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By Alan Moore & Various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0030-3
Supplementing the monthly adventures of Superman of Science Tom Strong was a monthly anthology title dedicated to short tales from that hero’s long and chequered career, including his youth on the lost island of Attabar Teru. Alongside were the well-upholstered adventures of Jonni Future, with the occasional comics experiment from some of the biggest names in comics.
This collection starts with an arctic thriller set in 1950, illustrated by the superb Paul Rivoche and scripted by Moore himself, as was the silent, whimsical romp ‘Tesla Time’ with pictures by Jaime Hernandez. Young Tom Strong ‘And the Fiend from the Forgotten Shore’ is a ghost story of sorts from artist Alan Weiss and British comics writer Steve “no relation†Moore, who also writes the traditionally evocative science bimbo Jonni Future, an outrageously pneumatic heroine who travels to the end of time via ‘The Halfway House’. The art here is Adams, Art Adams.
Alan and Paul return in issue #2 with ‘Live Culture’ as Strong and soviet counterpart Svetlana X thwart a multi-dimensional invasion on a space station, Steve and Arthur bring you Jonni Future and the ‘Moth-Women of the Myriad Moons’, and Steve and Mr. Weiss pit Young Tom against ‘The Thunderbirds of Attabar Teru’.
Jerry Ordway illustrates Alan Moore’s ‘The Rule of the Robo-Saveen’, and the usual suspects bring us Jonni Future and ‘The Seraglio of the Stars’ and Young Tom Strong ‘And the View Beyond the Veil’ in the third issue collected here.
Paul Rivoche returns for ‘Leap of Faith’, and Steve Moore writes ‘The Witch of the World’s End’ for Arthur Adams and ‘The Fairy of the Foam’ for Alan Weiss, whose regular assignments are Jonni Future and Young Tom Strong respectively.
Issue #5 brought the wonderfully experimental ‘Collect the Set’ from Alan Moore and Jason Pearson, wherein this entire tale of the Tom Strong Family is about and told in bubble-gum cards. The hero’s sapient Gorilla assistant stars in ‘King Solomon Pines’ by Leah Moore –actually a relation – and cartooning icon Sergio Aragones, and the issue concludes with a sharply funny tale of sexual exploration for Young Tom Strong in ‘The Mysteries of Chukulteh’ by the ever-popular S. Moore and A. Weiss.
The final issue features Tom Strong (by Alan Moore and Jerry Ordway), in the mind-bending ‘Goloka: the Heroic Dose’, Jonni Future visits ‘The Garden of the Sklin’ (S. Moore and Adams) and Young Tom Strong also visits the cerebral realms in ‘The Shadow of the Volcano’ (S. Moore and Weiss).
These tales are stuffed with nostalgic reinvention and familiar comic territories re-explored. Whether that has any meaning for new or young readers – and no, they aren’t necessarily the same thing – is largely irrelevant when the creators work this hard and are this good. Try it yourself and see.
© 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.