Won't You Come Out Tonight? (Tom Strong #4)

Cover art by Arthur Adams, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

The last time I regularly bought an ongoing superhero comic it was when Grant Morrison was writing New X-Men. I was already familiar with the characters but it was the art by Frank Quitely (below left) that drew me in. Quitely had a style of storytelling that mixed an incredible amount of forward momentum with the sort of solidly rendered characters and environments that made you want to stop and appreciate the drawing itself. The closest comparison I can think of is Katsuhiro Otomo's art on Akira. Unfortunately Quitely didn't draw every issue. Those drawn by Ethan Van Sciver (below center) featured the kind of generic art that some comics fans think of as "realism" and the ones drawn by Igor Kordey ( below right) were simply utilitarian, probably due to how rushed they were. Other artists drew fill-ins but none of them matched the fine detail that Quitely used to elevate the book.

That's when I realized that deadlines were more important to big comics publishers than consistent art and that writers were thought of as more of a draw than the artists that attracted me to the books I liked. At that time I was seeking out something new as a comic book reader. I wasn't happy with what I saw happening at DC and Marvel and I was growing out of most of the material they published.

Initially the superhero comics I bought every month were replaced by Japanese comics and trade paperbacks collecting old North American comics. Manga satisfied my craving for consistent art over the course of long serialized stories but I struggled to find American adventure comics that satisfied the same desire. One of the handful of series that captivated me was Saga of the Swamp Thing. Those six paperbacks collected a long run of stories by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, and Alfredo Alcala along with a number of other guest artists. I was confronted with the same situation, one writer and a revolving series of artists but it never bothered me.

There are a few reasons why those comics worked for me. Bissette, Totleben, Veitch, and Alcala may have had styles that could easily be distinguished from one another but there were qualities that unified them. All four artists employed similar storytelling devices and placed a lot of emphasis on texture. There were also plenty of issues where some combination of those creators collaborated on the art, resulting in a unified look for the series. Then there are the guest artists. Many of them were able to seamlessly blend in thanks to inks provided by Totleben or Alcala but even when they didn't blend in, like Shawn McManus, Moore played to these artist's strengths in the stories that were provided to them. I actually decided to revisit this series recently and there are a few of issues where a guest artist looks out of place but they are an infrequent enough occurrence that I'm still comfortable rating that whole run pretty highly, at least within it's niche.

Tom Strong features another smart solution to the problem of a large number of collaborators. Chris Sprouse continues to be the lead artist, rendering the present day adventures of our titular hero but starting with issue number 4, we start to see back-up features drawn by guest artists. These so-called Untold Tales of Tom Strong illuminate the history of the characters and settings of the main plot. The different art styles serve as a visual cue that we are seeing events from another time.

Chris Sprouse and Art Adams side by side with assistance from Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

This issue features an Untold Tale drawn by Art Adams. I'm a fan of Adams' detailed art though this issue isn't the best display of it. I have no problem with Al Gordon's inks over Sprouse's pencils but I'm not sure how well he meshes with Adams. Adams has a pretty distinct line but I don't feel like I'm seeing it in this story. This issue is a solid if unspectacular read, probably because the introduction of Nazi villainess Ingrid Weiss is merely a setup for the first multi-issue story in this series. This issue ends with Weiss luring Tom Strong into a Tachyon Accumulator (Moore using Warren Ellis-ish buzzwords again!) and sending him back in time. Her parting words mention the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea, hinting at the setting of the next issue.

Tom Strong #4 (October 1999) was written by Alan Moore with art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrlich as well as lettering by Todd Klein. The Untold Tale of Tom Strong contains additional art by Arthur Adams

Strongmen of America - Revisiting Tom Strong 

The Crimson Circuit is Complete (Tom Strong #3)

My god, Todd Klein must have spent so much time on this lettering. - cover art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrilich

Aztec and Mayan imagery has been a symbol of hidden ancient knowledge in science fiction since the release of Chariots of the Gods, if not longer. I wonder if that will fade the further we get from the much hyped Mayan Apocalypse of 2012 (which in case you hadn't realized, never came). I wonder if the long term association with the History Channel's Ancient Aliens will one day transform the white guy truth seekers who appropriated that imagery, into symbols of early twenty first century kitsch. I suppose Action Bronson turning that show into MST3K material is a start.

Supposedly an ancient depiction of a spaceship's cockpit. Looks uncomfortable as hell to me.

There was a time I'd have identified myself with that sort of behavior. I've been a UFO buff since I was a kid so I totally went through a Von Däniken phase but I found the archaeological evidence a bit lacking and got over it pretty fast. Plus, thinking that aliens built the pyramids made it all feel like less of an achievement and as a human being myself I wanted to take part in the victorious afterglow. Humans are horrible for a million different reasons but it's pretty cool that we built the pyramids, right? Let us have something!

Even though I only believed in ancient alien visitations for a brief period of time the imagery of lost Mesoamerican technology is something I have been immersed in with a relative amount of consistency. Just trying to read about UFOs casually you can't avoid the subject coming up. As a science fiction fan I kept noticing this imagery showing up in the movies, books, and even the comics I'd been reading. Jack Kirby did it best in The Eternals which I would have read the summer of my seventeenth year after having bought the omnibus with graduation money. When the old gods returned they were titanic, like you'd expect Kirby monsters to be. Maybe even more than that.

The "Aztech" Empire in Tom Strong handles that in a different way. They come from an alternate universe where their knowledge was never lost. Instead, they conquered America, Europe, and then the rest of the world. They turned their Earth into an advanced civilization then traveled sideways, conquering every Earth they encountered throughout the multiverse. They eventually attack Millenium City where they appear in golden ziggurats. When Tom Strong is captured and meets the old gods they turn out to be a computer program.

It's far less grand than Kirby's Celestials marching across the Earth but I guess it's unfair to compare the two. That said, the Modular Man's reformation in the previous issue also felt like a bigger deal. The Aztechs and Quetzalcoatl-3 just amount to another villain of the month.

The major setpiece of this issue is a series of pages that occur during Tom Strong's escape. They're structured similarly to the Gasoline Alley Sundays where the page depicts a single setting with the characters appearing in different positions throughout that setting. The pages succeed to varying degrees. The best page features Tom Strong stealing some sort of vehicle from his captors and moves through the space with a Kirby like momentum. The other pages are a bit more bland and I can't help but think that employing an obvious grid like Gasoline Alley's Frank King would have done a better job of guiding the reader's eye.

Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

The other stylistic tic that I noticed in this issue is the inner monologue of Tom Strong spread across the issue in red caption boxes. I can't think of any other issue using a first person narration like this one. It's weird seeing so much text in this comic because Alan Moore's writing was so much more lean during this era as opposed to the wordy but occasionally overwrought passages of his runs on Miracleman and Swamp Thing. That prose mixed with Tesla talking about her father serve to introduce the idea that as Tom Strong enters his hundredth year, his mortality may become more apparent. It's an interesting message to send to the reader but by hiding it in such a forgettable issue it's made into little more than a pleasing piece of furniture in an otherwise dull waiting room.

***

The third issue of Tom Strong is also the first one with a letters column and it contains this intriguing letter:

I was aware of the idea that Tom Strong's mother Susan could be attracted to Tomas, the sailor that died while bringing her and her husband to Attabar Teru. That's mainly because of how that factors into the alternate reality driven "Tom Stone" stories that appear in later issues. However, I didn't read that into their brief interactions in the actual first issue. Susan is depicted as broken up about the death of Tomas and Sinclair coldly notes that she had been fond of him. That doesn't really translate into sexual attraction to me because, well, I have plenty of people who I like without wanting to fuck them. Perhaps there are other social cues that I'm not picking up on here because this idea is echoed in a few letters in future issues.

Now if Tom Strong can be read as a mixed race character I still don't think that makes the questions surrounding noble savages and magical black people from his origin story go away, particularly because he passes as white. His daughter Tesla on the other hand is actually of mixed race. Her representation throughout the series is certainly one of it's finer points. She is one of the most well defined members of the cast and probably my favorite, especially when she's griping about her parents. As a kid I identified with her and I didn't find a lot of depictions of women in comics I could relate to back then.

Tom Strong #3 (August 1999) was written by Alan Moore with art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrlich as well as lettering by Todd Klein

Strongmen of America - Revisiting Tom Strong 

More on race in Tom Strong: 
Tom Strong #1 and race in pulp narratives

It's Only Life That Gives Meaning To The Stars And Worlds (Tom Strong #2)

This cover is pretty ugly. Those gradients make everything kinda grey. Art by Chris Sprouse and Angus McKie

Tom Strong wasn't the only comic book adventurer born in 1900 and still practicing in 1999. Warren Ellis would have also been writing about 99 year olds Jenny Sparks and Elijah Snow in The Authority and Planetary respectively. Planetary also dealt with a hundred years of secret history and forgotten pulp heroes (including a stand-in for Doc Savage, one of the inspirations for Tom Strong). I don't know if this represents the late 90s zeitgeist, I haven't revisited a lot of genre comics from that era. It does seem that there were certain kinds of ideas floating around in the minds of creators employed by Wildstorm, ABC's parent imprint.

In addition to giving you a glimpse at the Modular Man's technology the top panel of this page also alludes to a paneling style used in an earlier spread. Neat! Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

Take the Modular Man. Formerly a scientist named Temple Baldry, the Modular Man has broken his consciousness down into units of information stored in a self replicating machine. As the machine builds more new machines Baldry's personality appears and takes control of them, creating a large wave of smaller robots representing one entity It's interesting to see Alan Moore tapping into the kind of high concept science fiction one might associate with the comics Ellis was writing in this era. On paper The Modular Man sounds like the kind of villain you'd see in the pages of Planetary but when he shows up in Tom Strong the conflict is resolved with a suggestion that you might expect to come out of the mouth of a Mort Weisinger era Superman. Strong, tired of fighting suggests that The Modular Man take over an uninhabited planet, in this case Venus.


The idealistic science fiction of silver age DC superheroes is one of the notable flavors to be folded into these stories. Its particularly refreshing to see Tom Strong employing alternate methods for saving the day like the one mentioned earlier. The vast majority of superhero stories climax with two guys punching each other. I do enjoy my fair share of comic book violence but western superhero action is frequently stiff and honestly, kind of tired outside of the hands of a select few artists. In addition, the authoritarian nature of superheroes generally makes that violence a bit more uncomfortable for me. 

Another splash panel. This one shows off another silver age DC trope employed in this series, the talking Gorilla! Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

Chris Sprouse and Al Gordon depict the big concepts as being, well, big. This issue features a succession of large splash panels on most of it's even numbered pages (the left hand page of each two page spread). Those pages usually pull the pov back to reveal the scale of action and objects throughout the story. It's a fun effect, especially when we get to see the cloud of machines that make up the Modular Man's physical form. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Todd Klein's contributions to the depiction of this character as he handles the lettering. The layered text of the Modular Man's word balloons suggests the effect of his voice being broadcast from multiple units within that cloud.

Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

In general Klein brings more to this series than most letterers get a chance to contribute. I love that he uses a unique typeface for the Ozu's dialect and Solomon the Gorilla's accent. On top of that he gets to develop all sorts of unique styles of type for the many different cover homages throughout the series.


The second issue of this series is much stronger than the first. While that issue worked so hard to give us history and establish the setting of the series, this issue gives us a glimpse of the relationship between the main characters. Moore gives them unique voices and that makes efficient use of the lower word count his comics employed at this time. There's an ease to the delivery of these stories that makes up a large part of their appeal.

Tom Strong #2 (July 1999) was written by Alan Moore with art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrlich as well as lettering by Todd Klein

How It Got Started (Tom Strong #1)

I'm not a fan of Alex Ross but this cover has a stark, iconic quality that fits the series.

Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

The first issue opens with Timmy Turbo receiving his membership packet from the "Strongmen of America" including Tom Strong #1, the very same issue we're reading right now. Timmy is a visual alien when compared to the detailed retro-futuristic city he lives in and the classic Tom Strong adventure that appears inside. On closer inspection the other people in the "Timmy sequences" are also drawn in a looser, cartoonier style like him. This suggests a bit of what is to come in the series when guest artists start appearing to render tales from Tom Strong's past.


Chris Sprouse is the sole penciller behind this issue and the lead artist on most of the series. He's a good hand when it comes to storytelling and does a great job of drawing strapping heroes like Strong, wacky gadgets like the kind Strong invents, and the mysterious Attabar Teru where young Tom Strong was reared.

Attabar Teru brings up one of the more difficult elements of the series. Tom Strong's origin in this issue feels like it could have been directly lifted from a classic pulp adventure story. That makes sense given the tone of the series but this story also appropriates some of the more unfortunate racial politics of early twentieth century pulp. In 1899 Tom's future parents Sinclair and Susan are on an expedition seeking out the rainbow shrouded island of Attabar Teru when their ship is wrecked on that island's shore. West Indian sailor Tomas, the only other person aboard their ship, is killed in the accident after successfully getting the Strong family to their destination, and inspires the name of our protagonist. Sinclair Strong uses a steam powered robot to build a home where he and Susan conceive a child. During the birth his parents are assisted by the island's native population. The Ozu people raise Tom Strong after his parents are killed, teaching him about the magical life extending Goloka Root. Tom repays them by creating a generator and bringing electricity to the island before he leaves to become a hero in America.

Tomas could easily be construed as a "Magical Negro" archetype, the Ozu are a tribe of noble savages with mysterious knowledge that most white men don't possess, and in modernizing their island Tom Strong takes on the role of white savior. It wouldn't be surprising to be discussing these kind of things in a story written by Edgar Rice Burroughs but this comic was released in 1999.  Moore could have written a pulp flavored story without this level of commitment to capturing the racism and orientalism that modern readers might associate with this era of writing.

I think Moore's choice to introduce those narrative elements is deliberate (whether or not it's the right approach is open to interpretation). I think it's possible that Moore intended to comment on the racist origins of similar characters when he introduced these ideas to the mythology of the series. Moore clearly cares about Tom's Ozu wife Dhalua and their daughter Tesla. Does respecting those characters as humans subvert their origin story? That's certainly something I'll be thinking about as I make my way through future issues. Readers who are already familiar with this series might be aware of the "Tom Stone" arc that appears in later issues which is definitely a commentary on race in the world of these stories. Was that story something Moore had been planning since the beginning? Regardless of the answers to those questions, the story in this issue presents those stereotypes at face value.

If you can get over those elements, this is an entertaining first issue. There are some interesting ideas presented here to establish the potential of it's setting even if the characters themselves haven't been fully fleshed out. This issue is also pretty funny which is something I forgot about going into this new review.

Art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, Tad Ehrlich, and Todd Klein

That said, the best thing in the whole issue is Moore's essay about the history of Millenium City. I'm already a sucker for comic book backmatter but this essay engages in even more world building and more allusion than the actual comics contained in this periodical. Check it out:

Tom Strong #1 (June 1999) was written by Alan Moore with art by Chris Sprouse, Al Gordon, and Tad Ehrlich as well as lettering by Todd Klein

Strongmen of America - Revisiting Tom Strong