earth by an unknown race and is taken into custody by the United States government. Mark is raised in a controlled environment, and every stimulus and lesson is fabricated to teach Mark to be the ultimate patriot. However, the conditioning is surface deep at best.

At the same time he is growing up, Kyle Richmond ([[Franchise/{{Batman}} Nighthawk]]), Stanley Stewart ([[Franchise/TheFlash The Blur]]), Joseph Ledger ([[Franchise/GreenLantern Doc Spectrum]]), [[Franchise/WonderWoman Princess Zarda]] and the [[Comicbook/{{Aquaman}} Amphibian]] begin to enter the world stage as Superheroes all of which are [[AntiHero less than ideal]] versions of their DC counterparts, ranging from corporate sellouts, to certifiably insane, to racist and even genocidal in their actions.

** Hyperion to Comicbook/{{Superman}}
** Nighthawk to Comicbook/{{Batman}}
** Power Princess to Comicbook/{{Wonder Woman}}
** The Blur to Comicbook/{{The Flash}}
** Doc Spectrum to Comicbook/{{Green Lantern}}

-->'''Alexander''': You had access to an artifact from a non-human civilization! Do you realize what you had, and what you let get away from you? Do you? Then let me explain it to you! Imagine handing an F-16 to the Aztecs in 1521, when Cortez was at war with them, and instead of learning to fly so they could slice Cortez and his army to shreds, they cut off the wings to use as shields, the guns as clubs, and they take off the wheels because they figured they would look really cool hanging from the temple ceiling!

While ''Supreme Power'' said, "If superheroes were real, they'd be '''[[BewareTheSuperman terrifying]]'''."

Basically, if ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' asked the question, "what if superheroes were real?" and answered with, "they would have numerous personality flaws," then ''Supreme Power'' answered with, "they would be [[BewareTheSuperman terrifying]]."

** Zarda is ComicBook/WonderWoman with morals more in common with Ancient Greek heroes (in that they rarely had any) and is ...[[SanitySlippage a little out of it from being so old]], honestly beliving humanity is an inferior species and it is her and Hyperion's right to rule them. [[LifeDrinker She drains one man's life force to restore herself to a beautiful princess from a withered corpse, then the man's mother. . . who was on her knees worshipping Zarda as the comeuppance Man's World deserves. . . because Zarda still had a gray hair.]]
** Doc Spectrum is ComicBook/GreenLantern as a government secret agent and assassin who left behind almost every shred of empathy and morality a long time ago. The gem that gives him his powers is LoyalPhlebotinum... [[spoiler:to ''Hyperion'', not Doc, meaning that the hope that Doc Spectrum could stop Hyperion if necessary was for naught.]]

** Nighthawk is ComicBook/{{Batman}} as a wealty black man with a ''gigantic'' racist chip on his shoulder. On the trail of a super-powered {{serial killer}} who's killed several black prostitutes, Nighthawk tells Hyperion that [[MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome if the killer had been going after white, middle-class female twenty somethings, Hyperion would have been all over it ages ago.]] Never mind that the first time they met, Hyperion specifically mentioned he saw Nighthawk ignoring violent crimes because the victims weren't black, only to jump in the second a black person was the target.

** Depending on your feelings about [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe blue-skinned]] FishPeople, Amphibian may or may not be this.

* DudeNotFunny: In-universe. After the infant Hyperion accidentally disintegrates his new puppy, one of the government officials watching by video-camera darkly quips that "Spot" was an ironically appropriate name for the dog. The other official promptly punches him so hard he falls out of his chair.

* NWordPrivileges: Averted. Blur is deeply offended when Nighthawk calls him a "House Negro". As Stanley puts it, he grew up in TheDeepSouth... but Nighthawk is the ''only'' person to ''ever'' use that kind of language with him or identify him mainly by race.

* TheDeepSouth: Averted with the Blur who is himself from the south and comments that the first blatant racist he has ever encountered was Nighthawk, a fellow black man from Chicago. Granted, they're from different generations.

So begins ''Supreme Power'', Marvel's UltimateUniverse version of the Squadrdon Supreme/Sinister, originally based on the Justice League and following their successful mini-series in the 80s by Creator/MarkGruenwald. In the greater Marvel multiverse, this world is "Earth-31916", in comparison to the original ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme'' comics taking place on "Earth-712".

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: The Old Soldier in Howard Chaykin's run is a personification of the soldiers buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but has memories of soldiers who were casualties of conflicts spanning from the American Revolution to the Gulf War in spite of only soldiers from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

* DarkerAndEdgier: The series is essentially a grimmer take on the Squadron Supreme, with some of the more notable changes including Hyperion becoming distrustful of humanity after discovering he had been used as a tool of the U.S. government, Nighthawk having no issue with killing criminals and Doctor Spectrum experiencing blackouts where his Power Prism controls him to go on bloody rampages.

* ViewersAreGoldfish: The ''Hyperion vs. Nighthawk'' miniseries has a habit of constantly reminding the reader of what happened earlier in the comic at very opportunity, to the extent that one could read only the fourth and final issue and not miss any crucial detail of the plot.

* TamerAndChaster: The original series took advantage of being printed under Marvel's MAX imprint by frequently featuring uncensored nudity. This started to be toned down in later installments, to the extent that the 2006 ''Squadron Supreme'' series had the Amphibian reluctantly start wearing a costume and the few panels where she was depicted naked no longer showed her breasts, genitalia and buttocks unobscured.

** Zarda is ComicBook/WonderWoman with morals more in common with Ancient Greek heroes (in that they rarely had any) and is ...[[SanitySlippage a little out of it from being so old]], honestly beliving humanity is an inferior species and it is her and Hyperion's right to rule them. [[LifeDrinker She drains one man's life force to restore herself to a beautiful princess from a withered corpse, then the man's mother. . . who was on her knees worshipping Zarda as the comuppance Man's World deserves. . . because Zarda still had a gray hair.]]
** Doc Spectrum is ComicBook/GreenLantern as a government secret agent and assassin who left behind almost every shred of empathy and morality a long time ago. The gem that gives him his powers is LoyalPhlebotinum... [[spoiler:to ''Hyperion'', not Doc, meaning that the hope that Doc Spectrum could stop Hyperion if necessary was dead a-borning.]]

** Nighthawk is ComicBook/{{Batman}} as a wealty black man with a ''gigantic'' racist chip on his shoulder. On the trail of a super-powered {{serial killer}} who's killed several black prostitutes, Nighthawk tells Hyperion that [[MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome if the killer had been going after white, middle-class female twentysomethings, Hyperion would have been all over it ages ago.]] Never mind that the first time they met, Hyperion specifically mentioned he saw Nighthawk ignoring violent crimes because the victims weren't black, only to jump in the second a black person was the target.

** Argonians: They are Hyperion's people who sent him to Earth, they possess advanced technology and Supermanesque powers, and (allegedly) are critically endangered/near-extinct.

So begins ''Supreme Power'', Marvel's UltimateUniverse version of the Squadrdon Supreme/Sinister, originally based on the Justice League and following their successful mini-series in the 80s by Mark Gruenwald. In the greater Marvel multiverse, this world is "Earth-31916", in comparison to the original ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme'' comics taking place on "Earth-712".

* AntagonisticOffspring: Emil Burbank was one of these. [[spoiler: His backstory revealed that he killed his school bullies by trapping in their houses before lighting their homes ablaze, lost his virginity by drugging and raping his older sister which eventually drove her insane to the point she had to be permanently confined to an asylum, and engineered his parents' deaths by having their car drive off a cliff for the sake of cashing in on their life insurance policy. All this occurred before he even turned eighteen.]]

So begins ''Supreme Power'', Marvel's UltimateUniverse version of Comicbook/{{the Avengers}} foes, the Squadron Sinister and their later heroic counterparts the ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme'', themselves originally an {{Alternate Company Equivalent}}'s of Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica from the Franchise/DCUniverse. It's better than it sounds, as it's pretty much one giant WhatIf story, with the premise of "What if TheGovernment raised Superman?" In the greater Marvel multiverse, this world is "Earth-31916", in comparison to the original ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme'' comics taking place on "Earth-712".

Mark Milton (alias Hyperion, Marvel's main pastiche of Franchise/{{Superman}} if you will) is sent to Earth by an unknown race and is taken into custody by the United States government. Mark is raised in a controlled environment, and every stimulus and lesson is fabricated to teach Mark to be the ultimate patriot. However, the conditioning is surface deep at best.

The stories are printed on Marvel's [[Creator/MarvelMax MAX]] imprint (basically the R-rated segment of Marvel Comics) and do not shy away from gore, destruction, and violence. At the height of its publication, it was considered one of Marvel's better comic book lines (being released during the same era as the mainstream love affair with {{Crisis Crossover}}s and the infamous ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay'', many saw it as Marvel returning to its spiritual roots of being an answer to DC's use of comic book tropes).