Category: Tom Strong

By various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-148-0

The fourth collection gathers the material from issues #20-25 of the Man of Science’s monthly comic-book and signals a period where Alan Moore relinquished much of the writing to other hands. But before that happened he created an alternative time-line pastiche of DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths story that did much to flesh out the minor and background cast members. Running in #20 -22, ‘How Tom Stone Got Started’, ‘Strongmen in Silvertime’ and ‘Crisis in Infinite Hearts’ is by Moore, Jerry Ordway, Karl Story (and a few friends) and tragically shows in a better-than-average alternate/time-paradox how a matter of a second’s delay can change the World.

What if the black sailor, Tomas Stone, rather than Sinclair Strong had survived the Shipwreck on Attabar Teru? What if a child raised in a more humane environment, rather than the bleak isolation of a scientist’s theories, had reached America in 1920 to become a very different kind of super-hero? These questions are answered with profound sensitivity both to the sensitivities of a readership steeped in comic-book lore, and the desire for a damn fine comic experience.

Peter Hogan writes the next adventure, as a restored Tom, his extended family and Russian counterpart Svetlana X revisit the moon only to discover a huge surprise. ‘Moonday’ is drawn and inked by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story and the same creative team craft ‘Snow Queen’, as Greta Gabriel, Tom’s murdered lost love of the 1920s returns, not dead and chillingly, no longer human…

Geoff Johns, John Paul Leon and Dave Stewart conclude this volume with ‘Tom Strong’s Pal: Wally Willoughby’, wherein a twenty-something, nerdy, klutzy fan-boy proves to be possibly the most dangerous force in the universe. This subtle charmer puts a modern spin on the old adage of “Politeness costs nothing” and ends the book on a warm note.

Whilst possibly not having great resonance with Alan Moore’s mainstream followers, nor young newcomers, old lags who have followed comics for a while might find these tales oddly familiar and reassuring.

© 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

By various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-148-0

A light touch is something sadly scarce in super-hero comics these days, so the third compilation of Science’s Ultimate Hero (collecting issues # 15-19 of the monthly comic-book) is a welcome distraction as it features a few old friends and foes – and plots. ‘Ring of Fire’ by Moore and Sprouse with inking by Karl Story sees the living volcano-man Val Var Garm entice the strong Family into his under-Earth city before joining them on a more formal basis as Tesla’s live-in boyfriend (see Tom Strong Book 2 for more information and thrills).

A three eyed galactic drifter then turns up just ahead of a three part Alien Invasion in a tale first hinted at in ‘Lost Mesa’ (Book 2 again). Summoning all the help they can the heroes head for interplanetary space to destroy an armada of giant ants in ‘Some Call Him the Space Cowboy’ and ‘The Weird Rider: Gone to Croatoan’, ‘Ant Fugue’ and ‘The Last Round-up’ all by Moore, Sprouse and Story.

The follow-up was another short-stories issue with Howard Chaykin illustrating Moore’s adventure of Sexual Impolitics in ‘Electric Ladyland!’, Leah Moore, Shawn McManus and Steve Mitchell reviewed the last moments of arch-villain Paul Saveen in ‘Bad to the Bone’ and Alan, Chris and Karl close the book with surreal fourth-wall-ery as Tom and Tesla become trapped inside a comic-book in ‘The Hero-Hoard of Horatio Hogg!’

With an extended section of pin-ups, this knowing, clever pastiche of a simpler time in comics is a fine way to reminisce with some thing new.

© 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

By various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-228-5

Alan Moore continues his loving re-examination of the comic experience in this second collected volume of the adventures of the perfect hero. Reprinted from the pages of issues #8-14 of the Tom Strong monthly comic-book, this selection kicks off with ‘Riders of Lost Mesa’ as Strong and his talking Gorilla assistant Solomon encounter a town of cowboys that have returned to Earth after an absence of 150 years. Western aficionado Alan Weiss provides the art for this striking and portentous vignette, whilst co-creator Chris Sprouse draws ‘The Old Skool’, an exploit of the hero’s eccentric fan-club, The Strongmen of America. He also handles ‘Sparks’, a solo outing for Tom’s daughter Tesla, who meets new friends in an active volcano.

I suspect these short adventures were intended as a way of introducing characters and concepts for later use in extended storylines, but that doesn’t make them any less delightful, and I welcome the return of the much neglected graphic short story – which has almost become a lost art in these days of braided multi-part epics. Paul Chadwick illustrates the ‘Terror Temple of Tayasal!’, Chris Sprouse draws and Al Gordon inks both ‘Volcano Dreams’ – a surreal solo story starring Dahlua, Tom Strong’s wife – and daughter Tesla’s individual adventure, ‘Flip Attitude!’.

Gary Gianni illustrates the eerie ‘Tom Strong and his Phantom Autogyro’, and Sprouse and Gordon continue the mindbending as the hero crosses into the dimension of cartoon counterparts in ‘Funnyland!’ Tesla Strong almost reclaims the dignity of the book before herself succumbing to multi-dimensional madcappery in ‘Too Many Teslas?’ but order is eventually restored in time for the next issue.

‘Strange Reunion’ is the first of a two-part epic that calls Tom Strong to the far end of the Universe and allies he had made at the end of the 1960s. Along with the second chapter ‘Terror on Terra Obscura!’, it forms a loving and dramatic homage to the JLA/JSA team-ups that so inspired the budding fan-boy generation. With his analogue Tom Strange they rescue the inhabitants and captive superheroes from an intergalactic invader. Old timers might recognise the heroes of Terra Obscura as the publishing stable of the 1940’s and 1950’s outfit Nedor/Better/Standard Publications (and whose flagship title was America’s Best Comics).

The next tale was an all-out tribute and pastiche of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Family as Tom, Tesla, Tom’s young self and even the cartoon rabbit counterpart from ‘Funnyland!’ unite to save time and space in ‘The Tower at Time’s End!’ with Sprouse and Gordon joined by Kyle Baker, Russ Heath and Pete Poplaski on individual art chapters.

The final homage of the book is to those legendary EC Science-Fiction anthology comics. With all stories of the nigh immortal family set in the 1950s, ‘Space Family Strong’ delves into their space-faring past, and is illustrated by Hilary Barta, whilst Sprouse and Gordon illustrate both ‘The Land of Hearts Desire!’ and a team-up with that era’s Johnny Future in ‘Baubles of the Brain Bazaar!’

Whilst I’m unsure just how these tales would sit with that portion of Alan Moore’s audience that his other work has brought to comics, and who therefore have little or none of the background to fully appreciate the gags, in-jokes and references, let alone the artistic variations these pastiches utilise, I do know that they are written in a clear and straightforward manner and are enchantingly realised by the many talented artists involved.

So if a kid of five could pick up enough to become hooked all those decades ago, surely inquisitive adults can be just as open to the wonderment today. I certainly hope so…

© 1999, 2000 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

By Alan Moore & various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-228-5

In 1900 a boy was born to the renowned scientist Sinclair Strong and his wife. At the time they were shipwrecked on the lost island of Attabar Teru, from where they had planned to raise a child free from society according to purely scientific principles. Although Susan Strong was less than happy with her husband’s vision she acquiesced and young Tom was isolated in an atmospheric chamber where he spent the first eight years of his life growing under the weight of five gravities, and learning systematically everything the couple wished him to learn.

In 1908 a huge earthquake shattered the chamber, freeing the incredibly powerful boy, but tragically killing his parents. From then on he became a ward of the benevolently Arcadian Ozu people, learning their ways and becoming habituated to the mind-expanding longevity prolonging drug distilled from Goloka root. In 1921, he left this fabulous paradise to find the world his parents had escaped. In 1999 Tom Strong is the World’s greatest hero and has been for nearly eighty years.

Alan Moore has distilled the myriad elements of fantasy’s most popular heroes and injected them into an utterly pure comic-book world to examine the nature of this most modern myth, the super hero. All these varied elements enable him and his collaborators, primarily the superbly talented Chris Sprouse, to pay homage to their favourite fads, trends and memories whilst telling old fashioned stories in new-fangled ways.

This premiere volume introduces Tom Strong, his Ozu wife Dahlua and daughter Tesla, and the super-cool city and world they protect together. Millennium City, on the East Coast of America, is a blending of every superhero’s home town, fantastic and futuristic but still in desperate daily need of a champion. After the endearing, obligatory origin issue (this book collects the first seven issues of the monthly comic book series), the second chapter deals with the return of an old foe, the Modular Man, who menaced the world in decades past, and now threatens to overwhelm and consume the city, if not the planet.

Next is a cross-dimensional adventure as the Aztech Empire, conquerors of uncounted parallel universes, attempts to make Tom’s reality their latest acquisition. Issue #4 begins an extended epic, which tells a tale of two eras as a contemporary attack by the ‘Swastika Girls’ on Tom’s home – “The Stronghold” – leads to a flashback yarn of the hero’s lost exploits in World War II. Illustrated by Arthur Adams, this story-within-a-story is a funnybook fetishist’s dream as leather-clad Nazi superwoman Ingrid Weiss defeats Strong in the bombed out ruins of Berlin, only to return in 1999 and trap him in the distant past, when all the land mass of Earth was one huge super-continent, Pangaea.

The second part (from issue #5) again features Chris Sprouse on the main art, with another “Lost Tale of Tom Strong”, this one drawn by Jerry Ordway in a tribute to the classic EC fantasy tales of Wally Wood and Frank Frazetta.

Issue #6 continues the saga as Tom returns to the present for possibly the final confrontation with arch-enemy and mad-scientist extraordinaire Paul Saveen, the hidden brain behind the Swastika Girls. Dave Gibbons provides the untold tale of the first battle between these giants of science, and the main plot culminates with the revelation that Ingrid Weiss didn’t merely beat the hero in the ruins of Berlin…

The book concludes with a classic super-hero free-for-all as Tom’s wife and daughter join the fray, and Gary Frank and Cam Smith contribute a tale of 2050AD as this family saga spectacularly climaxes.

By synthesising the past Moore and Co brought back the whimsicality too seldom seen in modern comics, and by attempting the tone rather than the trappings managed to – mostly – escape the perils of parody and pastiche to create something worth reading on its own terms. Good fun for all.

© 1999, 2000 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Alan Moore, Steve Moore & Various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0615-8

There’s a delicious zeitgeist permeating comics these days. There was a time in the comic industry when carnivorous copyright attorneys roamed the veldt, able, ready and so much more than simply willing to issue writs at the slightest pretence on behalf of one company against another, or even against small kids in the playroom who’d used half gnawed crayons to make Daddy a picture of Spider-Man. It seemed as if simply being drawn the same height as a company trademarked property was enough for the vultures to swing into a holding pattern.

Those days, it appears, are gone forever. Every company has now bought into a process where a thinly disguised ‘homage’ enables creators to access a greater, shared fantasy meta-culture, whether for unsanctionable guest shots, as cool foils such as “Doc Brass” or “the Four” in Warren Ellis and John Cassaday’s Planetary, or simply for its own sake as in Alan Moore’s ABC works like Tom Strong.

The second volume of Terrific Tales collects issues #7 – 12 of the comic series and features, as usual, short tales of Young Tom Strong’s early life by Steve ‘no relation’ Moore and Alan Weiss, pulp scienti-fiction romps with the outrageously upholstered Jonni Future (by Steve ‘still no relation’ Moore and Art Adams) and what can only be described as gloriously experimental outings from Alan Moore himself and a variety of top names.

Shawn McManus draws the memorable storybook fable ‘Blanket Shanty’, Jason Pearson illustrates ‘The Tom Strong Cartoon Hour’ whilst Michael Kaluta provides pictures for the prose ‘Millennium Memories’. The highlight for me is ‘Coloring Our Perceptions’ a wordless, primitivist strip spectacularly painted by Avant Garde cartoonist Peter Kuper, although it is a delicious delight to see Bruce Timm’s pastiching of comic book jungle girls trapped in a game preserve (‘Jungle is Massive’). Rounding out the pictorial radicalness is Peter Bagge’s particular brand of post-modern, urbane angst in the domestic chiller, ‘The Strongs’.

This is an interesting book for interesting times but I still can’t help but wonder what you feed Lawyers to keep ’em docile.

© 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

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.

 

By various (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-148-0

Alan Moore relinquishes his writer’s role to a selection of top creators for an intriguing medley of tales from his own private universe with this collection.

First is the staggeringly whimsical ‘The Day Tom Strong Renegotiated the Friendly Skies’ by Mark Schultz and Pascal Ferry, wherein The Man of Science has to correct the supposedly immutable Laws of Physics governing aerodynamics as, apparently, manned flight is only possible because of a deal brokered by Strong’s own father at the turn of the century, and the sky-gods have decided not to renew the contract…

‘Jenny Panic & the Bible of Dreams’ from Steve Aylett and Shawn McManus tells of a young girl whose nightmares create and warp Realities, and Brian K. Vaughan and Peter Snejbjerg craft a fascinating spin on devotion by exploring the history of Strong’s life-long robotic companion, Pneuman in ‘A Fire in his Belly’.

The two-part ‘The Terrible True Life of Tom Strong’ from Ed Brubaker and Duncan Fegredo’ finishes the book, a pretty if uninspired old plot-boiler revisited as Strong wakes on our world and his adventurous existence is revealed as nothing but a glamorous delusion in a damaged mind. Despite its grateful nods in equal part to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Moore’s own true origin of Marvelman/Miracleman, its readable but self-indulgent questioning of its own reality and internal integrity detracts from what might have been a sharp spin on a favourite plot.

All in all this collection (reprinting issues #26-30) is a fun read, and a worthy companion to previous volumes scribed by someone who seems incapable of writing a bad comic, and obviously well able to share his toys.

© 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Alan Moore, Peter Hogan, Yanick Paquette & Karl Story (America’s Best Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-193-6

This second volume of stories featuring the alternative heroes from an Earth duplicate situated at the other end of the galaxy continues the heady blend of wonderment and soap-opera as archetypical superman Tom Strange begins a romance with a widowed Jungle Queen just as an old comrade returns.

Of course said comrade – Captain/Colonel Future – is returning from beyond the solar system in a spaceship that has been twisted and malformed by the hideous mysteries of deep space. And, naturally, said homecoming has precipitated a catastrophic series of time-slips that has re-inflicted the events of Pearl Harbour on modern Hawaii and threatens to A-bomb Hiroshima one more time. Super-heroes are popping out the mists of time to fight their counterparts and heirs and the world is generally reduced to a state of utter higgledy-piggledy.

Couple that with the last word in super-heroine (can I still say that?) zombie stalker plots and you have a well-drawn piece of retooled retro-nonsense that will please the already converted but will utterly baffle the casual reader and sadly make no new converts to our little corner of the entertainment market.

© 2004, 2005 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

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.

© 2003, 2004 America’s Best Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.