What Doesn't Make Us Weak...
Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, By Peter Hogan, Chris Sprouse & Karl Story, DC Comics
A BOOK brimming over with love, built on imagination and crafted with skilled clarity of vision that still keeps readers keen and eager as its tale unfolds.
Tom Strong is due to become a father-in-law but his own son the Nazi bio-engineered Albrecht has plans of his own, namely a new world order with him in charge, and to accomplish that he needs to travel back in time to change the future.
What’s to fault with this book? That it wasn’t published in a larger format so that we can dribble over the Sprouse/Story art more? That’s about all. There’s sequential continuity for the old guard and stand-out panels for the newbie comic readers out there; either way it all looks good. While on the writing front, Hogan joins the names of Steve Englehart and Bruce Jones as men who’ve truly played innovatively with time travel in the comic book field; teasingly playing with the clichés of the form but positioning each aspect chess-like in such a way that even dullards like me can still follow the connections and smile at how it all comes together.
Action, adventure, matter-of-fact logic amidst confusion with thrills too as Nazis, robots, firey-folk and villains, possible doppelgangers and women who only get cameos but still come across as fully-rounded characters, all turbo-charged on a mission that’s inevitably a race against time, with a fine understated line from Strong to Solomon, the talking silverback gorilla with “You’re a good boy... and I’m proud of you.” And I’m glad I’ve read this book.
Sponsored by Target Media
