I've been told I wouldn't like Tom Strong.
Is this true great and mighty fish of the sea?
TOM STRONG IS AWESOME BECAUSE IT IS LIGHT SCI-FI FUN. THOSE WILL PURE HEARTS AND SOULS OF BABES WILL REJOICE IN ITS WONDER AND INNOCENCE. THOSE OF BROKEN MINDS AND DARK SOULS WILL BE CAST INTO THE FOREVER ZONE OF MUNDANITY.
In all seriousness, TOM STRONG I think is wonderful. I can't say if you'd hate it because I don't know what it is about it you may hate, or what it is about it that I love so. Some issues of TOM STRONG are anthology issues with three little stories in them. Others are three-part epics. Some of the highlights are the two-part Tom Stone story where Tom hears of a parallel world where he doesn't exist, instead his mother has a baby with another man, and the child is named Tom Stone. What's interesting about it is that not only do you see a wonderfully in-depth parallel world, but the previous issues are all seen in the parallel version and
Tom Stone is arguably better than Tom Strong. It's really rather brilliant. Another wonderful two-parter is the Terra Obscura story in which Tom Strong is called to a parallel Earth
in the same dimension to save a bunch of science-heroes. What's more interesting is that Alan Moore discovered, after ABC had begun, that there already
was an ABC line of comics, so he co-opted their characters, put them on Terra Obscura and had them in suspended animation for some time. There's the terrific single-issue story where Tom and multiple versions of himself are called to the Time Tower to deal with Saveen.
Saveen is Strong's nemesis, and one of the reasons I love Strong. Saveen is dead before #1. So much of Strong goes
backwards. Strong has been around for 100 years, so the comic delves into the past
a lot creating a rich and evocative backstory.
While it's light and fluffy, it's actually genuinely exciting and interesting and rather substantial. I think it's terrific. Also, there is a two-parter
not written by Moore which features a Miracleman riff. And there's a Brian K Vaughan issue.
So I love it.
It follows police officers in Neopolis, a city where everyone has powers. It's only 12 issues (and an OGN and a spin off mini, IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE) but it's wonderful. All of the characters are well developed and almost every panel is a reference to something.
This doesn't do it complete justice.
The idea of TOP 10 is that if you have a city of superheroes, what are the police like? So it's essentially every cop drama you've seen but with superheroes. Robots are the black underclass, Vampires are the mafia, and you have crazy crimes, like Loki killing Baldur. There's huge number of references to characters in the ludicrously dense background... its like every sci-fi story exists in Neopolis and the police have to sort out anything that crops up. It's only 12 issues and portrayed as a season, and unfortunately the second season which was to feature the robotic "Malcolm X" never even began. It does have a prequel, THE FORTY-NINERS which is wonderful, and a mini on one of the main characters, SMAX. Smax is a big blue troll and the idea was, in cop shows you have the guy from 'backwards Alabama' or some such, a guy embarrassed of where he comes from. Smax is from Middle-Earth. And every fairy tale land. So SMAX is about him going back to his home town to kill a dragon. It's really a lot of fun.
What's interesting about ABC is that Alan Moore's approach to the line went, "What if Superman wasn't invented in 1939?" By changing the era, he looked at what a superhero comic from that time would've been like. So he thought, "What if superheroes started in Victorian England?" The result: LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. "What if superheroes started in the early 1930s with all the pulp heroes?" The result: TOM STRONG. "What if superheroes started in the 1980s with HILL STREET BLUES and HOMICIDE and NYPD?" The result: TOP 10.
...
I could go on about how much I love the ABC line forever. People will harp on about WATCHMEN till doomsday, but I think the ABC line is probably the single greatest thing to happen to mainstream comics. Half a dozen titles, released simultaneously, variations on a theme, and all brilliant. No one writer in comics has ever made such a magnificent contribution as this.