Tom Strong

Tom Strong was a comic book series published from 1999 to 2011, created by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse.

AUTHORS: Aylett, Steve; Brubaker, Ed; Casey, Joe; Hogan, Peter; Johns, Geoff; Moorcock, Michael; Moore, Alan; Moore, Leah; Moore, Steve; Schultz, Mark; Vaughan, Brian K.

ARTISTS: Kyle Baker (illustrator); Paul Chadwick (illustrator); Howard Chaykin (illustrator); Duncan Fegredo (illustrator); Pascal Ferry (illustrator); Gary Gianni (illustrator); Russ Heath (illustrator); John Paul Leon (illustrator); Shawn McManus (illustrator); Ben Oliver (illustrator); Jerry Ordway (illustrator); Pete Poplaski (illustrator); Peter Snejbjerg (illustrator); Chris Sprouse (illustrator); Alan Weiss (illustrator); Paul Gulacy (penciller); John Dell (inker); Richard Friend (inker); Alan Gordon (inker); Steve Mitchell (inker); Jimmy Palmiotti (inker); Trevor Scott (inker); Karl Story (inker and cover artist); David Baron (colorist); Hilary Barta (colorist); Tad Ehrlich (colorist); Mike Garcia (colorist); Matt Hollingsworth (colorist); Michelle Madsden (colorist); J. D. Mettler (colorist); Jonny Rench (colorist); Darlene Royer (colorist); Alex Sinclair (colorist); Dave Stewart (colorist); Carrie Strachan (colorist and cover artist); José Villarrubia (colorist); Todd Klein (letterer); Arthur Adams (cover artist); Gary Frank (cover artist); Dave Gibbons (cover artist); Tom McSweeney (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1999-2011

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2000-2011

Publication History

Following the collapse of publisher Awesome Comics, Alan Moore established America’s Best Comics (ABC) in 1999 to continue working with some of his Awesome collaborators. The fledgling America’s Best line, which included Promethea (1999-2005), Top 10 (1999-2001), Tom Strong, and Tomorrow Stories (1999-2002), found a home at the publishing imprint WildStorm, which had recently been acquired by DC Comics. Having previously vowed never to work for DC Comics again, Moore nevertheless opted to continue with the line, writing a limited run of Tom Strong. The first issues appeared in 1999.

Moore co-created Tom Strong with penciller Chris Sprouse, who completed twenty-three of the thirty-six issues and drafted cover art for twenty-six issues. Continuous lettering was provided by Todd Klein. Following the twenty-second issue, Moore handed over the script to guest authors, and often guest artists, before returning to write the concluding issue, a crossover with Moore’s series Promethea. Contributing artists included Duncan Fegredo and Jerry Ordway, among others, while contributing authors included Leah Moore, Peter Hogan, Ed Brubaker, Michael Moorcock, and Steve Moore. The series ran from 1999 to 2006 and returned in 2010 with a six-part miniseries, Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, illustrated by Chris Sprouse and scripted by Peter Hogan. Sprouse and Hogan worked together again in 2013, along with illustrator Karl Story, when they teamed up to create Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril.

Plot

Tom Strong is an adventure series with science-fiction elements featuring the titular protagonist, a “science hero” endowed with longevity, higher intelligence, and improved strength as the result of an unconventional childhood and the empowering Goloka root. Aimed at a young adult audience, with a focus on the pulp literary tradition and family values, Tom Strong spans the twentieth century and engages with the twenty-first.

Raised on the fictional West Indian island of Attabar Teru by parents Sinclair and Susan and their robotic butler, Pneuman, Tom is freed from the experimental high-gravity chamber of his childhood by an erupting volcano and left an orphan among the Ozu people. At the age of 21, during the 1920s, Tom marries his childhood friend Dhalua of the Ozu and establishes a home base in Millennium City known as “the Stronghold.” The birth of their daughter, Tesla, and creation of the intelligent ape King Solomon follow during the 1930’s.

A nonlinear narrative structure retains a base in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, while flashbacks, time travel, and space travel create a collage of Tom’s life experiences. In the late twentieth century, an alliance among anti-Strong science villains brings about the return of Ingrid Weiss, a Nazi opponent from Tom’s past. Weiss surprises Tom on his one hundredth birthday with a son, Albrecht, who has been indoctrinated to the Nazi cause and rejects Tom’s attempts to influence his ideology.

Tom is enlisted to aid a parallel Earth, Terra Obscura, along with a group of traditional hero comic figures. This is followed by a multidimensional struggle with nemesis Paul Saveen at Time’s End, where Saveen annexes the palace of the Time Keeper in order to manipulate the universe. Various versions of Tom and his family come together to defeat multiple Saveens.

Tesla acquires a new boyfriend, Val Var Garm, from among the fiery Salamander people while an invasion of giant alien ants is imminent. The Strongs and a host of allies take on the giant ant threat, and Val strikes a fiery killing blow, quashing Tom’s resentful attitude toward him.

Foster Parallax gives his old flame Susan, Tom’s mother, a chromium locket that enables her to change her own past time line. Susan saves Tomas Stone, a ship’s captain, from a shipwreck, and the pair have a child, Tomas Stone, Jr. Tomas moves through life taking alternate paths. Saveen marries Dhalua and Tesla is born to them; however, Tomas and Dhalua are unable to resist their mutual attraction, and tragedy ensues. An alternate Tom allows his mother to use his time machine to correct the past and loses her forever. Greta Gabriel, long presumed dead, returns as an ice being and seeks the aid of Dr. Permafrost’s grandson, Pericles Parulian.

Tom nearly loses his “real” life when an encounter with a mystical Incan mask and a science villain deprives him of his identity. Fooled into accepting a psychological substitution, Tom engages in the life of a depressed, aging factory worker. Nightly dreams of life as a science hero cause him to question the reality of this grim existence, and he destroys the mask to return to his heroic lifestyle.

A “metatemporal investigator” enlists Tom and King Solomon to defuse a diabolical plot on the seventeenth-century Barbary Coast, and Tom later dissuades Greta Gabriel and Pericles Parulian from pursuing a life of crime.

Tom takes on the strangest adventure of all when he encounters a wanted felon, Promethea, and inadvertently triggers the America’s Best apocalypse. He meets the walking spirit of Paul Saveen, who reveals himself to be the illegitimate son of Sinclair Strong. All of the stories are wound to a close as humanity faces a new world.

In 2009, Albrecht engages in a Nazi plot involving Parallax’s time machine and the subterranean race of Dero robots to change the history of the Nazi cause on the eve of Tesla’s marriage to Val. Tom enlists the aid of a younger Tom, Dr. Permafrost, and the Salamanders to thwart Albrecht. The golden age brought about by Promethea, has, however, vanished as a result of Albrecht’s Nazi fanaticism.

Volumes

•Tom Strong: Book One (2000). Collects issues 1-7. Tom defends Millennium City and uncovers a conspiracy stretching backward in time.

•Tom Strong: Book Two (2002). Collects issues 8-14. The Strong family battles in outer and subterranean space, parallel Earths collide, and the Strongs face science villains at Time’s End.

•Tom Strong: Book Three (2004). Collects issues 15-19. Tesla finds unlikely romance, and team Strong and their allies take on an insectoid alien threat.

•Tom Strong: Book Four (2004). Collects issues 20-25. An altered time stream results in an alternate identity and future for Tom and Millennium City, and Tom’s past loves catch up with him.

•Tom Strong: Book Five (2005). Collects issues 26-30. Tom’s heroic legacy is examined, as well as the trials of “normal” life versus Tom’s heroic one.

•Tom Strong: Book Six (2006). Collects issues 31-36. Tom triggers the America’s Best apocalypse.

•Tom Strong's Terrific Tales: Book One (2005). Collects issues 1–6. This volume features a flashback to Tom's childhood on the island of Attaban Teru and highlights a new, unrelated superheroine, Jonni Future. 

•Tom Strong's Terrific Tales: Book Two (2005). Collects issues 7–12. This volume continues with Tom's adventures during childhood on Attaban Teru as well as stories of Jonni Future.

•Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom (2011). Collects issues 1-6 of the eponymous miniseries. Tom’s misguided offspring, Albrecht, returns, forming a time-altering Nazi alliance with the Dero robots and causing the loss of the Promethean golden age.

•Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril (2013). Collects issues 1-6. After he loses his powers, Tom teams up with Val Var Garm to save his daughter and granddaughter.

Characters

•Tom Strong, the protagonist, is a relentlessly humanitarian science hero of Millennium City. He was raised in a high-gravity chamber on a diet of local Goloka root and therefore possesses enhanced cognition, strength, and longevity. Tom appears in a red T-shirt with an inverted white triangle, black trousers with a yellow military stripe, black boots, and flight gloves, and he carries a holstered gun and a buck knife.

•Dhalua Strong is Tom’s wife. A chieftain’s daughter from the West Indian Ozu tribe, she often accompanies Tom on his peacekeeping and scientific ventures. Like Tom, Dhalua partakes of the Goloka root. Though Dhalua dons a wide variety of native and urban costumes, she customarily appears in close-fitting purple or black clothing.

•Tesla Strong is Tom and Dhalua’s daughter. She is an active part of both combat and scientific missions and also has Goloka-fueled longevity. Her appearance develops into a modified version of Tom’s uniform: a red midriff shirt with an inverted white triangle, black spandex shorts, and flight gloves.

•Pneuman is the Strong family’s robot butler. He was designed and assembled by Sinclair Strong in 1899 and first operated on a “steam-calculator” engine. He is a rolling cylinder with tubular arms and a head, decorated with a black bowler hat, a bow tie, and an inverted triangle chest pattern.

•King Solomon is the subject of Tom Strong’s successful experiment to introduce higher intelligence to an ape through brain surgery. Solomon speaks with a pronounced British accent that accords with his trousers, button-down shirt, sweater-vest, bow tie, and spectacles. He assists Tom with his missions.

•Paul Dorian Saveen, an antagonist, is an ingenious inventor and science villain who disappears and eventually returns as a spirit to reveal that he is Tom’s half brother. Dapper and verbose, he appears in a black mask and tuxedo.

•Ingrid Weiss, an antagonist, is a Nazi-engineered villain who first encounters Tom Strong in 1945 in bombed-out Berlin, where she obtains Tom’s DNA to produce their son, Albrecht. Weiss is a voluptuous blond in a black leather overcoat and boots.

•Albrecht Weiss, an antagonist, is Ingrid’s son and was made from Tom’s DNA. Fully indoctrinated to Nazi principles, he is Tom’s nemesis. He appears as a young, blond version of Tom in dark clothing or a Nazi uniform.

•Doctor Permafrost, a.k.a. Pluto Parulian, an antagonist, is a science villain specializing in cold-generating technology. His grandson, Pericles Parulian, later takes on his cognomen.

•Greta Gabriel is a newspaper reporter and Tom’s first love who disappears and is presumed dead during the 1920’s. Uncovered as an ice being in 2000, she becomes Pericles Parulian’s lover and adjusts to her new life.

•The Strong Men of America are a group of children who belong to Tom Strong’s club, receive membership magazines, and often require Tom’s help. They include Timmy Turbo, twins Fortnum and Mason Muntz, Calculus, and Sue Blue.

•Jonni Future is a secondary superheroine who travels between this far-future reality and one that resembles modern-day earth. She is a fierce adventurer and ethnobotanist.

•Val Var Garm the husband of Tesla Strong and therefore the son-in-law of Tom Strong. Val Var Garm has the ability to create and project fire, but this power can sometimes be a curse when he is angry.

Artistic Style

Chris Sprouse, co-creator of Tom Strong, sets the tone for the style of the work with initial designs grounded in simple and contrasting lines, suggesting early superhero artwork and pulp-magazine cover art. This is matched with a bold use of primary colors and monochrome associated with Tom’s red, white, and black costume. Contributing guest illustrators also allude to pulp-magazine cover styles, introducing softened lines and a greater degree of realism.

The comic’s frequent story-within-a-story structure employs internal episodes produced by guest artists such as Duncan Fegredo and Jerry Ordway. However, the return to Sprouse’s artwork in Robots of Doom reinforces the role of original design in the future of the series. Tom Strong’s layout is uncluttered, utilizing mid- to large-size panels. Within these open spaces, Tom often appears epic in proportion, often viewed from slightly below.

Dialogue and text boxes are carefully limited in most issues of the work; however, lettering plays a particularly significant role in Tom Strong. In the hands of Todd Klein, Tom’s speech is distinctly recognizable, appearing in emphatically bold circular bubbles complete with equally bold, large lettering in black, frequently characterized by exclamation marks.

Though Tom Strong represents a great deal of artistic diversity, Sprouse’s influence, the use of color, the consistency of layout, and the expressive lettering give the impression of total design, reinforcing Tom’s iconic status.

Themes

The destructive and creative potential of scientific inquiry is perhaps the most ubiquitous theme in Tom Strong. Raised in a high-gravity chamber without direct human contact, Tom struggles with the emotional impact of isolation throughout the series. The technological advances of science villains are used for crime and personal gain. Foster Parallax’s time machine also threads its way, with mainly negative impact, throughout the work. The science of natural resources, such as the Goloka root, brings human enhancement, and Tom himself is a product of both aspects of experimentation.

The value and function of the family unit are significantly emphasized in plot and dialogue. This unit incorporates diversity, from an artificially intelligent life-form to an enhanced ape to an interracial relationship between Tom and Dhalua that produces their mixed-race offspring, Tesla. Equality within the Strong family unit faces its greatest criticism at the hands of Nazi ideology.

Friendships, and resulting loyalty, support plot development in Tom Strong. Science villains such as Temple Baldry and Dr. Permafrost, with whom Tom manages to negotiate and ally, reappear as significant players in major conflicts.

Dealing with the span of the twentieth century and its impact on the twenty-first, Tom Strong also emphasizes the reality of cultural legacy, as Tom inherits not only his father’s genius but also the negative repercussions of his actions. The decisions of the twentiethcentury become the pitfalls of twenty-first-century life in Millennium City.

Impact

Produced primarily between 1999 and 2006 and resuming in 2010, Tom Strong plays a key role in elucidating the America’s Best Universe found in Promethea, Tomorrow Stories, Terra Obscura (2003), and Top 10. Tom Strong is also the only work in the line openly founded on literary precedent. As a work grounded in the art and ethos of the pulp literary genre of the early and mid-twentieth century, Tom Strong reintroduces some of the more appealing and meaningful elements of that medium, including intellectual curiosity and idealistic, heroic values. This tribute is juxtaposed with relevant twenty-first-century issues such as environmental change, human rights, and ethical responsibility.

Tom’s life spans the pulp literary period, and as such, Tom Strong encourages nostalgia for the pulps and a reexamination of their value to the twenty-first- century audience. Several conceptual elements of the work find particular relevance in contemporary and ongoing comics, including emphasis on the role of multiple possible universes, scientific investigation, and pulp homage, as found in Warren Ellis’s Planetary (1998-2009), as well as nostalgia for the aesthetics, technology, and scientific advancements of the early twentieth century also found in steampunk-influenced works.

Bibliography

Coogan, Peter. Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre. Austin, Tex.: Monkeybrain Books, 2006.

Di Liddo, Anna. Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.

Millidge, Gary Spencer, and Smoky Man, eds. Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman. Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf Productions, 2003.

Shapira, Tom. “Strong Men Also Cry: The Tom Strong Compendium.” The Comics Journal, 5 Oct. 2023, www.tcj.com/strong-men-also-cry-the-tom-strong-compendium/. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.

“Tom Strong (Character).” Comic Vine, 12 July 2024, comicvine.gamespot.com/tom-strong/4005-9160/. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.

“Tom Strong.” DC Universe Infinite, www.dcuniverseinfinite.com/comics/series/tom-strong/f48816ab-622e-4910-a377-66bdffecd34e. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.