| Tom Strong is
a "science-hero", born in 1900, raised in the jungle and living in Millennium
City. To the more literary-minded, he's a metaphor for the history of the
modern comic book- as his adventures are shown to us in flashbacks that
use different comic styles and conventions- but even the most superficial
elements of Tom Strong are enjoyable. He has neat-o adventures, uses gee-whiz
gadgets, and engages in the most dashing of derring-do. He's a good guy,
Tom, and you wish you could live in his world.
Alan Moore throws so many
ideas at you in the course of the 7 chapters (the first 7 issues of the
comic book series) that it's a pity there wasn't more time devoted to each
one, but this is Tom Strong, and he doesn't plod through concepts that
other comic character would spend pages and pages puzzling out- he's a
genius who works out solutions just as fast as the problems arise.
Moore is aided by several
artists, including a reunion with Dave Gibbons, his collaborator on the
justly acclaimed Watchmen series. But Gibbons is only a guest artist, drawing
a mere 8 pages. The bulk of the art is drawn by Chris Sprouse, whose style
is clean and captures the essence of Tom's character.
In the year 2000 Tom Strong
is 100 years old and as fit as ever. Can the same be said of American comics?
With Alan Moore to create them it can.
Born of Savage and Greystoke,
TOM STRONG is Alan Moore's intelligent take on Tarzan and Doc Savage, melding
the Jungle Lord and the scientific superhuman into a new pulp hero. Mr.
Strong is a fully-functional character with an astounding and unpretentious
history as a brilliant inventor and a two-fisted crime-fighter. But Tom
Strong is also about scientific endeavor, using the pulp fiction conventions
of, say, the theory of time travel, to explore Strong's incredible history
as a man who, through science and the hidden knowledge of ancient cultures,
has lived 150 years worth of adventures (perhaps, though the future of
Tom Strong is still conjecture at this point in the chronicles.) From Tom's
World War II conflicts with genetic Nazi supermen, to his encounter with
the first, and most dangerous, life form in Earth's primordial past, this
book covers a mere sampling of intriguing, fascinating, and extremely heroic
moments in Tom Strong's life. A completely engrossing book, whose ideas
are just as powerful as the slug-fests within its pages. A great writer's
addition to the lore of immortal pulp heroes. |
