Product Description: Alan Moore strikes again with Americas Best Comics, an entire line of comics created and written by him. A physical and mental super-human, Tom Strong was orphaned by his scientist parents, raised by a steam-powered robot, and fights evil alongside his beautiful wife and headstrong daughter. Tom quickly heads into battle against the Nazi super-woman Ingrid Weiss and a prehuman monster in this new volume.
It's good so far You feel like you're reading every tenth or twentieth issue of a comic that's been around for decades, because we jump right in in medias res, in the middle of Timmy Turbo's introduction to Tom Strong's comics. Through Volume I we skitter and scatter like autumn leaves on the pavements of Millennium City, backwards and forwards into the past (the birth of Tom Strong on the South Pacific island of Attabar Teru) and the future, back into the distant past (300,000 years ago, before the birth of plant life on our planet), and the Y2K celebrations that seemed so meaningful at the dawn of America's Best Comics.
We meet a few of the science criminals and super villains who make Tom Strong's life more interesting, but his arch-nemesis Paul Saveen, to me, lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. We don't know why he's bad, and the same goes for the Nazi superwoman Ingrid Weiss. So yes, it's hard to get caught up in their craziness the way one does when following the antics of the Joker in recent decades of BATMAN. However, the conceit of a biracial family of superheroes, aided by a robot and a gorilla, is enough to keep me reading, and I'm curious as to how Moore's narrative strategy can play itself out. We are dropped into this world which apparently has been going on a hundred years or more, and names and significant events come bobbing up to the narrative surface now and then like letters in a bowl of alphabet soup. Later we'll see what they spell out, or will we?
Will the young, blonde, 20s reporter Greta Gabriel become a threat to the Strongs' marriage? Will the rehabilitation of Albrecht take? What about the intricately drawn of the Ozu--is it a form of Ubby-Dubby language or has it actual syntax? Does Strong live on fan club membership payments, and if not, why do so much work for the them? On to Volume II.
Holy socks! Sign me up for the Strongmen of America fanclub. So who is the square-jawed and massively framed Tom Strong? Born at the turn of the old millennium on a remote island guarded by rainbows, raised in isolation in a high gravity playroom, granted longevity in life, and imbued with a genius for science - is Tom Strong. Today Tom, whose life span nears a century, sallies forth from his home and headquarters, the Stronghold, and, with his beautiful, elegant wife Princess Dhalua and his plucky daughter Tesla, safeguards the sprawling, gleaming metropolis of Millennium City.
Alan Moore, still comic book's best writer, doesn't really do any heavy lifting here but still evokes a simple sense of wonder with his terrific Tom Strong stories. Neither as gritty as Top 10 Book 1 nor as disturbing as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1, rather, Tom Strong's universe is filled with optimism and nostalgia. While Moore tends to lean towards storytelling with adult-oriented content, his Tom Strong series comes closest to a PG rating, even if there are still some mature themes present. Tom, whose origin owes a fond nod towards Tarzan and Doc Savage, is a science hero, a thinking man of action who makes use of his inventions and marvelous physicality to combat his many frightening and esoteric villains. His offbeat adventures are tinged with that pulp feeling from back in the day. Doesn't hurt a bit that Alan Moore makes his cast interesting. Dhalua and Tesla are absolutely marvelous, while the intelligent ape King Solomon and the steam-powered mechanical butler Pneuman nicely round out Tom's immediate circle. Tom himself is Moore's attempt to instill in one archetypal protagonist certain iconic characteristics drawn from Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Superman.
TOM STRONG (BOOK 1) collects the first seven issues of the regular comic book series, enough to give a sense of the breadth of Tom Strong's massive backstory. To further flesh him out, Tom's contemporary exploits are also complemented with related flashback stories (In one instance, there's even a flashforward story). This includes Tom's origin in the first issue, which has to be one of the most refreshing comic book stories I've read in years. 100 years of adventuring can fill up a roster of villains. In this volume Tom faces off against old foes, from a self-replicating mechanical monster, a genetically-enhanced Nazi villainess, and a sentient primordial slime mold to Tom's science nemesis, the evil (but well-dressed) mastermind Paul Saveen. But a new challenge awaits Tom as Millennium City is invaded by technologically advanced Aztecs from a parallel dimension. Yet another thing to look forward to is that this volume contains a 4-part story arc which holds some ramifications for Tom and his family.
Respect to the deceptively clean lines and composition skills of artist Chris Sprouse (LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, SUPREME). With the passel of guest artists covering the flashback portions (Arthur Adams, Dave Gibbons, Jerry Ordway), Sprouse's presence goes a long way in providing a consistent and cohesive look to the series. And I love his renderings of Millennium City, with its pristine, towering high rises and those cable cars zipping by overhead.
The negatives to this comic book? Well, the Tom Strong title, debuting in 1999, tended to suffer from sporadic publishing. In fact, it took a whole year for the seven issues here to be released. Another downside is that, starting with issue #8, the title began to feature three short stories per issue, which, except for the Tesla Strong chapters, aren't nearly as enjoyable, and again in part due to the inconsistent publishing. TOM STRONG - BOOK 1, however, is tremendous fun and highly recommended. This TPB also contains an introductory 2-paged text "history" of Tom Strong as written by Alan Moore, as well as several pages of character designs and bonus artwork by Sprouse. I'll say it: this volume is pulpy goodness.
Great intro to Alan Moore's fascinating characters After reading "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," I wanted to read as much of Alan Moore' work as I could. These tales of Tom Strong would not have been my first choice, but they was available and I grabbed them. I'm not sorry I did.
"America's Best Comics" is a collection of 6 separate comics that provide the beginning of the Tom Strong character. The series starts with the story of Tom's parents, around the year 1900, getting shipwrecked on Attabar Teru, an uninhabited volcanic West Indian island. Here, they hope to raise a child in a pre-Skinnerian controlled environment maintained at 5 Earth gravities. Tom, the child, is raised in an atmosphere of "pure reason, away from society's influence" and is accompanied by Pneumann, a wood-fed, steam driven automaton. The first story deals with Tom's birth and childhood, his relationship with the island's natives (no surprise, the place was inhabited after all!), his first meeting with Dhalua, his future wife, his eventual departure from the island and his founding of Millenium City, "on the eastern seaboard of America." Other adventures deal with various threats to Millennium city from an Aztec computer priesthood whose snake-god is on a computer screen, a metal-eating computer virus called Modular Man, some shape-shifting hyper-intelligent primordial ooze and a passel of scantily clad female Nazi air pilots.
The artwork is terrific. A few sections of the comic purport to be reintroductions of earlier strips, and are rendered in a different style. Alan Moore's writing is intelligent, subtle (for the genre), serious, mostly engaging, with few hints of irony or self-mockery. The stories themselves are fairly interesting, though they share the typical comic book dilemma of delivering a trenchant story in a limited space. The central plot device--that Tom's strength derives from his upbringing in a 5G environment--is the strip's only issue. As with any comic about the super-enhanced, is Tom's near invulnerability (he survives explosive detonations and bone-breaking stunts) sometimes results in a lack of suspense. Tom's successes are quick, easy and all but inevitable, taking away some of the punch of the plotlines. What can you say about a guy who can weather a bomb blast but gets knocked down by a single punch from a teenager?
I had to push my way through the last few stories, as the seemingly endless tale of bodacious, half-clad Nazi girls got tiring after a while. One's eyebrows could raise a bit too at the author's intentions behind this Anglo superman's marriage to a West Indian black woman, however royal. Dhalua was always portrayed as a strong woman, physically and psychologically, and Moopre has to be credited with dealing with an issues as delicate as race. Readers of color may not like his choices, but hey seem to have been made with a good heart and clear conscience.
In the end, I enjoyed Tom Strong and his varied cast of supporting characters. He stands for goodness, purity of heart, tolerance and family. You can do worse than that.
Not Free SF Reader Tom Strong is somewhat of a Doc Savage homage.
His parents take him to an island when born, and isolate him in a 5G environment on a special diet to build a superman. A volcano polishes them off and he ends up in Millenium City after making a superape and marrying a princess.
His adventures tend towards a touch more of the Planetary type weirdness than Doc's though, with alternate universes, long lived nazi superwomen etc., the latter is the main storyline of this trade.
Definitely fun stuff.
Just plain great stuff. First off - Alan Moore writes great stuff. Period.
Tom Strong is some his best work. From the very first page I was sucked into an alternate dimension where Tom Strong books have been in print since before I was born....which was a quite awhile. The setting and characters have the richness of a long-running series.
If I may use an analogy. One night my son and I were talking about 'That '70s Show" and he made the comment that it sounded like the show was written by someone who grew up in the seventies rather than a twenty-year old making a guess as to what the decade it like. Tom Strong does the same thing with comics - it doesn't feel contrived at all - it feels real.
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