In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover the surprising Alan Moore Superman story that predated his DC comic book work entirely

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and fifty-seventh installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend in this installment.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Alan Moore wrote a published Superman story before he ever worked for DC Comics.

STATUS:

True

June 1985 was a historic month for Alan Moore and Superman, as June 6th saw the release of Moore and Rick Veitch's brilliant DC Comics Presents team-up between Superman and Swamp Thing (I wrote about that team-up relatively recently. As an aside, I wrote in the headline for that article about how it was a Superman/Swamp Thing team-up that nearly killed the Man of Steel, since Superman is dying from a rare Kryptonian illness caused by a plant called the Bloodmorel, found in the Scarlet Jungles of Krypton, that somehow survived and came to Earth in a meteorite. Swamp Thing cures Superman using his plant powers to communicate with the alien plant to save the Kryptonian's life. Someone objected to that headline, because DC was never going to kill Superman in an issue of DC Comics Presents, and thus, the use of "nearly" was inaccurate. Oooookay. Moving on!).

dc-comics-presents-85-0

Two weeks later, Moore and Dave Gibbons (a pairing we would never see again on any other comic books) combined to produce the iconic "For the Man Who Has Everything," about Batman, Wonder Woman and Robin trying to celebrate Superman's birthday, but the villainous Mongul has trapped the Man of Steel in a hallucination courtesy of ANOTHER plant, the vicious Black Mercy...

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Most people, me included, assumed that these were Moore's first published Superman stories. That, though, turns out not to be the case!

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In 1980, London Editions Magazines (which was the comics publishing division of Egmont UK), launched Superheroes Monthly, a black and white reprint series of DC comics that Egmont had licensed from the United States. Check out the awesome Alan Craddock cover for the second volume of the series...

superheroes-monthly-volume-2-1

The series ran from 1980 through 1982, but then it continued for a series of three Annuals from 1982-1984. Now, the practice at the time was to release the 1984 Annual in 1983 and the 1985 Annual in 1984 and so on and so forth. Well, while these Annuals almost entirely just reprinted DC stories, there were occasionally times when extra material was needed. This sort of thing goes all the way back to the early days of comic books in the United States. You see, when comic books debuted in the States, they were almost always reprinted comic strips. That was sort of scene as the obvious way to go, as everyone knew Americans loved comic strips, so there was a proven market there. Who wants original comic books when you could have the top comic strips instead? Well, when you were presenting reprinted material, there was always the need for some original material to keep the page counts correct and one of DC's earliest characters (as I pointed out in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed) actually predated DC, because he first appeared as filler material in one of the earliest comic books (before National Allied Publications, founded by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, launched based on the novel idea of, "Hey, why not do ORIGINAL comic books?").

So in that second Superheroes Annual in 1983...

superheroes-annual-1984

There was a two-page text piece by Alan Moore, with illustrations by the brilliant Bryan Talbot. The story was titled "Protected Species," and it was about an alien who traveled the universe collected endangered species from lost planets that he would then bring to his bosses who would keep the survivors on a sort of zoo...

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Well, when he tries to bring in a Kryptonian, things don't go according to plan. Check out the brilliant way that Moore has the guy describe his encounter with Clark Kent (and then, Superman)...

protected species 2

I ADORE the bit where he starts to freak out as Clark Kent changes into Superman. "Why is he taking off his clothes?" The bit about how, if his eyes can melt stuff, perhaps his navel is his most powerful body part and he has to release clothes to get to it, is just AMAZING.

Click here for Page 1 and here for Page 2 to enlarge the images, to read the story better.

A problem is that I don't know WHEN this Annual was released. Alan Moore's first issue of Saga of the Swamp Thing was released in the last week of September in 1983. Would this Annual have come out before then? Prooooooobably not, but it would have been pretty close, I think, so this Annual MIGHT have predated Moore's first DC comic book work, which would be amazing, right?

EDITED TO ADD: Reader Rob S. wrote in to note that he recalled the Annuals being on sale in August, so they WOULD predate Moore's first DC comic book work. Awesome, thanks, Rob!

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The following year, Moore did another Superman story in the 1985 Superheroes Annual...

superheroes-annual-1985

This time, it was a really cheeky, clever story (with illustrations by Bob Wakelin) about a cab driver telling the story about how he was Superman's double once...

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Of course, as he tells this absurd (but hilarious) story...

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He doesn't realize that he's telling all of this to Clark Kent, who, well, might have some thoughts on the veracity of his story...

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Click here for Page 1, here for Page 2, and here for Page 3 to enlarge the story.

I might do a future legend about ANOTHER fascinating Alan Moore text piece from this era! We shall see (I'll save you the suspense. It WILL happen)!

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PART THREE SOON!

Check back soon for part 3 of this installment's legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com