Tom Strong, a character originally written by Alan Moore, makes his return to comic books with The Planet of Peril. The Vertigo series is penned by Peter Hogan, and he wastes no time in creating drama. Tesla, Tom Strong’s daughter, is experiencing horrible birthing pains. Pregnant with the child of flaming teammate Val Var Garm, Tesla is suffering as her baby responds to stress the by manifesting powers like his father. In short, when the baby gets pissed, it heats up and nearly kills Tesla.
Desperate for a way to save his daughter and grandchild, Strong forms a plan to bring back a serum from Terra Obscura, a weird planet that is almost like Earth, but fortified with a lot more super-powered heroes. What’s more interesting is that the exploits of Terra Obscura are chronicled on Tom Strong’s Earth via comic books. Oddly enough, the comic books have stopped being created, though Strong has no idea why. With Val Var Garm in tow, Strong heads out to Terra Obscura, only to have his arrival tarnished by a bit of bad news involving martial law.
Peter Hogan both succeeds and fails with Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril #1. His success is in how he introduces the conflict. Instead of slowly moving his characters into place, Hogan drops them right into a bad situation, and asks readers to join them. It’s a sure fire way to get people hooked on the series. Hogan’s failure, comes with the fact that he knows these characters too well, forgetting we didn’t all take over writing Tom Strong from Alan Moore.
In the middle of a series, this issue would be gangbusters because we’d be familiar with the cast. As a #1, Hogan relies too much on readers having a working knowledge of the history, and characters, within the Tom Strong universe. If you read issue #1 without that cache, you’re given nothing to hold on to. Without knowing these characters, how can you care about them? Hogan could have kept the rapid-fire developments, but still spent some time introducing who is who and why we’re supposed to care about them. As it is, Tom Strong is a rather cryptic book for first time fans.
Chris Sprouse keeps Tom Strong looking very much as it did when he originally worked on the book. This is a “classic” comic book style, blending the look of strips, pulp sci-fi novels and Silver Age comics. Sprouse changes some things up. His work is smoother that his predecessors. He also works in more detail and shading. Sprouse never loses the Tom Strong look, but manages to add his own style to the panels.
Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril is a great book if you know the history. If not, you may find it too exclusive to fully enjoy.
(3 Story, 3.5 Art)
