Writer: Alan Moore Artists: Chris Sprouse, Alan Gordon, Arthur Adams, Gary Frank, Dave Gibbons and Jerry Ordway
Publisher: Titan Books/DC Wildstorm
Plot: Sophisticated scientific techniques and a unique life history create Tom Strong, a 100-year old adventurer with a century's worth of adventures and enemies.
Comments: Tom Strong: Book One absolutely represents the pinnacle of superhero/adventure comics. Alan Moore and his co-creators, especially penciler Chris Sprouse, are to be congratulated for creating a mythos equal to or greater than the greatest comic book superheroes created in the past six decades.
And they did it in seven issues!
That's what's collected in this value-for-money softcover volume, the first seven issues of what represents, to my way of thinking, the apotheosis of Alan Moore as a storyteller. There simply is no way this book could be any better. Except maybe a hardback edition, which, in the UK, sold out on arrival.
The Ether is a long-outdated pseudo-scientific concept mentioned significantly in this series, and that's probably not a coincidence; the milieu Moore weaves here is so utterly convincing that it seems, at times, to have been pulled from the Ether of old.
Last week, on a whim, I picked up from the quarter bins a three-issue miniseries Moore wrote for Wildstorm/DC called Deathblow: Byblows. Seventy-five cents for three issues of Alan Moore is a good bet, and I did enjoy the work, although the pleasures were fairly minor. It was an amusing bit of fluff, playing a bit with a character from the old Image/Wildstorm days, but when I put it down, I wasn't overcome with the sensation that the series was anything special.
This Tom Strong softcover is a whole other animal. This is Alan Moore at the absolute top of his game, as good as he has ever been. This is Watchmen good, and with a better ending to boot.
Of course, I don't mean to imply this book has the level of subtext or complexity of Moore's landmark series with artist Dave Gibbons. Of course not. But Watchmen, as highly as I regard it, had a fatal flaw in its ending. While the final panels were chilling in their implications, and the series has held up perhaps better than any other comic of its time, Tom Strong is storytelling for the ages.
Moore creates an origin for Strong that only slightly stretches the limits of credulity, while paradoxically being completely incredible. From there, a tapestry is created that intricately depicts a worthwhile life lived well, the life of Tom Strong. We meet his family, his friends, and of course, a rogue's gallery of villains completely suited to a tale stretching the length and breadth of the 20th Century.
I'm not going to spoil this volume for you at all. Sure, I could regale you with my theories about the story, my thoughts, say, on Tom's true lineage. I could go into detail about the insightful manner in which Moore once and for all dissects the sick nostalgia of those who look fondly on the Nazi regime--but I am not going to say another word about the plot of the seven perfect comic books collected here.
Suffice it to say, Moore takes all the lessons he learned from Watchmen, Supreme, Swamp Thing, and all his best works, and applies them in something that is utterly familiar and startlingly original.
Chris Sprouse is proven here to be one of the best comics artists alive today. He handles everything Moore throws at him, with skill and grace. I don't know if the guest artists such as Gibbons and Adams were a part of the plan all along or were brought in to provide Sprouse with a little breathing room. It doesn't even matter; the guest segments are seamlessly wed to the Sprouse-illustrated chapters, in a manner so easy to absorb that there's scarcely even any reason to bring it up. It's enough to say that there's not a panel out of place in the entire volume--this is one of the best looking comics around.
You also get some bonus pages in this TPB – the introduction to the world of Tom Strong by Moore as a foreword. And Sprouse’s sketchbook pages, some nine of these. Throw into the mix the covers (plus the alternate cover for issue one) and you not only have storytelling at its best, you have a worthwhile package for even those who own the original issues.
Final Words: I reviewed the first few issues of Moore's Top Ten some months back, and found it not to my taste. I avoided Tom Strong after that experience, and now regret I waited so long to take another look at one of America's Best Comics. In this case, the name fits perfectly. Deny yourself the pleasure of this volume at your own peril.
