Strongmen of America

art by Chris Sprouse and Al Gordon

Let me take you back to my life before I had internet access. As a ten year old boy most of what I knew about comics I learned from, well, actually reading comics. My father told me a lot about comics history but he didn't really know about anything that came after Barry Smith drawing Conan the Barbarian. My sister read comics too but her knowledge was limited to X-Men and a few of the then current Vertigo comics that her friends would have read. In those dark pre-internet days I had to turn to a dark place to learn more about comics. Yes dear friends, I read Wizard The Comics Magazine. I was a child! Forgive me!

I did not yet appreciate who made the comics I read but Wizard drilled some names into my head. I knew that Alan Moore was important. I knew that Watchmen was important. Still, thanks to Wizard my first exposure to Alan Moore's writing was Tom Strong from Moore's America's Best Comics line.

I remember the article about the new ABC line with it's black and white character sketches. The description of Tom Strong really struck a chord with me. He was described as a Reed Richards-like super genius with other qualities reminiscent of classic pulp heroes like Doc Savage and Tarzan. I obviously knew who Tarzan was but after inheriting much of my grandfather's book collection I was now reading the stories that Tarzan appeared in before he was the famous caricature we all know today. Unfortunately, at ten years old I didn't have access to a comic book store and the local Optimo Tobacco Shop I bought my comics at never got any issues of Tom Strong.

One year later I was already a different comics reader. I got a copy of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns on a trip to Barnes and Noble and it changed how I read comics. I wanted to read all of the Frank Miller I could. I discovered a comic book store that was a thirty minute walk from my house and started seeking out things I never would have found at that old Tobacco shop. I bought a lot of comics there and one of them was Tom Strong #11. I remembered the character from that Wizard article and I knew that Alan Moore was important. Kinda like that Frank Miller guy I was crazy about.

I followed the series sporadically for a bit and I remember it fondly in spite of the issues I missed. It mined some material that was familiar to me but also spun those ideas in ways that appeared unique to me at the time. I had forgotten about the series until I was eighteen years old and working at my first job on the Upper West Side. I noticed a Fifty Cent comics box at Westsider Used Books and checked it regularly. I found a few issues of Tom Strong in there and decided to pick them up because I was pretty sure they were ones I never read. Among them was the thirteenth issue featuring the combined artistic talents of main series artist Chris Sprouse with guests Russ Heath, Kyle Baker, and Pete Poplaski. I was hooked in a way I had not been as a kid. It took a few years but I tracked down a complete run of the issues written by Moore. It was a cheap endeavor as well thanks to the bottom falling out of the back issue market. Now these comics occupy an important role to me as my rainy day reading material. From Hell and Watchmen may be greater works of comic art but Tom Strong is my favorite work that Alan Moore ever produced. There's so much fun to be had in these comics and the creators show a lot of affection for goofy shit that entertained me as a kid.

Tom Strong #1
Tom Strong #2 
Tom Strong #3 
Tom Strong #4 
Tom Strong #5 
Tom Strong #6 

Oh, how the ghost of you clings...

I hated when my dad would say that something was "better back in my day."

Comics, movies, music, cartoons. He claimed it was all better when he was growing up. I wanted the media of my generation to hold up. I wanted my comics, movies, music, and cartoons to be the best but when my father said it was better when he was a kid, I believed him.

I was the youngest of three children with an eleven year spread between us. As a result my parents were older than any of my friends' parents. Their youth seemed so long ago but I was still able to expose myself to a lot of their youthful interests as a kid growing up in the 1990s. Cartoon Network didn't have original programming but I was able to absorb plenty of Looney Tunes, Droopy, and Popeye. My parents still played their old records around the house granting my childhood self a diverse set of musical interests ranging from Howlin Wolf to Tom Lehrer. Turner Classic Movies aired Marx Brothers and Three Stooges films on Saturdays. I felt alienated from other kids for many reasons and being obsessed with a time before I was born didn't help.

Comics were my most passionate interest but the nature of the industry in that period made reading the comics of my parents' youth into a seemingly insurmountable task. Still, I was hooked on my father's comics history lessons. He talked about his earliest comics memories of reading The Spirit, Batman, and EC's Science Fiction comics. He told me about how he became a big fan of Jack Kirby and the Fantastic Four when he was in the army. I was hooked on his descriptions of comics I thought I'd never read.

I was pretty obsessed with Batman as a kid, thanks to a steady diet of the movies, the animated series, and of course, the comics. My father waxed eloquently about the earliest Batman stories. I remember the talking points. "Gritty subject matter. Long shadows. Moody art. Detective stories." You could probably imagine my excitement when my dad came home from work one day with a copy of Batman featuring Two-Face and the Riddler, a trade paperback that reprinted classic comics featuring those titular villains. The first chapter was an issue of Detective Comics from 1942! These were the comics my dad had spoken about!

Well, it sucked. The art was ugly, and not the kind of ugly I liked in Mad Magazine. Where were the long shadows? There wasn't much of a mystery either. This wasn't what my dad was full of shit.

Memory is a funny thing. My dad was right about Jack Kirby, and I like quite a lot of EC stuff. I can't tell you when I finally got around to reading any of those other things but the day I read those crappy Batman comics stays with me. I suppose it taught me that nostalgia wasn't to be trusted but it didn't stop me from pining for the past either.

My parent's childhood wasn't the only past I wanted to immerse myself in. As a kid, my comic book collection was divided pretty evenly between new comics, hand me downs from my older sister, and flea market finds that were usually from the 1980s. I poured myself into these comics and became obsessed with ads for comics that had been new a decade earlier.

I've continued to fall into this trap my whole life. When I became truly obsessed with Mad Magazine I bought as many old Mad paperbacks as I could find at a local used bookstore. When I discovered alt comics during my high school years I sought out as many 90s Fantagraphics releases as possible before diving into vintage underground comix. When I first discovered The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics it happened to be just before our current golden age of comic strip reprints exploded.

It's a bit weird for me to acknowledge how much my obsession with comics is tied into nostalgia. I no longer believe that comics were better when my dad was a kid. I honestly think that my adult life has been a peak for comics as an art form, and the last several years have played host to some of the greatest comics of all time. That's a line I'll be straddling when I write about these foolish things on this blog.