When acclaimed writer Moore (
Watchmen, 1987;
From Hell, 2000) returned to mainstream comics in the late 1990s, he created several brand-new costumed adventurers, the most enduring of them "science hero" Tom Strong. Raised experimentally on a remote island and gifted with physical and mental perfection, Strong protects civilization with the aid of his similarly extraordinary family and companions. This collection reprints issues of the anthology comic book
Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, which features stories that tend to be even goofier than Tom's customarily tongue-in-cheek exploits; for example, in this batch, a picture-book-style children's story entirely in verse and an adventure presented as a Saturday-morning cartoon. Moore's collaborators here are unconventional, too: Peter Kuper, for whom Moore wrote a script in Kuper's favored, wordless format;
Batman animator Bruce Timm; and Peter Bagge, who depicts the Strongs as a hilariously dysfunctional family in the mode of the Bradleys in Bagge's
Hate. Other scripts not by Moore but still a cut above standard superhero fare include flashback tales depicting Tom's childhood and time-traveling superheroine Jonni Future.
Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
SFX Magazine March 2005: " All told, this wallops you with more talent and imagination than you'll find in a month's worth of regular comics." www filmforce.ign.com: " For anyone who thinks Alan Moore doesn't have a sense of fun..."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.