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#1: How Tom Strong Got Started   Writer: Alan Moore Pencils: Chris Sprouse Inks: Al Gordon Colors: Tad Ehrlich Lettering: Todd Klein Cover date: June 1999

Plot Summary:
Every hero has an origin story. Tom Strong's origin is told in the very first issue: in the year 1899, inventor Sinclair Strong and his wive set sails from Millennium City to the caribbean island of Attabar Teru. There they are testing his newest invention, a robot called Pneumatic Man. A few months later, their son Tom is born. Tom grows up living in a gravity chamber and eating lots of Goloka roots which are said to provide a very long lifespan. This is why later he will be a very strong and slowly-aging man.

At the age of 8, Tom becomes an orphan - his parents die during a volcanic eruption. So the islands' native inhabitants called Ozu take care of him. In the Ozu tribe he meets Dhalua, who will later become his wife. When he's grown up, Tom decides to explore his parents' roots and to go to Millennium City. There he begins to use his special abilities as a crime-fighter. But like his father, he is also a scientist and inventor, so he improves his daddy's robot and creates a speaking ape.

This origin is told as a story-within-a-story: a little boy, Timmy Turbo, reads it in a comic book he got as part of a membership package from Tom Strong's fanclub, the Strongmen of America.

Comments:
For 2.95, we get a cover illustration by Alex Ross, a funny background story and an origin story which captures the mood of old pulp stories very well. This is a STRONG beginning.

© 2001 LeGuy.
All images, characters and names are trademarks of America's Best Comics.