Tom Strong and Tomorrow Stories by EMME

Art by EMME

Above, a spectacular illustration by Italian comic book artist Francesco Maria Ghedini aka EMME featuring Tom Strong and Tomorrow Stories' characters First American & U.S.Angel, Jack B. Quick, Cobweb, Splash Brannigan and Greyshirt. 

The illustration, in black and white, has been printed in Francesco Pelosi's book, Alan Moore: Mappaterra del Mago. The image is a clear homage to the Crimebusters' meeting in Watchmen.

 

For more info about EMME visit his Instagram page, HERE.

Art by EMME

The Crimebusters. Panel from Watchmen.

La Mappaterra del Mago

La Mappaterra by Pelosi & Frongia

Italian musician, actor, comic book author and scholar Francesco Pelosi is writing a series of articles focused on Moore's works: he is tracing a map and he named it la Mappaterra del Mago... The Magician's Map-Land. I am really proud to call Francesco... a friend!

Below, I translated - with a little help from another friend of mine, the extraordinary Omar Martini - a short excerpt from one of Pelosi's articles which includes the map drawn by Francesco Pelosi & Francesco “Checco” Frongia.

You can read the complete set HERE. Of course they are in Italian.

From the corner where we are now, from the special and elevated point of view of Citadel Supreme, we can finally see the whole Map-Land: it spreads beneath us but, on a closer look, also above and all around us.
At the centre there is From Hell’s black city [...]. Watching it from here, you can notice that it is wrapped in the flames of the Voice of Fire and that there is a Hole at its centre: there is the same Hole also up here, in the Citadel Supreme, because the two cities are equal and opposite, one black and rooted to the earth, the other gold and floating. However, when they are watched from above, from a place outside the Map-Land, they occupy exactly the same space - the only difference is that to access Citadel Supreme you have to go through the door/outpost called 1963.

Around the city of From Hell, there is an area of barren and even darker countryside, with an unusual circular shape. If we could look at the Map-Land from below, we would see that those dark lands are nothing more than the foundations of Providence/Neonomicon, an upside-down city, whose roofs and buildings, like rotting and incomprehensible roots, plunge directly into the ground.
The dark circle of Providence is defined by a series of streets that form the sides of two equilateral triangles, crossing themselves to outline a six-pointed star.
One of the points, the one looking at the Map-Land from above, seems to point to the sky or the West: it is the place where the city of Promethea lies. On the other hand, on the opposite point which seems to indicate the ground or the East, lies the city of Tom Strong.

From here, heading south, we find the townlet of A Small Killing […], then the Top 10 metropolis and going westwards, just before arriving at Promethea, the Lost Girls hotel. Following this path, we can see that the outermost part of the Map-Land is circular and all the towns in this area are connected to each other by roads and, in the same way, each town is connected to the centre of From Hell.
Then, moving from Promethea and heading north, we find the old and crumbling city of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the five districts of Tomorrow Stories (which include the village of Jack B. Quick, the swamp of Splash Brannigan, the film-set city of First American and U.S. Agent and the metropolis of Indigo, also known, depending on which side you access it from, as Greyshirt or The Cobweb). Finally, closing the circle to the east, we arrive at the small town of Mirror of love […] and again at Tom Strong.

However, the most interesting thing you may notice from this high angle concerns the shape of the land. The Map-Land, as it has developed until now, looks like a two-dimensional rectangle. If you look at it closely, you can see four dotted lines rising perpendicularly towards the sky from the vertex of the rectangle corners, each touching the vertex of another dotted rectangle that closes the airspace as if it were a box. The Magician's Map-Land is therefore both a two-dimensional rectangle and a 3D rectangular parallelepiped. Ultimately - and how could it be otherwise - we find ourselves inside a Block-Universe/Idea-Space.
The name of this all-encompassing place is Jerusalem. 

Francesco Pelosi

Tom Strong sketch by Dave Gibbons

Above, a quick pen sketch of Tom Strong by Dave Gibbons realized in 2002 during Bristol Comic Festival.

ABC time: I'm potentially explosive

Excerpt from an interview by Brad Stone posted on CBR site on the 22nd October 2001.
The complete interview is available here.

CBR: Tell us about the conception of Top Ten [an NYPD Blue-like story about a police department of super-heroes in a city where everyone has supernatural powers.]
Moore: I remember being a kid in the early 60s. And Batman got a computer. He put in facts and got punch type. Mr. Fantastic, Man from Uncle, all these superheroes got computers. It was part of their super powers. Now everyone has computers. And soon we'll all be hovering, if forecasts are to be believed. Compared to where we were in 1960, we are all super heroes now, and we still can't solve our problems. We still have disasters even though we can sum up more computing power than even Isaac Asimov imagined. That's the appeal of Top 10. It's a fantastic city full of unbelievable people, what a modern urban city feels like.

I was a big fan of Homicide and NYPD Blue. And I was thinking about [comics about] superhero groups, why they don't work. But Steven Bochco seems to be able to handle huge casts of characters very well. So I was thinking it through. Why don't groups work? Hill Street Blues works. So what if you could have a superhero cop book - at that point the light came on. It can be really funny and you can talk about stuff you cant talk about in super hero books. Like the prejudice against robots. Joe Pi [a police robot] - I'm really pleased with him. It's fun playing against type.

In the next chapter, if there is one, they'll go to Tin Town. The robots are all wearing cogs around their neck. And we have Malcolm Ten as a robot with his own ideas on how machines are treated, and saying to Joe Pie, aren't you selling out your brothers?

What are the obstacles to producing more Top Ten?
Well Jim Lee's Wildstorm was bought by DC. It's always precarious. I don't work in harness, I'm obviously a valuable commodity in the comics world. If I start to feel squeezed, I rise up spitting black blood with snakes coming out of my mouth. I'm potentially explosive. I don't trust em. Anytime something could drop and offend me enough to pull the plug. I won't want to do it forever. But another 12 issues of top 10? You can't stop the thoughts and ideas from occurring. I want to find a way to get them out of my system.

And how about your other super hero title, Tom Strong?
I wanted to do something sweet. It's lazy writing. Something about simplicity which seems to be what people enjoy. Surprisingly, I keep getting these bravery letters for putting in an interracial marriage. There aren't many mixed relations in comics. Since 1939, apart from the X-men, which was ambiguous, it hasn't happened. I hadn't thought about that. How shameful that is. How backward this medium is.

So the other title that seems to be very close to your heart is Promethea [which explores Moore's own fascination with magic and the land where ideas and myths take shape.]

Yes it's a thinly disguised magical rant, that you know you know that just happens to look a bit like a comic book. I'm really enjoying that.

The complete interview is available here.

Tom Strong by Claudio Villa

Above, a powerful and graceful portrait of Tom Strong by Italian acclaimed comic book artist CLAUDIO VILLA. The illustration has been realized as contribution to the sold-out  Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman (2003, Abiogenesis Press). 

DAILY MOORE [16]

Art by Dave Gibbons.
From: Tom Strong n. 6.
First edition: 2000, America's Best Comics.

Chris Sprouse on Moore, Supreme and Tom Strong

Below, excerpts from an interview with CHRIS SPROUSE that I did in 2008. 

The complete piece is available HERE.

Were you more excited or a bit “frightened” to work with Moore considering his writing status?

CHRIS SPROUSE: Both excited to be working with someone as good as Alan and frightened because I wanted my art to be as good as his stories and I didn't know if I was up to the task.

Drawing Supreme, had you any direct contact with him or did you work only on his scripts? I think at that time he had already finished his scripts for Awesome and had no contact with the company... What’s about the “quality” of his scripts? Were they as detailed as the legend says?

No, I had no contact with Alan while working on Supreme. The scripts were indeed detailed and very long, but they were so much fun to read! I've kept them all!

After Supreme you followed Moore on his ABC line co-creating Tom Strong. What’s about your contribution to this modern classic hero? Was is only limited to the visual aspect of the characters, the city (even if Millennium City IS a character in itself), mecha design and so on.. or did you also contributed to the story in any way?

At first, I supplied purely visual input, but supposedly Alan created all the ABC books with the specific creators in mind, or at least tailored the stories to fit each of our strengths and interests. Later, around issue #10, Alan and I did discuss stories very briefly and decided together to focus on the Strong family as a sort of homage to the family feel of the old Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four, which we both loved. Otherwise, I was very content to let Alan write whatever he wanted to because it would always be interesting and fun to draw.

After Supreme and Tom Strong, how do you weight your collaboration with Moore? Do you consider it as the highest point of your career till now? Any "strange magical" anecdotes to share with us related to yr long professional relationship with him?

It was definitely my favorite time in comics. I don't know if I was always able to do the best I could have every single issue, but I'm very proud of the work I did on Tom Strong. No real magical anecdotes in the literal sense, but it was very magical to work with Alan. I'm honored to have had the chance.

The complete interview is available HERE. 

ABC house ad art by Gene Ha

Art by Gene Ha.

Above, America's Best Comics house ad, dated 1999. Gorgeous art by Gene Ha, featuring Promethea, Tom Strong, Greyshirt and Toybox (from Top Ten).

Tom Strong by Dave Johnson

Art by Dave Johnson.

Above a fine Tom Strong sketch by Dave Johnson.

Tom Strong by Mike Wieringo

Art by Mike Weiringo.

Above a great Tom Strong sketch by the amazing Mike Weiringo.We miss you, Ringo!

Moore's characters by Kresimir Biuk

Art by Kresimir Biuk.

Above, an illustration by Croatian artist Kresimir Biuk published in Alan Moore: Ritratto di uno Straordinario Gentleman (2003, Black Velvet Editrice, page 56), the Italian edition of the Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman book.

The image is contained only in the Italian edition.

Kresimir Biuk's blog: here.

PETER HOGAN: STRONG AND BEYOND

Cover for Tom Strong and The Planet of Peril N. 2. Penciler: C. Sprouse; Inker: K. Story; Colorist: J. Bellaire.

Peter Hogan is a well-know British comics writer with a long career in the industry. He collaborated with Alan Moore on the ABC's line, especially on Tom Strong series. After the conclusion of the line he wrote solo two miniseries of the character - Tom Strong and The Robots of Doom and Tom Strong and The Planet of Peril. He is also the co-creator - with artist Steve Parkhouse - of Resident Alien series published by Dark Horse. As announced just few days ago, he is also part of Electricomics, Alan Moore's most recent project.

Below you can read an interview I did with Peter Hogan, conducted via email in April and May 2014.

My special thanks to Mr. Hogan for his kindness and willingness.

Peter Hogan's entry at The Comic Book Database: here.

Peter Hogan.

smoky man: Tom Strong remains the only “survivor” of Moore’s ABC line. You contributed some issues to the original series created by Moore and artist Chris Sprouse, collaborated with Moore on the Terra Obscura miniseries and then, after the end of the line in 2006, you became the writer of the title producing the new miniseries Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom and the recent Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril.

What do you find interesting in writing Tom Strong? I think it’s an almost perfect mix of classic and modern, also a great vessel for entertaining and intelligent adventure stories.

Peter Hogan: Yes, I agree. Tom’s a great character, with a great supporting cast. A lot of people tend to pick up on the pulp trappings, but to me Tom is more of a Silver Age character. He has that purity of being, and whatever the modern world throws at him… I won’t say it has no effect on him, but he can handle it.

I also think that Tom Strong’s family plays a great, key role in his stories, the human dynamics. What is your approach, regarding this aspect? I am curious as a reader interested in better understanding the “creative process”, how you - as writer - approach and handle this specific characters and… characters general…

Well, the good thing about Tom and his world is that it’s on a very human scale. There’s continuity to be dealt with, there’s a complex array of relationships and quite a few characters to be taken into account … but it’s all of a manageable size, so it’s possible to write involving and dynamic stories. I think where the big superhero universes have gone drastically wrong is that they’ve been strangled by their own continuity. There’s a strength and an elegance to simplicity, which is what they once possessed but no longer do.

As to how the character dynamics work … the answer isn’t that easy, because I don’t truly understand it myself. I mean, you can plot out logically what should happen, what you’d like to happen … but the characters might not go along with it. It’s an aspect of writing that probably sounds pretentious to anyone on the outside, but it’s absolutely true. Characters will say and do things that really surprise and delight you, and whether it’s your own subconscious at work, or whether you’re channeling something from out of the Aether … who knows ? But that is genuinely how it works. Bad writers are the ones who can’t put their own egos to one side and allow that process to happen, and consequently their characters tend to be two-dimensional.

Chris Sprouse's cover for Tom Strong N. 23.

Character-driven story versus plot-driven story: which one is your favourite choice as writer? Or maybe this is not a proper question and it depends from time to time…

I don’t really think in those terms. You need good characters, and you need a good plot, whatever you’re doing. But I remember Neil Gaiman once defining ‘plot’ as : anything that keeps the reader turning the pages, and doesn’t leave them feeling cheated at the end. I’d go along with that. So, ‘plot’ can be a pretty loose concept, but you absolutely can’t do without good characters.

Back to Tom Strong. Another key ingredient of the series is… the sense of wonder, often with a classic sci-fi flavor. Which are your references or influences, or just simple interests regarding this subject?

Well, I’m only six months younger than Alan, so broadly speaking we have the same set of influences. We grew up with the same comics and movies and books … and up until the very late 1960s I think that all that sci-fi adventure material was largely very positive and optimistic, and the future was viewed as a set of dazzling possibilities. I think there are echoes of all that in Tom Strong, but it’s all filtered through a modern sensibility.

Which is a hard thing to pull off. It’s a bit like trying to do a Capra-esque fantasy movie now. It’s really, really hard, because the modern world isn’t as innocent as the 1930s, and you have to take that into account. It CAN be done – Groundhog Day did it, for one – but it’s hard.

Page 13 from Tom Strong and The Robots of Doom N. 6. Pencils: C. Sprouse. Inks: K. Story.

We are talking about comics which means… drawings and storytelling, of course. So… what about your collaborative relationship with artist and co-creator Chris Sprouse? I personally think Sprouse’s clean style is the perfect match for Tom Strong being able to create a classic sci-fi atmosphere for the city, the architectures, the machines… and, at the same time, to make the characters act with great naturalness…              

I agree. Tom is Chris’s baby, and he does him better than anyone else. For me, that’s a joy, because I know Chris will always come up with the goods and I can just trust him to get on with it. Hopefully Chris feels the same way about me! When Wildstorm asked me to revive Tom for Robots Of Doom, none of us were sure if Chris would be able to take part, but I’m very glad that he did.

And I think Chris would be happy to keep on with Tom forever. On my side, I have ideas for at least the next two storylines, so … I just hope they give us the go ahead to do them. 

Now Tom Strong is under the Vertigo label: did this impact in any way on the character and the way you handle him and his stories?

Absolutely not. It was just a change of label, and our editor now is Kristy Quinn, who was the assistant editor on all the ABC titles. I do think it’s a shame that they didn’t keep the ABC name on it, just because, but … it was their call. They probably felt you couldn’t have a comics line with just one comic in it. 

The Planet of Peril is still unpublished in Italy. I read the original issues but I don’t want to spoil any bit of the story… so, can you reveal anything about it for the Italian readers?

It sort of grew out of the fact that the last time we saw Tesla in Robots of Doom she’d just announced that she was pregnant. Which I thought was just a nice thing to do, to have Tom becoming a grandfather – and curiously, it also coincided with Alan becoming a grandfather ! Anyway, when it came time to think of a follow-up story it occurred to me that the pregnancy might actually be a dangerous situation for Tesla, since her husband is a fire-being. It could be life-threatening.

So what might save her ? I came to the same conclusion that Tom does in the story, and that leads him to travel to Terra Obscura. Since I’d wanted to go back there anyway, and this allowed me to do it, I was delighted. But it’s a VERY dark story, because Terra Obscura is in the middle of a crisis where millions of people are dying. So there’s no big villain here, and it’s basically a story about death and how people deal with it. People who were expecting a more conventional superhero adventure didn’t really get it, but the people who were a bit more open-minded seemed to really love it. Anyway, it does have a happy ending, and I’m very proud of it.

Terra Obscura volume. Cover by Janick Paquette. Ink: Karl Story.

You and Alan Moore. This is an obvious question for you, probably one you answered several times in the past… So, how did you collaborate with Moore on previous stories and… did you “consult” him, or ask him any “support” or “comment” on the new mini-series you wrote “solo”?

Well, with Terra Obscura it was a full collaboration – Alan and I sat face to face and thrashed out the plots, and then I went home and wrote the scripts. With the other ABC stuff, like the early Tom stories, we’d chat on the phone and sometimes he’d suggest things, but mostly it was me asking him questions about backstory and so on.

Then when Wildstorm asked me if I’d revive Tom a few years later, it was completely conditional on Alan being okay with the idea. So I rang him up, and fortunately for me he was happy for me to carry on. But there was kind of an implicit understanding that I was on my own from then on, and shouldn’t bother him about it at all. So from that point on it’s been just me.

What did happen to America’s Best Comics: A to Z? Will we ever see the two remaining planned issues?

I very much doubt it. They just cancelled the whole thing halfway through. The only one of mine that never appeared was the entry on Smax, which was the weakest one I wrote by far, so I’m not that sorry that it never came out. The remainder of those issues would have been written by Steve Moore, and that is a loss … I would have absolutely loved to see what Steve might have done with Promethea, but I don’t know if he even wrote a word of it before they cancelled the series. If he did, maybe it’ll surface after all his papers have been gone through.

The whole A-Z thing was weird. It was basically Alan’s idea. He was finishing up his last couple of issues for ABC, and so I think he envisioned this series as a way of rebooting the line, giving Wildstorm a springboard from which to relaunch all the titles. Looked at in that light, it makes perfect sense, whereas if Wildstorm already knew that they were going to shut the ABC line down it made no sense at all – but I think that was actually the case.

They just wouldn’t discuss future plans at all, and that had been the case for months and months before the A-Z series even got under way, so it’s not like it was the poor sales of that which made up their minds. I think they’d just decided to shut it all down the second Alan walked out the door … which is kind of understandable, but I think they could have made it work without him if they’d actually thought about it. They made a LOT of bad decisions back then. 

Any desire to do something with the other ABC’s characters, under the hypothesis that it could be something possible? Personally I think you could write a great Top Ten run…

Well, I did get to do Top Ten – and a lot of the other ABC characters – in the A-Z series … but any more than that isn’t very likely. They haven’t even let Zander Cannon finish his run on the title, and I really wish they would. I was thoroughly enjoying it, and I know I’m not the only one.

Right now I’m waiting for them to agree to another series of Tom, which is my first priority. After that, I’d also like to do another series of Terra Obscura … and the only other character that might really tempt me beyond that is Jonni Future. If they ever ask me, we’ll see. 

Steve Parkhouse's cover for Resident Alien N. 0.

You are also writing an interesting comic for Dark Horse titled Resident Alien, with art by Steve Parkhouse. Can you say something about it? I read that Parkhouse provided the initial impetus for the series…

Yeah, that’s true. I’d worked with Steve before, and wanted to work with him again, and he’d said that he’d like to do something that involved aliens. Resident Alien is what I came up with, and it’s about an alien who’s shipwrecked here, waiting for a rescue ship that might never come. He’s been laying low, and masquerading as a doctor … and even though we show him as an alien throughout the whole story, it’s clear from other people’s reactions that everyone he encounters sees him as being human.
Anyway, when the local town’s doctor gets murdered, they ask him to help out. And he likes being a part of the town, and gets hooked on solving crimes … So, the movie pitch would probably be : alien detective. That’s pretty much all you need to know. The second series is just about to come out in trade paperback, Steve’s currently drawing the third series and I’m halfway through writing the fourth. We plan to be doing this for a while !

From your privileged perspective, what is your perception of comics today, both as a medium and as an industry?

As a medium it remains as fantastic as it ever was, and I think that will endure indefinitely, whatever effect technology has upon how people read.
As an industry it seems to be right in the middle of some big changes, and some of those changes are exciting and some of them are a little scary. We have far more publishers around now, and ones who are open to a wider range of ideas and genres, and that’s a very good thing – especially since the Big Two seem far less adventurous these days than they have been in the past. I’m reminded of dinosaurs, and I wish I wasn’t.

The industry will change, that’s the only thing that’s for certain, but … I wouldn’t want to place any bets on how ! Just so long as we can still create comics AND make a living, it’ll all be okay.

What about your future projects?

More Resident Alien, for sure. Right now I'm just putting together a proposal for a graphic novel, which I hope I can find a home for. And, as you know, I've done a short story for Electricomics.

Electricomics' people at work.

And... exactly, what is Electricomics?

It's an anthology of short stories written especially with electronic gizmos - things like tablets - in mind. Alan Moore rang me up about this nearly three years ago, and asked me if I'd like to take part. It's taken that long to get the project off the ground. The idea is basically to try and come up with stories that take advantage of an electronic medium, that couldn't be told the same way in print. So ... it's kind of an experiment, and was very challenging to write.

Can you also reveal us any detail about Cabaret Amygdala your contribution to it announced as "modernist horror"?

Well, it's actually called Cabaret Amygdala Presents ... Second Sight. Cabaret Amygdala was Alan's title, which I thought would make a good umbrella concept, like The Twilight Zone. Anyway, Alan asked me to come up with a horror story that would make people feel ... uneasy. It's not standard supernatural horror at all, because I can't really relate to that. There are aspects of the supernatural that I believe in, like ghosts, but I'm not at all scared of them. And most other aspects - the devil, vampires and so on - I just think are ludicrous, and also well past their sell by date. With this story I pulled together a couple of concepts that I personally find kind of creepy, and I hope other people will feel the same way.

Thank you Peter for your time and the great answers.

Italian version: here.

AM Portrait: Remembering the Alamo...

Art by ILYA.

From Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, page 269 of the sold-out volume published in 2003 by Abiogenesis Press.

In the following you can read (click on the image to enlarge) the 4 page comics homage written and drawn by British artist ILYA. A really funny story, full of references to Moore's comics and characters (with some "special guests" included in).

The comics has been posted on this blog with the author's permission.

For more info about ILYA visit the Wikipedia related page.

 

 

Art by ILYA.

AM Portrait: Marvelman and Tom Strong

Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico

From Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman: Marvelman (above) and Tom Strong (below). Respectively from page 139 and page 286 of the sold-out volume published in 2003 by Abiogenesis Press.

Both illustrations drawn by the great Italian artist CARMINE DI GIANDOMENICO. Posted on this blog with the artist's permission.

Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico

Carmine Di Giandomenico is a well-known and appreciated Italian comics artist and writer. His career started in the mid 90s and since then he has worked for several Italian, French and United States comics publishing companies. In recent years, he started his collaboration with Marvel Comics drawing many of their iconic characters. In 2007 he wrote (with assistance by writer Zeb Wells) and drew the mini-series Daredevil: Battlin' Jack, a key story in the long-running continuity of Matt Murdock. Currently he is at work on a new Punisher limited series.