Tom Strong (Book 2)

Rating:
Summary: Alan Moore's male archetype
Review: Alan Moore is, and deserves to be, a highly regarded author of what we should still call comic books (other names seem largely a reflex action hide embarrassment - which makes me annoyed to see them referred to as "the graphic story medium" in this book). He has in more recent years created a line of comics under the imprint "America's Best Comics", of which Tom Strong is one of those titles. This volume reprints the first seven issues of that comic.

'Tom Strong' is an attempt to render the male super hero in an archetypical form. This book has a strong science and family theme, with the male lead cast in a paternal role: Tom is a husband and a father, and has other family members around him, and he is also the leader of a society called the Strongmen of America, ordinary people who takes Tom's life as an inspiration. This book looks over the 100 years that Tom has lived to date, and throughout it he derives benefits from his family/ies and passes them on to the next generation.

What's good: Tom represents all those things we have enjoyed about many characters in the past. You'll spot echoes of Tarzan, Doc Savage, Superman, Tom Swift and many more as you read. Alan Moore has built an impressive back-story, which reveals itself slowly as the book unfolds, and everything fits together very well. Tom is also a thinker, rather than just a brawler - he overcome problems with his brain more than his fists. Tom's wife, Dhalua, and daughter, Tesla, are also fabulous characters.

What's not so good: I gave it 5 stars, so not much. My main complaint is that that many of the villains are overly stereotypical for me. With a little more effort, they could have been more rounded people. I could also have lived without the comical sidekicks, talking ape King Solomon and robot Pneuman.

Lots of thumbs up, and also check out Alan Moore's female archetype in 'Promethea'.

Rating:
Summary: More than meets the eye
Review: Don't let the talking monkey fool you.

Ditto the robot butler.

Tom Strong is a smart book.

Written by hirsute prodigy Alan Moore, this is a book about growing up. More to the point, it's a book about how Western pop culture grew up. Tracking the 20th Century as witnessed by Strong and his family (wife Dhalua, daughter Tesla, robot butler Pneumann and simian aide-de-camp King Solomon), the first collection chronicles their pulp-inspired adventures protecting the world from enemies like the Modular Man and invading forces from the Aztech Empire at the dawn of the 21st.

But don't be fooled. There's a heck of a lot more going on here.
Tom Strong is self-aware right off the bat: The first chapter tells the story of Timmy Turbo, a preteen who buys the first issue of a comic called - you guessed it - Tom Strong. As it turns out, Strong's adventures are chronicled in a series of comic books, which Moore uses as s storytelling device to clue the reader in on the family's adventures earlier in the century.
Many of the stories involve Tom Strong battling some enemy from his past, the introductions of which are chronicled in the "Untold Tales" of Tom Strong - comics-within-a-comic written and drawn in the styles of comics from decades past. The format gives the book a chance to showcase different artists, though all, I think, have well-established résumés; Dave Gibbons, Moore's partner in crime in the well-known Watchmen, makes an appearance.

But, as I said, it's not all about the pulp. There's a more profound message in Tom Strong one about how we imagine our heroes, and how that could have gone wrong, and where it didn't.
Strong is a Western pop hero in the classic sense of the word: tall, rippling biceps, Caucasian, nigh-invulnerable. But other aspects of his story aren't so typical. His wife, Dhalua, is black, and the two have a biracial daughter. His arch-enemy is Ingrid Weiss, a genetically engineered Nazi superwoman, who represents all of the evil things that Strong could have been created to be.

In this way, Strong is almost an antidote to critics who understandably charge that Western popular culture is white-centric and paternalistic. Strong may be the titular superhero as well as husband and father, but he is in no way patriarchal. On at least one occasion, it is Dhalua and Tesla who come to Tom's rescue at the hands of something far more sinister than he ever could have become. Both women are strong characters, operating as part of a family unit, but at the same time fiercely independent.

I can't say much more without giving away the ending. But in the end, all of the Strongs must do battle with the worst that humankind has to offer, and the evil that Tom could have become had he - and the people who canonized him a hero - made a few different choices.

Rating:
Summary: Holy Socks!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Today's Age-Old Hero
Review: Moore has shaped Tom's mythology out of the strong fabric that preceded the Superhero Golden Age: the American pulp and serial hero. Tarzan, Doc Savage, etc. Like them, Tom has a unique origin, being born and raised outside of society by his scientifically inclined mother and father on the lost island of Attabar Teru. Forged in science & nature, Tom returns to his parents' Western world and become the force for Reason & Good that he was invariably designed to be. Moore wants to give modern readers a similar return with Tom Strong, rebuilding the empire of comics darkened by Watchmen with a modern variation on the archetypes from before the superhero genre's rise. Today's comic companies must repeatedly reinvent their heroes to meet society's shifts; Tom is born whole, the product, not just of science and nature, but of innocence and intellect. Who will save these heroes from obsolescence, who will rally and guide the muscle-bound masks and costumes? Tom Strong, the product of the lost pulp/serial heroes and modernity's yen for realism, could just be the right man for the job.

Rating:
Summary: "A true masterpiece" ,or,"Alan Moore latest GN"
Review: This, next to Watchmen, is one of the greatest comic books I have ever read because it has one key element that many comics lack ever since the grim and gritty age. It starts out with an interesting premise: what if a man wanted to make his son a perfect human being by educating him in the far-off island of Attabar Teru, away from societies influence.
By raising him in a low gravity enviroment with his robot nanny, Phneuman and feeding him lots of the goloka root, which gives longevity and physical prowess, he becomes as it seems throughout the book, to become a human version of superman. When Tom turns 11 a quake hits Attabar Teru, and both his parents are killed so he is raised by the Attabar Teru trbe(not very unlike peacful indians.)When he grows up, he heads off to Millenium city and becomes a super hero, or science-hero as their universe calls them.And while the story is incredible, so is the art. Chris Sprouse is the perfect guy to draw Tom Strong because Tom Strong is supposed to be an incredibly smart and, well...,strong version of the BFG, a big guy who makes us all feel safer. I also liked the brief reuniting of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in the sixth chapter. Overal, this is one of the best graphic novels of all time,suitable for all ages, and something you should read right now!

Rating:
Summary: Great Idea But Only Average Execution
Review: Tom Strong is a tip of the hat to many classic comic book heroes and cliches. Tom Strong is based on Doc Savage, Solomon is based on the intelligent apes that populate the DC Universe, Tom's wife is like a cross between Wonder Woman and Storm of the X-men and so on. Having said that, there is a lot of originality in the book too. Without giving anything away, there are at least two characters in this book that are truly unique. I can't think of any other like them. I think all the characters in it are interesting but I don't think the story is as well executed as it could be. It starts off well but the collection seems to become less fun as you reach the end, although its never bad. Its not the best of Moore's ABC line (according to my experience that is A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and its no where near his classic works, but its worth checking out if you are a fan. I will buy the next collection, but I don't have very high hopes for it.