Since Comic Con, when America’s Best Comics character Tom Strong was revealed on the cover to The Terrifics #1, fans have wondered how Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse’s fan-favorite character might fit into the larger tapestry of the series.
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In the final pages of the story, the answer was finally revealed: Strong, believing himself likely dead, had left behind a message for anyone who might find it in the Dark Multiverse: “It’s up to you to save the universe.”
The recipients of this message are, of course, Metamorpho, Mister Terrific, Phantom Girl, and Plastic Man — a fantastic foursome if ever DC has published one. The way Strong’s message mirrors one contemporaneously being published in Marvel Two-in-One from the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards is a whole other discussion.
Strong, then — like Promethea, who recently, briefly appeared in Justice League of America — seems to be serving mostly as a kind of symbolic figure, and not a regular addition to the cast (at least at this point).
Strong is a kind of love-letter to comics and the pulps, and the positivity and light-heartedness associated with the character differentiates his stories from those of many of Moore’s other fan-favorite works like Watchmen and Promethea.
Also unlike Watchmen and Promethea, Moore’s co-creator continued to tell Tom Strong stories after Moore himself left, wanting nothing to do with DC. Typically, Moore bemoans the lack of creativity that he says motivates DC and Marvel to revisit old ideas (including his own) time and again rather than coming up with something new. However, he generally does not obstruct such things (or movie and TV adaptations), preferring instead to grumble from the sidelines while allowing his co-creators to make the money Hollywood and the publishers are offering.
Strong is a “science hero,” and he (along with his wife and daughter) enjoy enhanced physical and mental abilities and longevity. He resides in a building called The Stronghold in Millennium City. His closest associates include Pneuman, a steam powered robot, and King Solomon, a gorilla with human characteristics.
Tom Strong stories explored the multiverse (at a time when DC officially did not have one, for the most part — although that didn’t mean much to Moore, since DC did not own Wildstorm and its ABC imprint for the first little while he was there), traveling through different timelines and universes, each of which tends to represent a different genre of comics storytelling. Grant Morrison would do something similar with his miniseries The Multiversity for DC years later.
