This may sound weird coming from someone who writes about what I consider to be classics in the comics industry, but I’m not really someone who ascribes to the idea of a “best” era of anything. I’m not just referring to my own preference of considering things “favourites”, since best is so subjective, but more specifically the people who will say that they’re born in the wrong era. That they’d rather be around the fashion of the ’50s. The music of the ’80s. The films of the ’30s. Whatever.
I think it’s reductionist. It usually ignores social and political issues at the time. That while nostalgia is fine and well, wearing those rose-coloured glasses only leads to problems. I can certainly appreciate wanting to be in a situation where your favourite media, entertainment, culture was new and fresh, but I think that there’s never been a better time for it than now. A sliding now. Because you get everything. The great new stuff coming out now and all of the works that came before. Don’t limit yourself to one period.
Although, I do believe that for everyone the second best era for comics is their childhood. Or when they first fell in love with the medium. (Applications of that can cause problems with superhero creators, but that’s a different argument for a different time.) That best will be different for everyone and none of them are wrong. When they had their sense of wonder and imagination tapped by the magic of creation. If you’re lucky, it will happen more than once too. It can come like waves.
I often gravitate towards comics of the ’80s and ’90s myself. Those were my childhood and teenage years. Horror and weird comics. DC Comics and Vertigo. The X-Men in the ’90s like practically everyone else. Though the fringes have pretty much always called to me. The independents definitely for the past 20 years or so. That being said, one of the times when the industry captured lightning in a bottle, all too briefly and sadly fraught with tension, was in the early ’00s with the aptly named America’s Best Comics.
“‘Interesting,’ said Tom Strong, and travelled on, into the shifting, half-remembered City of the Dead.”
I could probably pick any comic or arc from the line (and very likely may well do so in the future) and consider it a classic. It really wasn’t hyperbole to call the line America’s Best Comics, though there was probably a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour rather than hubris in its naming. I am, however, going to focus on Tom Strong #10 by Alan Moore, Gary Gianni, Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Matt Hollingsworth, and Todd Klein. In a way, I kind of chose it at random (not really, though it was among a selection of Tom Strong issues I considered), but it strangely fits within some of the larger themes I intended this week.
Tom Strong as a concept is a boys’ adventure type of comic. While there were certainly comparisons to CC Beck’s Captain Marvel in terms of style and presentation, Tom Strong as a character is even more of a throwback to pulp adventure heroes. Particularly something like Doc Savage. Quite different from Moore’s previous dabbling with Captain Marvel-adjacent subject matter with Marvelman/Miracleman. But it doesn’t end there with an expansion into his extended family featuring his wife, daughter, robot, and talking gorilla friend. It’s the kind of thing that looks backward through the history of comics and pushes them forward with more progressive ideas and future sentiment.
That’s inherent here in this issue itself as it’s broken into three separate stories. All of them written by Moore with colours by Hollingsworth and letters by Klein. The first is pretty much an illustrated prose story with art by Gianni. It features Strong going into what the story calls the City of the Dead, which essentially looks and functionally acts like the past. Strong attempting to go back to see his parents. With a kind of moral of you can look, but you can’t touch. That it’s fine to remember the past, but you can’t dwell in it. Gianni’s artwork absolutely fabulous, in a style not dissimilar to old novel illustrations. Very textured and detail oriented.
The other two stories pencilled by Tom Strong co-creator Sprouse and inked by Gordon. They’re interconnected and push forward more of the ongoing narrative within the book, even though both are relatively self-contained. They break open the idea of infinite possible worlds within the America’s Best Comics universe, first with a fun take on funny animal comics and then a nod and a wink to some existing familiar universes in the second. Sprouse and Gordon more than up for making each feel unique while maintaining a baseline style for the primary Tom Strong and his daughter Tesla.
The shifts in presentation and style throughout even the same story, let alone across the stories, are beautifully handled by both Hollingsworth and Klein. With Gianni, the colours fade with the descent into the world of the dead and become flat more animated in the funny animal world of Warren Strong. Likewise Klein’s letters adapt to the various characters and types of stories.
“With a near infinite number of me on a similar number of worlds, I was statistically guaranteed to screw up on some of ’em!”
And that’s just one issue. Of one series. Tom Strong #10 by Moore, Gianni, Sprouse, Gordon, Hollingsworth, and Klein is only a drop in the bucket just for the Tom Strong corner of the ABC universe. A fun exploration into the infinite possibilities of not only the in-comics universe, but of approaches to comics storytelling and history. It’s the sort of thing that is highly enjoyable to read, just on the surface, but also a celebration of the craft of comics too.
It does, however, also tie back in to something that I used to love about comics. And collecting in general. In how you can possibly get the issue itself. DC does offer them for sale individually digitally, if you want them immediately, but I get how that can be cost prohibitive. Part of the fun for me for numerous series, especially something like a complete run of all appearances of Swamp Thing for instance, was hunting down back issues I missed. Filling in holes in my collection.
Tom Strong is a weird one where the collections don’t seem to be in print now. Not even the Tom Strong Compendium that came out a couple of years ago and has a second volume (collecting the spin-off series Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales, the sequels by Peter Hogan and Chris Sprouse—one of the rare instances where I was okay with continuations after Moore departed DC again, since Sprouse is a co-creator and should be allowed to do what he wants too with the characters—among other related tales) apparently coming out next year.
I’d suggest diving in to searching out those old books (it’s in volume 2 of the original hardcovers/trade paperbacks if you go that route) in your local comic shop, at conventions, etc. See if the joy of discovery for physical items works for you. (Though, again, I realize even that can be pricey. Checking out your libraries for out of print stuff can be good too.)
Classic Comic Compendium: TOM STRONG #10
Tom Strong #10
Writer: Alan Moore
Artists: Gary Gianni and Chris Sprouse & Al Gordon
Colourist: Matt Hollingsworth
Letterer: Todd Klein
Publisher: DC Comics – Wildstorm | America’s Best Comics
Release Date: September 20 2000
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