Tom Strong

Author: Alan Moore

The master, Alan Moore, created America's Best Comics in 1999, and Tom Strong was intended to be the on-going centerpiece. Well, that and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Tom Strong is, in many ways, an amalgam of many different heroes from the Golden Age of Comics and Science Fiction. He's part Doc Savage, part Superman, part Iron Man, and part Buckaroo Bonzai. Raised in a high-gravity chamber, and regularly ingesting a native West Indian root that keeps him young and strong, he's a super-star with a wife, Dhalua, and daughter, Tesla, who have long-life and powerful bodies. Oh yeah, and there's a steam-powered robot. And maybe that's the best thing about Tom Strong – the fun interplay with history. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he's using his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of genre fiction to create a densely-layered world, and in Tom Strong, he created a world where his main character could go through various comic concepts. Tom Strong often played out adventures with his younger self, with a fuzzy bunny version of himself, and even an Archie-like universe! It's both a spoof of early science fiction and superhero comics, as well as a loving homage. Why it's on the list: Super smart, and super fun, Tom Strong may be Alan Moore's most entertaining titles.