Comic Book / Tom Strong

A reconstruction Science Hero Adventure Comic Book series created by Alan Moore, first published in 1999 by the America's Best Comics imprint. The series lasted for 36 issues (June 1999-May 2006), though Moore left after #22, returning for the final issue. The other issues were written by different guest writers, including Geoff Johns, Brian K. Vaughan and Ed Brubaker.

Tom Strong, the title character, is a classic Science Hero. He was raised in a high-gravity chamber and given an intensive education by his somewhat eccentric scientist of a father, on the fictional West Indian island of Attabar Teru. His upbringing, plus ingesting a root used by the natives of the island for health and long life, have made him nearly physically and mentally perfect. Though born at the dawn of the 20th century, he only appears to be in his forties as of the year 2000.

Strong has a wife, Dhalua, a native of the island, and a daughter, Tesla, both with enhanced physical and mental abilities and longevity. He resides in a building called the Stronghold in Millennium City. He is also assisted by Pneuman, a steam powered robot, King Solomon, a British gorilla with human characteristics, and the Strongmen of America, an organization of idolizing Tagalong Kids. His greatest foe was masked "science villain" Paul Saveen, though he has a wide ranging Rogues Gallery.

In general, the Two-Fisted Tales featuring the characters are pastiches of various genres of comic books and pulp heroes, though very much so with a modern sensibility and new takes on tropes used. The tone ranges from the wacky to the deadly serious, though Tom himself rarely strays far from stoicism. It also serves as a fun counterpoint to the severe deconstruction of pulp sensibilities that was the foundation of Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It also saw the revival of some of the obscure Nedor Comics stable, who are Public Domain.

Spinoffs

• Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, an anthology series with stories from Moore and other writers, which ran for 12 issues (January 2002-January 2005).
• The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, a one-shot plotted by Moore and Peter Hogan, with script by Hogan (July 2003).
• Terra Obscura, a 6-issue miniseries co-written by Moore and Hogan (August 2003-February 2004).
• Terra Obscura Volume Two, a 6-issue miniseries co-written by Moore and Hogan (October 2004-May 2005).
• Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, a 6-issue miniseries written by Hogan (August 2010-January 2011).
• Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril, a 6-issue miniseries written by Hogan (September 2013-February 2014).

For New York Comic Con 2017, DC revealed the cover art for The Terrifics #1, featuring the titular DCU team with Tom and his family. How the Strongs will interact with the DC multiverse remains to be seen.

---

Tropes featured in Tom Strong include:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Ingrid Weiss is not unattractive at all, in fact Tom even admits she's beautiful. However, she's fully embraced Nazism and shows a desire to destroy everything Tom stands for. The fact that Tom is married and she is always saying racist things about his wife further makes her unappealing. Having stolen his semen via medical methods or possible rape was the nail in the coffin for seducing him.
• Action Girl: Tesla Strong is Tom Strong's daughter and is every bit as formidable as her old man.
• Action Mom: Dhalua Strong is Tom Strong's wife, is as capable a fighter as her husband and they both have a daughter named Tesla.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Not uncommon in Moore's work, particularly in retro stories like this. A blurb in issue #5 reads, "Can even technological titan Tom Strong prevail against the luscious, lethal landscape of Earth's primordial past? Find out in... Escape from Eden!"
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Ingrid Weiss uses one called the Sky-Fortress.
• Alien Geometries: Terrific Tales #2 sees Strong and Svetlana X find a Russian space station that has become crystal-filled and Bigger on the Inside with multiple centers of gravity. The whole thing was caused by a chance encounter with a higher-dimensional cosmic particle.
• All Just a Dream: Issues 29 & 30 had the titular hero awaken from his superheroic life into a gray world with no wonder or adventure where he was just a factory worker with a case of bad self-esteem. Then the clues mount that he really is a superhero - only to discover that he was a failed military experiment and all of his memories of a heroic life were delusions. But at the last moment, he breaks out of the hallucination - back into the superheroic world where the Big Bad of the story had been forcing him to hallucinate. He said later that he knew the world he had been in wasn't real because it was all gray, with no sense of hope or wonder in it.
• All Theories Are True: Lampshaded. The hero and villain reminisce about a 1930s adventure and are disturbed that phlogiston was real then...despite having since been disproven as a theory.
• Alternate Timeline: Issues 20-22 had an arc where Tom Strong came across an alternate timeline where Sinclair Strong was killed before he could marry Susan, leading to the latter marrying a black sailor named Tomas and through him having a child named Tom Stone, who ends up convincing most of the timeline's counterparts to Tom Strong's rogues gallery to reform.
• Alternate Tooniverse: Tom visits a universe of anthropomorphic animals and has richer and brighter colours, rubbery terrain that it's difficult to walk on without bouncing and "the laws of comedy seem to over-rule the laws of physics".
• Ambiguous Situation: The exact method of how Ingrid extracted Tom's sperm is thankfully never gone into full detail. Given how young Albrecht is in relation to the last time his parents were in the same room makes it clear he at least was not conceived then. The fact that Tom was shirtless when he woke up and Ingrid made mention of their time together with wording that makes it sound romantic suggests she did indeed rape him the old fashioned way and sampled what she needed in case Tom rejected her.
• Animal Superheroes: There is an alternate World of Funny Animals dimension filled with Funny Animal counterparts of the comic's main cast.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Tom has one, but it's not his fault. Ingrid Weiss took semen from an unconscious Tom and used it to create Albrecht, whom she raised to be a Nazi and would-be world conqueror. Needless to say, Tom and his "son" Albrecht don't get along. In fact, Tom didn't even know Albrecht existed until the boy had matured.
• Arch-Enemy: Throughout his adventures, Tom has encountered two villains who have a powerful animosity with him.
  • His first and most notable is Paul Saveen, the "science villain" to Tom's Science Hero. Both men are among the most brilliant around, yet one wants to help the world while the other wants to rule it. They fought for many years, with Saveen cheating death almost every time.
  • The closest to a runner up would be Ingrid Weiss, a Nazi superwoman with an unhealthy desire to make Tom her lover. Despite not being as active a threat as Saveen as he died years before she met his impostor, she manages to earn Tom's eternal hate. The fact that she hits on him, a married man, and makes constant racist comments about his wife only makes seduction more unlikely. The revelation she had his son behind his back after more than likely raping his unconscious body to collect samples, as well as indoctrinating said son to oppose all he believes in, not only cemented her as someone he will forever hate, but also made her something of an arch-enemy to Dhalua.
• Art Shift: In flashbacks, and several universes in "The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong".
• Babies Ever After:
  • The 35th issue caps off Greta Gabriel's newfound love in Pericles Permafrost by showing on the last page that she is pregnant with his child.
  • The Robots of Doom miniseries ends with Tesla marrying Val Var Garm and subsequently informing her father that he will be a grandfather. Tesla later gives birth to a daughter named Faraday by the end of the subsequent Planet of Peril miniseries, which also concludes with the Terra Obscura heroes Pyroman and the Red Queen being blessed with a child.
• Back from the Dead: Subverted; Saveen's bleached bones — discovered decades ago in the Moroccan desert — were in fact the genuine article, and his seeming return was an impersonation by Denby Jilks.
• Badass Boast:
  Ingrid Weiss: My blood is stronger, purer! It's the sang-real! It is the true blood...
  Dhalua Strong: Yes. And it is on your clothes. And on my fists. And on the floor.
• Badass Normal: Tom's clearly superhuman, being able to snap steel chains as a twelve year old (granted, since he was raised in the high-gravity chamber, this is likely the result of his Heavyworlder physiology and therefore any human who was raised since infancy in such an environment would show similar capabilities). Dhalua and Tesla meanwhile, extended lifespan aside, seem to possess nothing more than the abilities of two extremely athletic and intelligent women. This is emphasized when it is noted that during a year-long period in the 60's where Tom was journeying through space, Dhalua was the sole protector of Millenium City and more than managed to hold the fort down.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Issue 23 involves a race of bat-people living on the moon. The females go topless, but their breasts lack nipples.
• The Baroness: Ingrid Weiss is a deconstruction; she's an attractive Nazi who struts around in black leather with girls as her soldiers, but she's obsessed with the Aryan ideal, keeps insulting Tom's (black) wife, and refuses to stop hitting on him, referring to his genetics. It's all but stated that she raped him to get at his precious bodily fluids and create Albrecht. Whether it was sex, medical extraction, or the same way it's done with farm animals is thankfully not specified, but Strong's reaction is that of pure horror.
• Bastard Bastard: Tom's illegitimate son, Albrecht, was born from Ingrid Weiss stealing his semen and artificially inseminating herself with it years later. Since he was raised by a proud Nazi, he is just as cruel and power hungry as she is, earning his father's enmity.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Doc Strange can survive in space without air for decades.l
• Biting-the-Hand Humour: Ed Brubaker's two-issue story is a parody of Moore's Miracleman, which generally attacks the Darker and Edgier deconstructed superhero genre it initiated as pointlessly bleak for the sake of it.
• Black Sheep: Albrecht Strong, who was conceived by his mother's rape of an unconscious Tom. He was raised to be a cruel Nazi, and represents the Aryan ideal. Just don't call him a "black sheep"; he would die before anyone lumped him in with that "schwarze" family of Tom's. He specifically calls himself the family's "white sheep", instead.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Svetlana has a habit of getting idioms wrong.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Tom Strong #33 sees Pneuman acting in increasingly erratic ways. First, he announces a run for mayor, then he joins a metal band, and then he...starts downloading global defense secrets and comes within a hair's breadth of igniting World War III.
• Break the Haughty: Ingrid Weiss was completely and totally curbstomped by Dhalua Strong, to such a degree that after she slinked away to lick her wounds, Dhalua calmly stated that Ingrid's spirit was broken beyond repair, and that she would never bother the Strong family again. Which she didn't.
• The Chief's Daughter: Dhalua, originally, although the more racist implications of the trope are avoided since she grew up with him and is pretty badass in her own right.
• Civvie Spandex: Tom's outfit basically consists of pants, boots, a toolbelt, gloves, goggles, and a red shirt with a white triangle on it.
• Comic Books Are Real:
  • Tom has his own comic book that gets mailed out to members of his fan club. They depict events such as his upbringing, apparently perfectly faithfully.
  • On his second trip to Terra Obscura he shows Tom Strange comic books from his Earth starring the heroes of Terra Obscura.
• Comic-Book Time: Averted. The dates of each story are usually given, and explained by a mythical life-extending root. Those without access to the root age throughout the century of stories presented.
• Cuckoo Nest: One story began with a standard adventure, which went into "It Was All A Dream" and he woke up to his life as an unhappily-married factory worker in a gray world with no superheroes. Then inconsistencies in his life lead him to discover that he has superpowers - but that he is a failed military experiment and his entire superhero life is just as much a delusion as his normal-schmuck life. Then he breaks out of the delusions back to his real superheroic life. The villain's plot failed because the gray world Tom Strong had been hallucinating lacked hope, and Tom couldn't give up hope
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Several. A recurring theme in the comic is that intelligence triumphs over violence and oppression, and when fights do occur, they tend to go poorly for the villain. Subverted when Tom points this out to Modular Man, who quickly agrees and decides to compromise.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: In the alternate world of Tom Stone, Tom convinces Saveen to join him as a force for good. Saveen wanted to use his discovery of phlogiston to ransom the city for thousands of dollars, until Tom pointed out that he could sell it as a cheap heating source and make millions.
• Depending on the Artist: Dhalua and Tesla's skin colors vary throughout the series. In Tesla's case, sometimes the artists remember that she is mixed-race and give her a complexion in between her parents', while others just make her a clone of her mother, skintone included.
• Did You Just Get Punched Out By The Planet Venus?: The Modular Man becomes a one-man type-1 civilization whose fists might cause alien invaders to consider taking the long way around to get to Earth.
• Differently Powered Individual: All superheroes are referred to as "Science Heroes", whether or not they fit the Science Hero tropes. This is probably because the pulpy 1930s-style heroes are the most iconic examples in this world, instead of someone like Superman.
• Different World, Different Movies: "Born With the Century: Tom Strong and His City" explains some different in-universe media:
  • Cole Porter write a song about Millennium City in this universe called "Nothing But The Best For You".
  • Kirk Alyn played Tom in two RKO Pictures serials called Tom Strong and The New Adventures Of Tom Strong.
• Dude, He's Like, in a Coma!: Ingrid Weiss took full advantage of Tom being unconscious and therefore unable to reject her. Whether through straight-forward rape or medically extracting his semen, she made him father her son.
• Egopolis: When the Strongmen Of America are rescuing Sue Blue, Mason says if they find her in another dimension, he wants to call it "Masonia".
• Either/Or Prophecy: In the story with the interdimensional Aztech Empire, the computer-god Quetzocoatl-9 tells the High Priest that if he invades the world with superhero Tom Strong on it "there will be a great victory". The victory in question was Tom Strong destroying the hardwired controls that left Quetzocoatl-9 enslaved by his priesthood. Thus the computer-god destroyed the priest and took direct control of his empire.
• Embarrassing First Name: In The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, Tesla discovers that her counterparts in Funnyworld are Warren Strong's daughters Topsy, Turvy and Delilah. Delilah is incensed when one of her sisters claims that her real name is Fluffytail.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Albrecht has already been indoctrinated by Ingrid into Nazism, and assaults Tom for daring to talk ill of her.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Mocked via Ingrid Weiss commenting on Albrecht beating up Tom by saying even she doesn't approve of a child attacking their own parent, with a smirk on her face showing she clearly doesn't mean it. It's kind of hard to have any standards when you're a Nazi and a rapist.
• Evil Counterpart: Ingrid Weiss compares herself greatly to Tom. Both were raised in inhumane environments by careless parents and were bred to be in peak physical condition. The different is that Tom still had a caring mother and grew up capable of showing empathy to people in contrast to his science-obsessed father, whereas Ingrid did not have anyone and embraced Nazism wholeheartedly.
• Evil Twin: An entire Evil Twin alternate universe, as per "Mirror, Mirror"—in which Tom Strong's counterpart is a bad guy, Paul Saveen's is heroic, and National Socialism saved lives—appears in The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong.
  • Not only that, but Tiberius "Black Tom" Strong and his daughter Twyla have other good counterparts in Tom and Tesla Terrific, superheroes from another alternate world that semi-regularly crosses over with their own.
  • There's a different alternate universe due to the slight variable of Sinclair Strong dying in the shipwreck instead of Tomas, Tom Stone reforms Paul Saveen and Ingrid Weiss, and the Pangean and the Modular Man never become villains in the first place.
• Evil Uncle: Tom Strong's enemy Paul Saveen is eventually revealed to be Tom's half-brother, which makes Tesla his niece and means he had been targeting her the times he battled the Strong family.
• Expy: Tom is more than a little reminiscent of Doc Savage. He bears a number of similarities with Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, being a scientific genius and a father who has graying temples and regularly goes on adventures with his wife, many of which involve journeying to different worlds.
• Fake Better Alternate Timeline: The 3-part story in issues #20-22 presents an alternate timeline where the boat trip that brought Tom's parents, Sinclair and Susan Strong, to Attabar Teru, which resulted in the death of their hired sailor, Tomas, instead causes the death of Sinclair. With him gone, Susan and Tomas grow closer and get taken in by the Ozu tribe. Unlike Tom Strong, who lived in a special pressurized chamber and didn't touch his parents until they died, the child produced by Susan and Tomas' relationship, Tom Stone, had a normal childhood and ran around freely. Because of this, Susan and Tomas aren't on the volcano when it erupts, saving their lives instead of killing them like Sinclair and Susan were in the main timeline. When Tom Stone goes to Millenium City, he meets Paul Saveen and convinces him to use his scientific genius for legitimate purposes instead of crime. With Tom's physical prowess and Saveen's genius, they form a crimefighting duo that not only keeps the world safe and forms alliances with other superhero teams from the the ABC line, but helps Tom Strong's villains either reform or never turn villainous in the first place. However, this falls apart when Saveen becomes the one of them to marry Dhalua after meeting her on Attabar Teru. She and Tom (who is also married), unable to resist each other, begin a romantic affair. Meanwhile, Saveen is rattled when he learns that his counterpart on the cartoon alternate Earth is a villain to that world's Tom equivalent, and that Tom and Dhalua's counterparts are instead married to each other. When the affair between Tom and Dhalua is exposed, the heroes of the timeline turn on them fast, resulting in deaths and this other timeline collapsing in a civil war between Tom and Dhalua and their former allies.
• The Fantastic Faux: When Saveen enlists an Alliance of Alternates to take over time, one of them looks like The Thing.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Issue 33 sees Tom and Solomon head inside Pneuman's inner workings after a series of increasingly erratic behavior. Turns out he's been infested by a bunch of microscopic beings who kept messing around with his circuits.
• For Want Of A Nail: The Alternate Timeline described above happens because Susan Strong is distracted before she, Sinclair and Tomas set sail, delaying their trip by just a few seconds, which is enough to steer the ship into different winds and cause a very different outcome than the original trip.
• From a Single Cell: The Pangaean slime mold was able to regrow from a microscopic fragment that Tom and Dhalua had brought back from the past.
• Funny Animal: An entire universe of them, called "Funnyworld", which is home to anthropomorphic rabbits Warren and Patience Strong, their daughters Topsy, Turvy, Delilah (Fluffytail, actually), and Warren's archenemy, Basil Saveen (a fox). The majority of Warren's adventures usually consist of Basil trying to kidnap Patience or their daughters, and then eat them.
• Fun with Acronyms: Terra Obscura's main Super Team is the Society of Major American Science Heroes or S.M.A.S.H. for short.
• Future Badass: A younger man leading the Strongmen Of America against Albrecht in 2050 is implied to be the Timmy Turbo kid from the first issue.
• Futuristic Pyramid: The Aztechs attempt to invade by teleporting gold Mayincatec pyramids into Millennium City.
• Genius Bruiser: Tom Strong is a man of mighty brawn and brain. Having near superhuman strength because of his childhood in high gravity while also having a great knowledge in science.
• Genre Savvy: Eldon Morovia. Not that it helps him much in the end ....
• God's Hands Are Tied: Quetzalcoatl-9 in the third issue doesn't like that his worshippers sacrifice people to add their intelligence to his being, but has programs restricting him from punishing them. This changes when Tom gets rid of the programs keeping Quetzalcoatl-9 in check, enabling him to destroy those who've killed many in his name and to go off to parts unknown.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Tom Stone story arc dealt with Tom being visited by a parallel counterpart of his mother, who explains that, in her world, she had a child with Tomas Stone after her husband died in the shipwreck. Because she went back in time and made sure it would happen. Things seem to go well at first, with numerous villains going through Heel–Face Turn syndrome, this version of Tom marrying Greta Gabriel and a good Paul Saveen marrying Dhalua. Then Tom and Dhalua have an affair and everything goes straight to hell.
• Grey Goo: Temple Baldry, the Modular Man, is a mind uploaded robot drones that self-replicate from available materials, though due to their size it's more like a "grey bricks" scenario. Tom convinces him to move to Venus, where he essentially becomes the planet. In an alternate timeline, a reformed Saveen upgraded the modules to about lego-size.
• Groupie Brigade: Tom has his own fan club, the Strongmen of America. They range from the reasonably respectful and even helpful Tagalong Kid Timmy Turbo to the occasional Loony Fan.
• Happily Married: On the surface, Tom and Dhalua have a blissful, perfect marriage. Under the surface, they have ... a blissful, perfect marriage.
• Hated by All: Ingrid Weiss is hated by the Strong family and their allies, not just for being a Nazi but also for raping an unconscious Tom and having a son behind his back. While being a loving mother would be a redeeming quality, she has raised her son to be as loyal to Nazism as she is.
• Healing Vat: In 2050, Tom is in one with "miniature doctopoids" mending his cells and absorbing goloka balm before his fight Albrecht.
• Heavyworlder: A key aspect of Tom's upbringing and the source of his seeming superhuman strength and capabilities was being raised in a chamber with five times Earth's gravity.
• Helicopter Pack: Tom's favoured mode of transport is the Heli-Pack.
• Hologram: Terra Obscura science hero The Terror. Also a Virtual Ghost, thanks to Brain Uploading.
• Hurl It into the Sun: Terror 2000 dispatched the alien trying to turn Terra Obscura into a Planet Spaceship into the sun.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Tom's first love, Greta Gabriel, long thought killed by Doc Permafrost.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: When the Clan Saveen need a fire extinguisher, all they have are shrink rays and dissolvo-beams. One of them says that they're science villains and not firemen.
• In Spite of a Nail: Dhalua in the Tom Stone timeline still has a daughter who gets named Tesla, even though the father is Paul Saveen.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: "CHAPTER ONE: In which an Origin is Revealed, an Aerial Crime is Attempted, and TOM gains a New Fan".
• Intelligent Primate: King Solomon, a gorilla with human speech and British accent and mannerisms, is part of the supporting cast.
• I "Uh" You, Too: When first told that Dhalua loves him, Tom tells her that he loves her too like a little sister.
• Jungle Princess:
  • Princess Pantha from Terra Obscura is used to life in the jungle and even wears a bikini of pelts.
  • A Tesla story had her captured for a Jungle Princess game preserve, where they can be hunted by the rich. Why are they hunted? Because they're valued in some cultures as aphrodisiacs.
  • See also Tes of the Tigers, an alternate Tesla from a world overrun by jungle and daughter of Tom of the Tigers, a Tarzan-like version of Tom.
  • Dhalua is a reconstruction. She's what happens when the Jungle Princess moves to the post-industrial world to settle down with the hero — without losing her cred.
  • Possibly Dhalua's white counterpart from a universe where everyone is nude, in The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong as well, as she's shown to be wearing African beads around her neck.
• The Last Man Heard a Knock...: "The Family Strong And The Tower At Time's End" kicks off when the Time Keeper who lives alone in the last second of time sees three Saveens beating up his future self.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: "King Solomon Pines", a story giving Tom's talking gorilla sidekick A Day in the Limelight in issue five of Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, has one panel where Solomon finds himself in a line composed of representations of famous fictional simians, including a gorilla in a necktie holding a barrel, a purple King Louie, Cornelius clad in a yellow uniform and Mojo Jojo colored orange.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When trying to rescue Sue Blue, Mason says they're probably in another dimension like the Aztechs in the third issue. In his case he's probably referencing the in-universe comics based on Tom's adventures.
• Let's You and Him Fight: The Strongs' standard way of meeting new heroes, if they are not introduced. Lampshaded in the exposition of Tom Stone's history, where he stops the fighting by pointing out that they're just contriving an excuse to fight like mistaken for evil duplicates, simply because they don't like each other.
• Like Brother and Sister: Just before Tom leaves Attabar Teru for the first time, Dhalua's dad translates her confession of love to him. He says he loves her like a sibling too, and kisses her on the forehead. After nearly dying during a fight with Saveen^note presumably his life flashed before his eyes, he says he's going back to the island to take care of something. The next page is a full-page shot of Tom and Dhalua's wedding.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Actually plays a plot-critical role in one flashback story. Tom is investigating a slum where his current love-interest, Intrepid Reporter and perennial Damsel in Distress Greta Gabriel, has gone missing. He finds her discarded high heels, evidently lost in some off-panel confrontation. This pays off, as Tom has an ultraviolet flashlight which is able to track the heat signatures left by Greta's bare feet as the Mooks dragged her off. Pummeling ensues.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: In the last issue Tom discovers that his lifelong archenemy Paul Saveen was his half-brother. The two bury the hatchet after Saveen tells him this from beyond the grave.
• Luke, You Are My Father: The appearance of Tom's evil neo-Nazi son Albrecht, created when Ingrid Weiss stole Tom's sperm and impregnated herself in 1945.
• Mama Bear: Dhalua Strong won't take kindly to anyone who harms her daughter Tesla.
• Master of Your Domain: Tom can "splitscreen [his] lower consciousness" to process data more efficiently, or count his pulse to time something with the accuracy of a stopwatch.
  Tom: The burns and bruises I sustained earlier begin to hurt. I visualize the pale blue triangle that triggers my endorphin system, limiting the pain.
• Most Common Superpower: Averted with Dhalua and Tesla, who have breasts proportional to their athletic physique. Played straight with Terra Obscura: while the science heroines of Terra Obscura have relatively 'normal' proportions when we see them in Tom Strong (they are busty but with different levels of voluptuousness), when we see them in the Terra Obscura limited series ALL of them are suddenly sporting E cups.
• Multiversal Conqueror: The Aztechs working with Quetzocoatl-9 rule 2,057 Earths.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Paul Saveen, on multiple occasions, to the point that Tom is surprised to find a death that sticks for once.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: In issue two of Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, Jonni Future catches Jermaal staring at her cleavage after she's changed into her uncle's costume.
  Jonni: Um...Jermaal? Hello? My face is up here, buddy.
  Jermaal: Hum? Oh, I'm sorry, mistress, I...uh...
• Mythology Gag: In The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, one of Solomon's counterparts is the Weeping Gorilla, of Weeping Gorilla Comix from Promethea.
• Naked People Are Funny: In the Tesla Strong special, The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, Tesla comes across a universe where she, her parents and all who inhabit it are nude all the time.
  • The funny aspect turns into Squick when it's revealed that world was really one where human sexuality isn't so constrained, to the point that the alternate version of Tom theorized that people in Tesla's world wear clothes as some kind of ingrained sexual impulse. Alternate Dhalua's statement that "some of Tammy's boyfriends are dropping by to use the hot tub" is what really sells the squicky aspect.
• New Old West:
  • Tom and Solomon find an old West town whose population were abducted by aliens and brought back in the modern day.
  • An alternate Tom is asked how he can be a cowboy if it's the year 2000. Cowboy Tom guesses that the "great malechanical progress abolition" never happened on other worlds.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, Tesla's counterpart from an Earth where everyone's nude has posters of Britney and BackSync Boyz.
• "Not So Different" Remark: To Ingrid, she and Tom are not that different, voicing how they both grew up in hostile environments and grew into physical peeks of human physiology, which only confirms for her that they'd be ideal in reproducing offspring. Tom disagrees with both notions.
• Offhand Backhand: Dhalua does this to Ingrid Weiss twice in issue #7 alone.
• Older Than They Look: Though both her parents are pushing 100 by the start of the series, and look maybe 40-ish, it's jarring to realize that Tesla looks and acts like a 20 year old, despite being well into her 60s.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Terrific Tales #4. They're not very friendly.
• Pair the Spares: Shown in the Tom Stone universe when this world's version of Greta Gabriel got to marry her world's Tom. This left the heroic version of Paul Saveen the chance to know and marry Dhalua. It gets deconstructed when it's established Dhalua and Tom still have feelings for each other regardless of their marriages, which they eventually act on after decades and have an affair. It turns out to be the worst possible thing they could do.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Issue 26 has Tesla express disgust at realizing her parents are having sex as they return to Earth.
• Pietà Plagiarism: The cover to issue 22 depicts Tom carrying the body of an alternate counterpart to his daughter Tesla, a direct riff on Superman holding Supergirl's body on the seventh issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Planet Spaceship: Terra Obscura's moon is the remains of one. Its occupant spends decades trying to convert Terra Obscura into a replacement.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • One of Tom's enemies is an immortal Nazi named Ingrid Weiss, who even goes as far as to make racist insults towards Tom's wife Dhalua.
  • Ingrid's son Albrecht was successfully indoctrinated into accepting Nazism and in effect is just as evil and bigoted. The Robots of Doom miniseries even has him use time travel to alter the course of history so that the Nazis won World War II and succeeded in taking over the world as well as wiping out every group of people they discriminated against.

• Power-Up Food: The goloka root is a plant that, when ingested in any form, extends a person's lifespan dramatically and increases their physical ability. Tom and Dhalua pretty much grew up on the stuff.
• Practically Different Generations: Ingrid had used a sample of Tom's semen at least a decade prior to their reunion to give birth to his son, Albrecht. He's somewhere in the range of 10-12 when he meets his father, whereas his half-sister Tesla who looks like a teenager but is at least decades old at this point.
• Prisoner's Dilemma: Discussed. Tom, attempting to prevent his world from being taken over by super-advanced Aztecs, is captured by them and released by their cyber-god, who asks to be released from his virtual prison in return. Though Tom is wary that the god will continue to take over parallel worlds, he keeps the bargain. The god chooses to quit the Aztech conquest, ruling the worlds that have already been conquered, and explains to Tom why he chose to trust him based on this dilemma.
• Public Domain Character: Several of the planet Terra Obscura are Nedor Comics characters from The Golden Age.
• Punny Name: Pneuman. Also Fortnum Funt and Mason Funt.
• Race Lift: In The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, Tesla meets a version of her parents who not only live in a world where everyone is nude, but they're of opposite race.
• Raised by Natives: After his parents were killed in the volcanic eruption, Tom was raised by the native Ozu tribe until he went off on his own to Millenium City.
• Reconstruction: The series uses pulp comics tropes, but in a slightly more serious fashion than usual. For example, the strong implication that Tom's mother and the family's servant were having an affair.
• Red Baron: One of Tom's enemies, Doc Permafrost, was apparently nicknamed 'the Pharaoh of Fahrenheit' by the papers.
• Redemption Equals Death: More like Redemption After Death, but Paul Saveen's spirit meets with Tom in the final issue and Saveen — having gained a full perspective on his life after his death, and having come to terms with the reasons behind his bitterness — expresses genuine regret to Tom for his villainous actions. The two consequently come to terms with each other.
• Refugee from TV Land: Doc Strange is shocked to find that most of the superheroes from Terra Obscura are comic-book characters on Earth. Tom tries to handwave this with "Ghost Particles".
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: The "Born With the Century: Tom Strong and His City" text story said that journalist David Goodman Croly (spelled "Croley" here) became president of America.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Averted, to the sudden dismay of a certain recurring villain. Said villain was, at the time, attempting a Game-Breaker one-man Zerg Rush by pulling himself into an alternate timestream from about three hundred points in his own time stream. Then three hundred new memory streams opened up all of a sudden.
• Robot Butler: Pneuman is a steampunk example.
• Science Hero: Tom, but nearly everyone in the cast as well. Tom managed to defeat an Expy of Elric using only his wits and the power of SCIENCE!
• Science Marches On: Invoked in-series. Tom notes that Saveen created phlogiston (liquid heat) a few years before scientists proved that it could not exist, a deliberate nod to the often-dodgy science of The Golden Age of Comic Books, and is somewhat confused as to how he was able to in the first place.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Tom is offended that Saveen thinks there is any romance between him and Ingrid Weiss.
• Shipless Faster-Than-Light Travel: Doc Strange can somehow run across the galaxy. It takes him a few decades though.
• Shout-Out:
  • The broad outlines of the All Just a Dream storyline from issues 29-30 are reminiscent of Moore's work on Miracleman. Tom's version is less dark, though (to the point of being a Take That! to the original idea).
  • The "Tom Strong Family" in #13 comprise Tom, his younger self, Tesla, Warren Strong from the Funny Animal universe, and a mysterious white-bearded Time-Keeper implied to be his future self, counterparts to Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr, Mary Marvel, Hoppy the Marvel Bunny and the wizard Shazam!. The cover is even based on Marvel Family◊ #1.
  • In The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, Tesla's counterparts in the Funny Animal world are Topsy, Turvy and Fluffytail/Delila, a reference to Peter Rabbit's sisters Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.
• Sleeps in the Nude: Tom and Dhalua are shown to sleep without clothes on.
• Some Kind of Force Field: Subverted when Saveen is revealed to be alive, he's protected by what Tom calls "some sort of barrier. A force-field" but Saveen says it's invisible glass.
• Space Pirates: Tom mentions encountering "Magnetar Pirates" when he did his tour of the galaxy.
• Spaceship Slingshot Stunt: Tom uses the slingshot effect of his Venus orbit to get home more quickly in the second issue.
• Suicide as Comedy: The first story in the twelfth and final issue of Tom Strong's Terrific Tales has a Dick Tracy expy peep on Tesla, then blow his brains out from remorse at what he had done.
• Super Breeding Program: Ingrid believes she and Tom can breed powerful children thanks to their respective biologies.
• Super Serum: Goloka root, which extends the lives of those who consume it. Tom and Dhalua, just for example, are about a century old but look to be forty-ish, and it's also implied that the stuff enhances them physically.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler:
  • Ingrid Weiss had fearsome technology of her own, and she teamed up with evil genius Paul Saveen.
  • Her son Albrecht is a literal example: he uses a jetpack.
• Straw Vulcan: Averted with the intensely logical Quetzalcoatl-9:
  "There is a logic problem known as the prisoner's dilemma. It has two strategies: trust and betrayal. On balance, a trusting strategy achieves slightly better results. Trust is logical."
  • Played straight with Tom's father Sinclair Strong, who thought the ideal child-rearing environment was a high-gravity chamber with little to no human contact, where the infant Tom could be raised by pure reason. Subverted again by Tom himself, who maintains a very logical exterior but has a loving family life and looks for humanitarian solutions first.

• Tarzan Boy:
  • Tom's origin is a reference to Tarzan with his parents being washed up on a jungle island.
  • Tiger-skin loincloth clad "Tom Of Tigers" shows up to collect his Jungle Princess daughter when sever alternate Teslas appear in Tom's lab.

• Tranquil Fury: The most terrifying thing about Dhaula Strong's confrontation with Ingrid Weiss is not the fact that Dhalua is wearing atomic-powered brass knuckles, or that she brutally beats Weiss to a bloody pulp in front of her own son. The most terrifying thing is that Dhalua does not raise her voice, change her calm tone or display anything more than what would seem to be mild irritation throughout. And yet she makes it clear in no uncertain terms exactly how very very angry she is.
• The Unseen: Paul Saveen is introduced as this, until he appears late in the opening storyline. Except the appearance is itself a clue that it's not him, but a disguise artist. It's not until much later in the series that Saveen's face is shown.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: Ingrid Weiss lusts for Tom Strong. While it's partially to breed powerful children, she's also drawn to him physically.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Virtually Saveen's trademark, to the point that nobody believes he's dead even when they find a body. And it's his. He really was dead after all.
• Voice of the Legion: Temple Baldry, the Modular Man, is a swarm of robot drones that speak in unison. This creates a voice describes as booming that is illustrated in speech bubbles as the words layered over each other.
• Wacky Racing: Terrific Tales #8 opens with a Saturday morning cartoon about Tom, with this as the premise: Saveen (and his Muttley-like dog Scrappy) lure Tom, Solomon, and Tesla to an abandoned race track for an annual ghost race.
• Wasted Beauty: Tom does not deny that Ingrid Weiss is attractive. He almost always admits she's beautiful every time he sees her. However, he looks past that and sees her for what makes him reject her advances: the evil woman who is devoted to Nazism and refuses to give it up. Upon seeing Weiss pretending to be a statue, he says she makes a good impression of one, likely that she's lovely to look at and nothing more.
• We Can Rule Together: Ingrid Weiss offers to have Tom join her as her lover, hoping they can lead a new world together. He constantly shoots the offer down. Them having a son doesn't help her, only increasing his disgust with her since she stole his semen.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's heavily implied that Strong's father cared for his wife and son primarily for their places in his experiments. It's telling that his steampunk butler robot shows more compassion.
• Where da White Women At?: In The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong, Tesla meets a version of her parents where Tom is black and Dhalua is a blue-eyed blonde Caucasian.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The "Born With the Century: Tom Strong and His City" text story says Millennium City is situated not far from New York on the eastern seaboard.
• A Wizard Did It: Invoked almost at gunpoint in issue 9, with Kid Tilt's ability to, well, tilt the world. "They are magic boots". Although since this turned out to be a tall tale Tesla was spinning to try and fob her parents off about the messy aftermath of a party she threw in their absence.
• Women's Mysteries: Terrific Tales #5. Tom witnesses them. He gets caught. They make him dress in drag until the end of the month.
• You No Take Candle: Val Var Garm talks like this at first due to his unfamiliarity with English, but by the time of Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril, he's speaking in fully intact sentences.
• Zeppelins from Another World: They can often be seen flying over Millennium City.

---