Terra Obscura, vol 1

 

By Alan Moore, Peter Hogan, Yanick Paquette and Karl Story (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-860-7

Alan Moore’s refit of the American superhero genre continues with this spin-off from Tom Strong, himself a blending of Doc Savage and Superman mythologies that sees the hero and his immediate family having adventures and meeting other remixes of iconic comic characters throughout time and space.

During one of these adventures (notionally in “1968”), Strong discovered a close duplicate of Earth at the far end of the Milky Way which even had its own counterpart of himself (Tom “Doc” Strange) as well as a pantheon of superheroes and villains derived from the Better/Standard/Nedor comics of the 1940s and early 1950s.

In a later tale Strong and Strange teamed to defeat an alien that had conquered the alternate Earth (dubbed “Terra Obscura” for expediency’s sake) and placed its heroes in suspended animation for thirty years. The current story begins three years after the liberation.

Sadly, from there on it’s business-as-usual in the world of modern superhero epics. The plot is a standard super-being murder-mystery. A generic cast of heroes gathers in the face of a civilisation in slow crisis. Can we discover who killed the Captain Future analogue, and can the Justice Society, sorry, Society of Major American Science Heroes uncover the traitor in their midst who is trying to conquer the world?

I understand the whole point of these tales is as a glossy homage to the comics of our youth, but who are they actually intended for? Will eye-candy tributes, no matter how well written or drawn, really bring in new readers, especially young ones? Are old farts like me ever going to settle readily for modern remakes of the glorious whimsies we devoured as children, or will we gradually stop buying new comics and concentrate on high-ticket reprints and the tracking down of back-issues that always evaded us during the onset of puberty?

There is perhaps, an argument for this material as periodical publication, as a means of getting people into comic shops, but how many can pay their own way and still generate the demand for a collected edition?

I readily admit that the fanboy in me actually enjoyed the read. Moore and Hogan engaged my attention and Paquette and Story satisfied my constant craving for good drawing, but I didn’t buy the miniseries, and I wouldn’t have read the compilation if those nice people at Titan Books hadn’t sent me a review copy.

Saccharine isn’t honey. You can always put a coat of fresh paint and sequins on your favourite armchair, but that doesn’t make it new or even more comfortable. Despite Alan Moore’s ability and cachet, I doubt this sort of material has any long term broad appeal.

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