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Comic Book / Supreme Power

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"You will never be alone."
"UBI DUBIUM, IBI LIBERTAS (LATIN) WHERE THERE IS DOUBT, THERE IS FREEDOM."

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. Inside is a lone child. The couple takes it home to raise him as their own. And then shortly afterward 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.

Guess you haven't heard this one, after all. Siegel and Shuster, take a break, J. Michael Straczynski's calling the shots here.

So begins Supreme Power, Marvel's Ultimate Universe version of the Squadron 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 Squadron Supreme comics taking place on "Earth-712".

Mark Milton (alias Hyperion, Marvel's main pastiche of 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 (Nighthawk), Stanley Stewart (The Blur), Joseph Ledger (Doc Spectrum), Princess Zarda and the Amphibian begin to enter the world stage as Superheroes all of which are less than ideal versions of their DC counterparts, ranging from corporate sellouts, to certifiably insane, to racist and even genocidal in their actions.

Basically, Watchmen said, "If superheroes were real, they'd be riddled with personality disorders and neuroses."

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

The stories are printed on Marvel's 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.

Executive Meddling would later have Straczynski off the book and forced a new creative team to relaunch the series with a new storyline and new characters that look a lot like properties already owned by Marvel. After this incarnation, the franchise appeared ruined. But a brief mini was released in 2011 that appeared to try to take a back-to-basics approach, hearkening to the original run of Supreme Power (returning to the MAX imprint, a return to being Bloodier and Gorier and more realistic story) but with the initial story focusing mainly on Hyperion and Doc Spectrum.

During The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman), the entire Supreme Power-Earth was destroyed by the villainous Cabal, but not before brutally slaughtering its entire population, including the Squadron. After Secret Wars, Nighthawk was mysteriously revived and transported into the restored Marvel Universe, forming a new Squadron Supreme with fellow exiled members from dead universes. He also starred in a short-lived solo series, but was later killed during Secret Empire, quickly succeeded as Nighthawk by his associate Tilda Johnson, AKA the former Deadly Nightshade.

Compare Garth Ennis' The Boys, another 2000s Author Tract from a renowned comic book writer filled with tons of violence, sex and political commentary on Bush-era policies.

Comic titles in the Supreme Power universe:

  • Supreme Power (2003): The original comic, which lays the groundwork for the setting.
  • Doctor Spectrum: 6-issue mini-series covering the history of the character Doctor Spectrum, and his Battle in the Center of the Mind as he lay comatose whilst the Power Prism bonded to him.
  • Supreme Power: Hyperion: 5-issue mini-series covering the founding of the Squadron Supreme and their attempts to subdue Hyperion to coax him back to the team.
  • Supreme Power: Nighthawk: 6-issue mini-series featuring Nighthawk as he battles Serial Killer Whiteface, who has begun distributing lethally poisoned drugs on the streets of Chicago.
  • Squadron Supreme (2006): First missions of the Squadron Supreme. Canceled on a cliffhanger at issue #7.
  • Ultimate Power: Crossover between the Supreme Powerverse and Ultimate Marvel.
  • Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk: 4-issue mini-series in which Nighthawk compels Hyperion to assist him in stopping the ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
  • Squadron Supreme (2008): 5 years after the events of Ultimate Power, Nick Fury from Earth-1610 leads a new version of the Squadron Supreme as a lunar expedition returns...changed.
  • Supreme Power (2011): Hyperion returns at long last, and the invasion fleet that sent him to Earth is finally on its way there.

This comic provides examples of:

  • Adaptational Hairstyle Change:
    • Emil Burbank in the original continuity was extremely hairy and bearded and resented Hyperion for making him that way, in a humorous inversion of Lex Luthor's Pre-Crisis origin of resenting Superman for accidentally causing him to go bald. This continuity's version of Emil Burbank is clean-shaven and his hair isn't as long.
    • Subverted with the Shape, who is introduced with a full head of hair, but later on is as bald as his original incarnation.
  • Adaptational Jerkass: Given the comic's darker tone, a lot of the characters who were traditionally heroic in the original Mark Gruenwald comics are more cynical and flawed, the most notable examples being Hyperion becoming disillusioned towards defending humanity after discovering he had been lied to and manipulated for most of his life, Power Princess ruthlessly believing her strength gives her the right to do whatever she wishes with no regard to anyone who is harmed by her actions and Nighthawk being willing to kill criminals in addition to believing all Caucasians are irredeemable racists.
  • Adaptational Modesty: The Shape in this continuity wears a costume that covers up his body more, when his original incarnation had a pair of shorts as his only clothing.
  • Adaptational Sexuality: Inertia is a lesbian in this continuity, when her classic counterpart was in a relationship with the male Haywire.
  • Adaptational Skimpiness: Zig-zagged with the Amphibian, who, in contrast to her fully-clothed male counterpart in the original continuity, goes around completely naked in the original series. By the 2006 series (as a side effect of the saga continuing publication under Marvel proper rather than the more mature-content-lenient MAX imprint), Doctor Spectrum convinces the Amphibian to put on a costume, which is still significantly more revealing than what her male counterpart typically wore.
  • Adaptational Villainy: This continuity's version of Emil Burbank manages to be even worse than his original incarnation, as to be expected from changing a character willing to team up with his enemy during times of greater crises into a narcissistic sociopath who abuses his gifted intelligence to get away with his actions and molest underage girls.
  • Alliterative Name: Both invoked and lampshaded, as the government names the child that will become Hyperion Mark Milton due to the appeal of that particular name among focus groups.
  • Almost Lethal Weapons: Whiteface's poison has since killed everyone that's been exposed to it, and has no antidote. When exposed to it Nighthawk, despite being a Bad Ass Normal just gets sick and falls unconscious. Even Whiteface is surprised by him being still alive.
  • Alternate Company Equivalent: In spades. Including Captains Ersatz of other Marvel characters.
  • Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: As a "take" on DC heroes, has the resident genius use his Super-Intelligence to bring about great change... until it's Double Subverted and Reed Richards Is Useless.
  • Artistic License – History: 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 the Tomb of the Uknown Soldier only containing soldiers from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
  • Ass Shove: Tom Thumb was placed in a capsule and inserted in the Shape's rectum during the Squad's mission in Africa. He needed counseling afterwards.
  • Babies Make Everything Better: Implied to be totally-not-Ma-Kent's thought process when Hyperion fell out of the sky (she and her husband were giving each other serious stink-eye in the car immediately prior).
    It's like. . . it's like he was sent to us. . . like God sent him to us. It's a sign that. . . that things will be okay between us again.
  • Badass Normal: Nighthawk, of course. He's the only superhero without powers. The government doesn't consider him for Squadron Supreme, considering his talents "irrelevant", though. For his part, he's never shown even the slightest bit of envy towards those with powers.
  • Bad Future: The ultimate result of The Government's cruelty, explored furtively in the "Hyperion" mini-series.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy / Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: Zarda's muddled recount of her past implies that ancient mythical heroes with superhuman abilities were the result of her own landing pod giving rise to superhumans, just as Hyperion's does.
  • Beware the Superman: Hyperion is a very legitimate threat when he stops taking orders from the army. Yet they still prod him. Of course, after both Hyperion's meltdown and the discovery and detainment of Redstone, they've got ample reason to be afraid.
  • *Bleep*-dammit!: Due to not being published under the MAX imprint, Howard Chaykin's series censors the word "shit", but does so in a way that it's still obvious the word is being used (i.e. rendering it as "$#!+").
  • Boomerang Bigot: Nighthawk is so "pro-African American" that he's basically a fanatical black supremacist. Hyperion literally calls him out that he only targets non-black criminals who go after black civilians, and ignores all other forms of crime (with the exception of black drug dealers). In fact, he takes his black supremacy to the extent he's actually racist against other black people, outright proclaiming any black person who doesn't hate all white people is basically a white supremacist collaborator, and the Blur—an African-American who grew up in the southern states—even notes that he's heard fouler racially-charged language from and been more racially objectified by Nighthawk, his "fellow black man", than he ever has been by the white men who he lives amongst.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: It's heavily implied that Emil Burbank did sexual things to his older sister when he was a boy.
  • Cape Punk: Deconstruction type—Humans will react to superhumans with jealousy, envy, and attempts to control them to the point any such beings will go completely off the rails.
  • Captain Ethnic: Nighthawk only beats up people who are committing hate crimes and is portrayed as out-and-out racist against whites. Blur averts this.
  • Central Theme: You Are Not Alone. Everyone afflicted with superpowers at the start believed they were the only ones like them in existence (except Zarda, who knew others would come eventually, but spent thousands of years under a mountain waiting for them, so she ain't quite right in the head, assuming she ever was). Hyperion and Blur pretty much instantly become best buds based solely on the fact that they can relate to each other, and are grateful to finally have someone else who can really understand them. Amphibian finally finding Doc Spectrum, being able to communicate with another human being and not be seen instantly as a monster is a heartbreaking revelation for her. Racism aside, this is Nighthawk's main issue; he's just a Badass Normal among some of the most powerful superhumans in any comics continuity. What's driven him to become Nighthawk has separated him from the rest of humanity, but with no powers of his own, he still doesn't fit in among the supers. . . he really is alone. Of course, that's assuming he really is a normal human...
  • Chekhov's Gun: Supreme Power #8 shows the exact results of Hyperion going-all out against any other superhuman. He wins hands down, but their battlefield ends up looking like a nuclear test site. It's acknowledged in every super-battle afterwards, and Hyperion never goes that far again.
  • Clark Kenting: Averted: Mark states that what he wants more than anything is a normal life, and suggests getting a regular job and wearing glasses to disguise himself. His handlers respond with a "No. Just… No" Reaction. Hopes dashed, Mark continues as Hyperion. None of the heroes in the setting have secret identities except for Nighthawk, who wears a mask.
  • Clothing Damage: Mark and Joe, in particular, are far, far more durable than any material the best scientists on Earth can cook up to clothe them in. Mark can shred his costumes just by flying at absolute top speed. The Blur likewise suffers this thanks to friction from his Super-Speed, until his corporate sponsors give him a suit that can stand up to it.
  • Composite Character: The largely unknown alien species, to whom Hyperion and Zarda belong, shares traits belonging possessed by the Argonians (Earth-S's Eternals), the Utopians (Earth-S's Inhumans), and the Skrulls, as well as other groups.
    • Argonians: They are Hyperion's people who sent him to Earth, they possess advanced technology and Superman esque powers, and (allegedly) are critically endangered/near-extinct.
    • Utopians: They are Zarda's people who possess great superpowers, including immense lifespans, and highly advanced technology, including interstellar space-travel.
    • Skrulls: They are a non-human species with superpowers, warlike tendencies, and advanced technology, including Dr. Spectrum's Power Prism. Also, like the Skrulls of Earth-S, they were (supposedly) driven to near-extinction long ago.
    • Much like Weapon X from the Ultimate Universe, they were the creators of a genetic-virus that spread among humankind and granted many of them superpowers, much like the origins of the Ultimate Universe's mutants.
    • They bear many commonalities to Marvel's Olympians, such as semi-immortality and immense power, Zarda was worshipped as a goddess by the ancient Greeks (much like the mainstream Olympians), and her attitudes are very fitting for a real-world hero from Greek myth.
      • Also, Zarda's creation of a society of misandric female-supremacist warrior-women during her time among the ancient Greeks is very similar to the history of Marvel's Amazons, with Zarda filling the role of Hipplyta.
  • Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: The Blur is first discovered by booking agents, who help him get endorsement deals from assorted companies.
  • Corrupted Character Copy: The comic takes DC's Justice League and runs them in this direction, the end result being a group of Anti-Heroes at best.
  • Confessional: Despite not being Catholic, Mark just needs someone to talk to, and the priest obliges, and gives him some actually pretty decent advice. It's not his, or even really Mark's, fault that it results in compounded mistakes coming due... with interest.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Amphibian is hairless, blue with black markings and large golden fins on her arms and legs. Her design is quite beautiful, reminiscent of a brightly-colored tropical fish, but she appears monstrous enough (and is essentially a feral child, with all that accompanying baggage) that encounters between her and unprepared people tend to go badly.
  • Darker and Edgier: 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 takes control of his body to go on bloody rampages.
  • Deceased Parents Are the Best: Invoked In-Universe. Hyperion's "parents" are government agents assigned to the "mission" of raising him as the ultimate patriot. Once Mark is of age and his existence is revealed to the world, there's really no point in having his parents in his life anymore, so the agents submit a request to be "extracted" from their "assignment." A distraction is arranged for Hyperion, and his "parents" have their deaths faked by the government and go into hiding in Amsterdam.
  • Deep South: 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.
  • Deliberate Under-Performance: Dr. Burbank has been a child prodigy since he was born, but spent much of his early academic career getting average grades because he found that getting perfect grades led to bullies beating him up and teachers accusing him of cheating.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: While it wasn’t given enough time to be properly explored, Zarda actually acts as if she stepped out of an ancient Roman or Greek hero epic — she’s a brutal, selfish, bloodthirsty, sociopathic, and entitled demigoddess that kills random people for the smallest inconveniences, does as she pleases, and shows no remorse for anything she’s done. She sincerely believes that her power makes her better than everyone else and is only concerned with becoming Mark’s mate and ruling the world. She’s basically a female version of Achilles.
  • Dirty Kid: Emil Burbank is already hinted to be a sociopathic rapist, but he also strongly implies at one point that he's been that way since he was a kid, with his older sister currently being institutionalized as a result of violating her in his youth.
  • Does Not Like Men: Inertia. There are some men she's comfortable around or friendly with, like the Blur and Doc Spectrum, but she's largely disgusted by the male sex due to experiences in her adolescence and childhood. Unlike many examples, she has a permanent sour disposition, is very quick to violence, and is an open lesbian.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: 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 and calls him a "prick" when the guy asks what he did wrong.
  • Dumb Muscle: Shape is super-strong, but has the mind of an extremely young child.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: Colonel Joe Ledger was already one of their best soldiers when The Government choose him to become their second superpowered operative.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Poor Spot. This later gets a Lampshade Hanging by some girls who explain an experiment where a monkey was made to look like a different species and released among that species, only to be avoided cause they know something is wrong; they say they get that feeling with Mark.
  • Eye Scream: To show you what this series is like: Nighthawk, the Batman equivalent uses this way more than this universe's version of the Joker.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Well, actually, that would be averted. Super crime is very violent and graphic as is normal crime. Where it comes into play is with Nighthawk, who, while only preying on white on black crimes, will stop black drug dealers.
  • Fan Disservice:
    • Zarda spends the first three issues she's introduced completely naked. The first time we see her, she a thousand-year dessicated shambling corpse.
    • Depending on your feelings about blue-skinned Fish People, Amphibian being naked all the time can be seen as off-putting.
  • Fanservice:
    • Once Zarda gets her youth back (implied to be by sucking it out of a man she's just killed), she spends the issue, all of the next one, and most of the one after that stark naked.
    • If Amphibian is not the above trope, then she's this one.
    • And there's the copious amounts of Clothing Damage suffered by Hyperion, Doc Spectrum, and The Blur.
    • The strip club scenes in the seventh issue of the comic.
  • First Time Feeling: Hyperion feels pain for the first time while fighting Doc Spectrum. Hyperion, whose senses and biology render him immune or unable to be stimulated by almost anything on Earth, appears thrilled by this and immediately demands that Spectrum do it again. Spectrum is understandably weirded out by this and promptly runs away from the fight.
  • Flying Brick: Hyperion and Zarda. And they don't hold back. Redstone is one of these except without flight.
  • Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: After Hyperion's secret agent "parents" first see his "flash vision" in action, they realize how dangerous being in daily contact with this superbaby is. Despite having been warned that there were not to "become involved" during their "misson," they proceed to have sex, explicitly because having just realized how close they may be to death at any given moment, they both need to feel alive.
  • Giving Radio to the Romans: Subverted. During his entire massive rant to the scientists on the project, General Alexander rants on how they've been wasting decades on DNA samples instead of focusing on the alien spaceship they came from.
    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 Cortés was at war with them, and instead of learning to fly so they could slice Cortés 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!
  • Got the Whole World in My Hand: After flying into orbit as a boy, Hyperion holds his arm up to shield his eyes from the sun and in so doing inadvertently "grasps" the Earth in his hand. This proves to be one of the major formative experiences of his childhood.
  • Grasp the Sun: See above.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: 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.
  • Human Alien: 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. Eventually it’s implied that he’s not a Human Alien at all, but rather something with a vague outline of a Xenomorph, somehow disguised by some high-tech Glamour.
  • Humanoid Abomination: How the super-humans in this setting are presented — immeasurable power in human form. Even relatively benevolent super-humans, like the Blur, possess powers they don't fully understand, do things that shouldn't be physically possible, and could easily kill dozens of people in moments. At one point, government agents predict that if Hyperion, or a similarly powered individual, were to go on a killing spree, he'd be virtually unstoppable and the death-toll would be measured in terms of "megadeath," something usually reserved for nuclear war.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: 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. This doesn't last.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: After spending multiple series avoiding any real punishment due to coasting on his intelligence being required to defeat greater threats, Emil Burbank eventually gets his comeuppance at the conclusion of Howard Chaykin's series, where the people empowered by the energy of Hyperion's ship end up losing their abilities, which includes Burbank losing his advanced intellect and ensures his final appearance consists of him raging over his inflated ego being shattered by the revelation that he was now robbed of the gift that had long enabled him to avoid punishment for his unsavory actions.
  • Interservice Rivalry: The various government agencies tasked with dealing with Project Hyperion are prone to hiding operations behind one another's backs, jostling for control over Hyperion himself, and petty personal rivalries. Then General Alexander steps in, declaring "the Wild West days are over."
  • Life-or-Limb Decision: The most recent mini deals with Ledger, having become the America's main Government-sponsored hero, slowly lose control of the Power Crystal 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 the only way to get the crystal off him.
  • Loyal Phlebotinum: The sentient Power Crystal that powered Hyperion's ship. 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.
  • MacGuffin Delivery Service: Nighthawk calls Hyperion and the Blur to take down Redstone, a superhuman serial killer who rips the left arms off hookers For the Evulz. As soon as the smoke clears, there's an unscathed Doc Spectrum to take him into custody. And then they confiscate the security footage and blackmail the few living witnesses into shutting up, indirectly framing him for the murders.
  • Madden Into Misanthropy: The Bad Future is the direct result of The Government's efforts to dominate Hyperion.
  • Mad Scientist: Emil Burbank, though hardly ever do "mad" and "scientist" intersect with him — he's a smart man who enjoys murder and sometimes even rape, but goes about those crimes in fairly mundane ways.
  • Male Frontal Nudity: Doc Spectrum in issue #6.
  • Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Surprisingly averted, considering the story gets as much mileage as it can out of applying Surprisingly Realistic Outcome to every superpower it can. Mark's able to spend the night with a stripper with no ill effects for either party.
  • Meta Origin: The ship which launched Hyperion and Zarda's Escape Pods, which not only brought them to Earth, but an alien engineered retrovirus that transformed a number of the population into lesser superhumans. Doctor Spectrum made good use of the ship's Power Crystal, too. Zarda's arrived in Ancient Rome, resulting in Roman mythology. Zarda went to sleep Under A Mountain at the end of that era, waiting for Hyperion to arrive.
  • Monster Clown: Whiteface, aka Steven Binst. A Practically Joker who poisons the crack going into the city and later everyone in attendance at the birthday party of the mayor's 8 year old son. All while barely talking and wearing a perpetual scarred frown.
  • Morality Pet: Kingsley is this to Doc Spectrum. She's the only person he ever cared about, and he can't imagine what he'd do without her.
  • Multiple-Choice Future: Arcanna has a limited ability to see possible futures and collapse them into a preferred outcome.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Zarda gives three different pasts to the same person within the same scene.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: Joseph Ledger aka Doctor Spectrum.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Nighthawk is lamenting to Hyperion that guys like him, Redstone, and Doc Spectrum won the Superpower Lottery with strength, flight, Eye Beams and so on, while "the only brother in the bunch got the box that says "he can run really, really fast." Lame ass, useless power..." (as if superpowers are inherently racist, or something). The Blur, standing right behind him, takes offense at this, so uses his Super-Speed to strip Nighthawk completely naked, and tells him he can walk home like that (bear in mind, they're in Louisiana, and Nighthawk is based in Chicago).
  • The Napoleon: Tom Thumb, an angry little man who stands about an inch tall. He'll kick your ass.
  • Nigh-Invulnerable: Hyperion, Zarda, Redstone, Shape, and Inertia all have this power. Redstone in particular revels in it; he doesn't care about covering up his crimes, because since he can't be hurt, he figures there'd be nothing anybody could do about it even if he got found out. He eventually learns that he CAN be hurt or even killed in a number of different ways. Even superhumans have to breathe...
    • The Shape has malleable skin that can't be penetrated — bullets just fall out of him, knives bounce off, and even a punch from Hyperion simply sinks into his belly harmlessly.
  • No Nudity Taboo: Amphibian just doesn't get the concept of clothes, thanks to being a Wild Child. It's portrayed closer to National Geographic Nudity than Innocent Fanservice Girl, though has elements of both.
  • N-Word Privileges: Averted. Blur is deeply offended when Nighthawk calls him a "House Negro". As Stanley puts it, he grew up in the Deep South... but Nighthawk is the only person to ever use that kind of language with him or identify him mainly by race.
  • Offing the Offspring: Amphibian's mother tried this after she was born, walking out into the ocean to drown herself and her monstrous infant. Unfortunately, as the name might imply, Amphibian is perfectly suited to life in the ocean. . . so her first sight after being born is mother's drowned body sinking into the black depths.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Ultimate Marvel named it, but Supreme Power codified it.
    Doctor Steadman: You see, your problem is that you don't really understand how powerful these individuals are, or what they are capable of doing. I sent Joe out wearing a radio tuned to the National Geological Foundation's tectonic imaging laboratory in White Springs, Colorado. You see, when Hyperion finds his target, we will not have to wait to hear about it on CNN, General. We will hear about it on the Richter Scale.
  • Puberty Superpower: Averted. Spot lives up to his name because Hyperion gets his "Flash Vision" at an early age.
  • Race Lift: Nighthawk and Blur were both white in the source material, and Redstone was Native American. You can debatably count Nick Fury. Inertia was also white, but is here Ambiguously Brown with no reference made to her ethnicity. There's also the Black Archer, a black version of the formerly white Golden Archer.
  • Rape as Backstory: Inertia's backstory hinges on her being gang raped as a teenager.
  • Recruiting the Criminal: 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.
  • Scary Black Man: Who would you rather meet: Batman or Nighthawk?
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: "Where does a five-hundred pound gorilla sit? Answer: Anywhere it wants to." This is everything the government is scared Hyperion will become, and everything Redstone already is.
  • Serial Killer: Michael Redstone, though note that he bucks most of the conventions. He doesn't care if he gets caught, because, realistically, what could they to do to him? As mentioned, he ends up regretting this attitude.
  • Shame If Something Happened: Stan initially wants to use his Super-Speed to be a hero and help people, but his lawyers convince him that doing so could risk his corporate endorsements, and thus the life he's managed build for himself and his mom. When Nighthawk finally does rope him and Hyperion into stopping Redstone, the aftermath involves telling Stan that, if he admits to having participated in bringing Redstone down, he's essentially pleading guilty to a laundry list of civil and criminal offenses, and keeping his mouth shut is in his and his mother's best interests. It's all part of the government's plan to try and get Hyperion back under their control, in this case by removing his only support.
  • Shooting Superman: Hyperion was shot many times as he stormed the base that housed his ship. It would later come to light that he didn't actually directly cause any deaths or injuries in the attack — most of the casualties were the result of bullets ricocheting off his body. Later, Hyperion actually shoots himself, in the eye to prove a point about how much threat The Government has over him. In a crowded strip club in broad daylight.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: One of the more cynical Superhero comics, the best example can be the flashback montage that accompanies Bill Clinton's introduction of Mark to the world. Every point Clinton gives of why Mark is a model citizen and human are subverted by a relevant flashback, including Mark's parents telling them that they love him.
  • Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: Brilliant sociopath Emil Burbank frequently finds himself stuck working alongside Shape, a developmentally-disabled ex-janitor. Everyone else in the Squadron Supreme gets along fine with Shape, while Burbank is so despised and distrusted that the government takes him out of the field and puts him in charge of devising contingency plans for taking down his teammates.
  • Sociopathic Hero: Zarda.
  • Spiritual Crossover: At one point Marvel and DC had a special type of crossover in mind: one character of each company would be stranded, for a year, in the universe of the other company, that would use it for a year as they saw fit. The project fell into Development Hell and was never done. So Marvel did it on their own: at the turn of the century they had the Ultimate Marvel universe (an Ultimate Universe of the Marvel universe) and the Supreme Power universe (an Ultimate Universe of the aforementioned Squadron Supreme, and so based on DC Comics to some degree). There was a crossover between both in "Ultimate Power", and after it Nick Fury was moved to the Supreme Power universe and Zarda to the Ultimate Marvel one.
  • Stepford Smiler: One of the guards actually compares Mark's surrogate family to The Stepford Wives.
  • Stout Strength: Shape is absolutely massive, but super-strong. His arms are visibly muscular despite his obesity.
  • Superhero Horror: A downplayed example, but the superhumans in this story are presented less like people and more like Humanoid Abominations who inspire fear rather than hope, and are capable of murdering dozens of civilians in minutes if it suits them.
  • Take That!: When discussing "the Atlanta Blur," a general expresses his opinion that it's the stupidest name the media's ever given anybody.
  • Tamer and Chaster: 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 as a result of the gradual shift towards being published under Marvel instead of MAX, 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.
  • To the Pain: How General Alexander re-conscripts Hyperion in "The Deconstruction of Mark Milton".
  • Transplant: Zarda and Nick Fury switch places in the Ultimate Power crossover.
  • Ultimate Universe: Though not the Ultimate Universe. However both worlds do meet in Ultimate Power.
  • Upbringing Makes the Hero: What The Government attempts, and mostly succeeds at.
  • Unwitting Pawn: 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. Unfortunately, both stories are broken only with the government's help, as part of their plans to control Hyperion and his public image.
  • Viewers Are Goldfish: The Hyperion vs. Nighthawk miniseries has a habit of constantly reminding the reader of what happened earlier in the comic at every opportunity, to the extent that one could read only the fourth and final issue and not miss any crucial detail of the plot.
  • Walking Wasteland: Al "Nuke" Gaines, a man whose radioactivity is literally off the charts and who kills anyone or anything near him unless properly contained.
  • Wild Child: Amphibian AKA Kingsley Rice. Her mother tried to drown the both of them after seeing her malformed baby, but the Amphibian took to life underwater pretty well, living there into her early 20s before ever being discovered. She's incapable of speech, but can communicate telepathically. She also responds to anything she preceives as threatening with violence. Oh, and, as you might've guessed, she doesn't wear any clothes.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Pretty much the Trope Codifier. Children, you get superpowers, go work at the supermarket.
    General Casey: You're not human. You know that now. You look like us. But you're not one of us. So what difference does it make? You don't have any rights, we don't have any obligation to treat you one way or another.
    • Straczynski gets mega bonus points for having this speech be delivered by a black General Ripper.
  • With Us or Against Us: Nighthawk believes this;
    "A long time ago, my dad heard Malcolm X speak at a church in Memphis. He said that during slave days, you had the house Negro, and the field Negro.
    The house Negro lived in the master's house, ate the same food as the master, lived in a warm room, usually in the basement. If the master got a cold, he was right there to help out, all cheerful and friendly because he wanted his own life to be good, and that meant making the master happy.
    The field Negro ate whatever scraps the dogs didn't eat, lived out in a cold shack, was beaten and kicked — and when the master got sick, he prayed every day the master would die. Didn't matter if the master was technically a nice guy or not. The master represented the system, and it was the system he hated."
    • It's pretty much the core of his philosophy: In a world with masters and slaves - oppressors and oppressed - every slave that isn't looking for a way to defeat the masters serves the masters.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Whiteface, the Nighthawk miniseries' Arc Villain, 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. He isn't; Nighthawk rips the grappling hook embedded into Whiteface out, killing him. No Joker Immunity here!

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