|
|
|
|
|
|
| TOM STRONG |
|
Volume
One |
| by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Art Adams,
Gary Frank, Dave Gibbons, & Jerry Ordway |
Hardcover: 160 pages
DC Comics
ISBN: 1563896540 |
$24.95
|
| The Origin
of Alan Moore's "Science Hero"
How can one man have so many
ideas? Alan Moore is most famous for his deconstruction of super-hero genre
comic books in the 1980s, but now he's reconstructed the idea and showing
us what he's learned. |
|
|
|
| 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. |
|
|
|
|
AMERICA'S
BEST COMICS
|
|
|
|
| Tom
Strong #1 |
|
|
Written and Created
by Alan Moore
Art by Chris Sprouse
and Al Gordon
Cover by Alex Ross |
How it all began for the
100-year-old strongman/scientist! Lost island tribes, bizarre pneumatic
man-servants, talking apes, romance and the Blimp Bandit! It’s a big-hearted
America’s Best Comics kickoff and Tom Strong thrown his arms open wide
to welcome you! |
|
| A new ongoing
series from the writer of WATCHMEN and the artists behind Supreme debuts
with an extra-length issue featuring a painted cover by Alex Ross (SUPERMAN:
PEACE ON EARTH)! From the pen of Alan Moore, one of the most critically
acclaimed writers in the history of comics, comes the amazing world of
TOM STRONG. A world filled with adventure! Jungle kingdoms! Pneumatic robots!
A world conceived in stunning beauty and realized in the best pulp tradition.
A world we could all use. Get in on the ground floor with the full-length
origin story "How Tom Strong Got Started." |
|
| |
|
|
| Tom
Strong #2 |
|
|
|
Tom is off exploring Venus
when his old enemy, the Modular Man, returns! Seems he’s encoded his mind
onto self-replicating mechanical modules, and they’re taking over the world
one building at a time! Tom can’t fight him without destroying the city,
and even if he does win, how can he purge the Modular Man’s files from
the Internet? |
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Chris Sprouse
and Al Gordon
Cover by Chris Sprouse |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Tom
Strong #3 |
|
|
| Tom faces the Aztechs, hi-tech
heart-rippers who have already enslaved 2,057 parallel realities to their
cold, computerized snake god, Quetzlcoatl-9! And our man Strong is armed
with a pair of goggles, a knife, and a red shirt with a triangle on it.
Unfair? You bet! But still, the Aztechs might be able to put up a bit of
a fight anyway … |
|
As Tom Strong beat the Modular
Man, so does he defeat the Aztechs: not with biceps, not with ballistics,
but though the use of the large organ between his ears!
Written by Alan Moore
Art and cover by Chris Sprouse
and Al Gordon |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Tom
Strong #4 |
|
|
|
With cover and 8-page interior
story by the legendary Art Adams complementing the work of regular Tom
Strong artist Chris Sprouse, this issue plunges us back to the smoking
ruins of a strangely unfamiliar Berlin in the last days of World War II,
where we witness the alarming confrontation between Tom Strong and the
Nazi superwoman Heidi Weiss amidst the rubble and the shadows of a broken
Europe. No fan of our pulp titan can afford to miss Swastika Girls! |
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Chris Sprouse,
Art Adams, and Al Gordon
Cover by Art Adams |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Tom
Strong #5 |
|
|
| A stunning issue featuring
a cover and 8-page interior feature by Jerry Ordway! Tom Strong is far
from home, trapped in the far-distant past and stranded on the Earth's
first single continent. It's here our high-tech Hercules must face his
oldest foe, the deathless horror that is our world's earliest inhabitant.
You won't want to miss Tom Strong's adventures at the Dawn of Time as he
relives his "Memories of Pangea." |
|
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Chris Sprouse,
Jerry Ordway, and Al Gordon
Cover by Jerry Ordway |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
