Tom Strong #5 - "Memories of Pangaea"

[laughing_tree]

I thought, I don't want to do superhero comics. Or, if they resembled superhero comics, I want them to be based upon a different premise. So with both Promethea and Tom Strong, which turned out to be very different books, I was actually looking at the original origins of the comic book superheroes, which was in the pulp magazines. The pulp magazines of the 20s and 30s, that was where most of the heroic archetypes, people like Doc Savage or the Shadow, first appeared. So I thought, all right, if we rolled the tape back... Forget everything that's ever happened in superhero comics, just roll it back to that point and then apply it forward in a slightly different direction, and see what happens. -- Alan Moore

Comments

[lordultimus]

I do think that if the point was to base everything on pulp novels and the like, books like Promethea and Top 10 should have taken place outside the rest of the ABC universe, even if it was just them using the term "Science Hero" instead of "Super Hero".

[laughing_tree]

What do you mean?

[lordultimus]

It's basically nitpicking, I'll admit.

With Promethea, the super hero stuff was basically tacked on. The Five Swell Guys were perfectly fine characters, but removing them basically changes nothing. You can't even say that Promethea was a super hero in the traditional sense since one of the big points was that she only existed in the real world in rumors.

With Top 10, it's a much smaller complaint since it's such a minor detail, but the fact that everyone uses the term "science hero", which Moore coined to reflect the more pulp novel feeling of the ABC universe, is rather distracting since literally everything in Neopolis are based on traditional superheroes and comics.

[laughing_tree]

I liked the Five Swell Guys but I admit I was never sure I 'got' what Moore and Williams were trying to do with them.

Actually, thinking about it now, maybe the idea is to be a contrast for Promethea. If she represents the glory of the imagination, they're superheroes with the level of 'mundane' intentionally dialed all the way up (though that ironically makes them more distinctive and memorable than if they went the traditional codenames-and-costumes route). When Promethea creates her brighter, better world, we do see them finally look like traditional superheroes.

[buttz]

I hate that you have to trim these issues down -- I love the "Always the optimist" landscape reveal page once Tom revisits Pangea.

[lordultimus]

I'm a big fan of the Pangaeans final speech right before it dies.

[starwolf_oakley]

Pangea hating the idea of "eating and being eaten" is similar to something from Moore's Swamp Thing run.

I thought Pangea liked music. That billions of years and all humanity created that was worthwhile was music. Seems I misremembered.