Well, one thing's for sure: SUPERMAN BURNS IN HELL would be a really, really awesome Rasputina or Judas Priest album cover. In fact, the only way I could possibly improve on the title is by adding some exclamation points. SUPERMAN BURNS IN HELL!!! (see the difference?)
Though I don't know if we'd want an Alan Moore story told from this particular period - after CAPTAIN BRITAIN, MIRACLEMAN and SWAMP THING, all of which were legendarily imaginative, well plotted, and mindblowing in every single way, he gave us very dreary, boring, flat works like WATCHMEN. In addition to the slow paced plotting (did it REALLY require 12 issues to tell?) and unecessary characters...worst of all, Alan Moore is a funny guy, and in this period we see very little of Alan Moore's sense of humor. (Though WATCHMEN had one tidbit of the old Alan Moore we know and love that always makes me laugh: while discussing one criminal who wore a costume because he got off on being beaten up, when asked what happened to him, Night Owl responds "Oh, he tried it on Rorshach and the guy was pushed down an elevator shaft.")
While WATCHMEN is still better than most comics out today, it wasn't done when Alan Moore was in his best and most productive "mood" - and certainly not the kind of mood that is best for Superman.
I'm just rationalizing, of course, to keep from banging my forehead against the wall constantly in frustration when I remember that
ALAN-FREAKIN'-MOORE could have been writing a regular Superman Comic.
Incidentally, great diss by Moore to Byrne. Remind me never to get into a "Your-Momma's-So-Fat" contest with the guy.
If we're talking about my buddy Alan Moore's Superman stories, obviously the top one was WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW? What can I possibly say about this that everyone else here hasn't said?
Interesting thing I've noticed about MAN OF TOMORROW: at first, when reading it I thought it was George Perez (no relation) doing the pencils instead of Curt Swan. George has this very distinctive inking style of doing thousands of itty bitty lines, and even if he just does the inks alone, it still "looks" like a George Perez comic.
Alan Moore's greatest Superman story I think, was SUPREME. Most comics have a trippy or imaginative idea every year, or in the case of the really great ones, once every issue. SUPREME, though, had a trippy idea averaging ONCE A PAGE. There was a trophy in the back of the 40s ALLIED SUPERMEN H.Q. that was marked "HELIOS, KING OF THE SUN." Whoa. They have a
King of the Sun now? Sure, it helps that Supreme was based on the blueprint of Superman, but that doesn't make any of Alan Moore's ideas any more mindblowing. Thousands of superpowered puppies that chase cars - and actually catch them to bury in the backyard, breaking into a museum to get at the dinosaur bones. Travelling in Hyperspace, they see themselves leaving BEFORE they've even arrived. WOW.
I did not like SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11 ("For the Man Who Has Everything") as much as lots of people seem to. For one thing, Superman was characterized all wrong. Superman has been established as idolizing his utopian native planet, and his father as a hero who sacrificed himself and his wife so that their son would have a chance at life. This sacrifice has inspired Superman to continually be self-sacrificing himself. So, Superman, given the chance, dreams of his heroic father as being a ranting crackpot? I cannot seriously believe that Superman, the ultimate idealist, is so cynical that he imagines his native world as a dystopia racked by social injustice and rioting. Another work produced by Alan Moore, in his own words: "When I was in a bad mood."
Great Caesar's Ghost were DC ever stupid back then, what the heck were those editors smoking?
When it comes to DC editors, their great decisions are inverse to the amount of mescaline being huffed around the office at any given time. It wasn't that they were doing too much drugs - it was that they weren't doing enough.