Terra Obscura

I'd bought the first two issues of the first Terra Obscura series off the rack, and was impressed enough by them to want to read the rest; however, I was disappointed in the subsequent four issues when I finally bought the trade paperback collecting the series, as they seemed to lose the tightness of plotting and the numerous "Easter eggs" common in an Alan Moore story (perhaps that's because I've never read any of the Tom Strong comic books); actually the whole thing came off as an OK, not great, Marvel Comics and/or DC Comics superhero story arc from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

The plot: an Earth (Terra Obscura) learns to live without superheroes as an alien creature seizes control; the surviving heroes are finally brought out of show more suspended animation thanks to the efforts of "our" Earth's pre-eminent "science-hero" (think Doc Savage), Tom Strong, and find a world that doesn't particularly want them, but which nevertheless needs them. Various actual Golden Age heroes from Nedor Comics that over the years lapsed into the public domain like the Black Terror (here called simply The Terror; when alive, his partner Tim and he were dubbed "The Terror Twins"), the Fighting Yank, American Crusader, Grim Reaper, Doc Strange (Tom Strange), Captain Future, the Ghost (a.k.a. Green Ghost), Lance Lewis the Space Detective, the Magnet, Miss Masque, etc., etc., are tweaked in the approved Alan Moore fashion going back to the early 1980s (Watchmen, Marvelman/Miracleman). While these versions are doubtlessly more interesting than their original incarnations, they're still not interesting enough, as presented here, for anybody who isn't a follower of the Tom Strong family of comics or an Alan Moore completist. The art team of Yanick Paquette and Karl Story is clean and serviceable; however, Moore's absence from the scripting chores here is really felt by the second half of the series.

Best wrinkle that isn't really explored enough: the Terror's computerized consciousness (he was killed fighting the aforementioned alien conqueror) being used to police some cities as part of a corporation ("Terror, Inc.," no less...), with the marketing slogan, "Your community could be like this too. All it takes is a little terror...and a whole lot of love." (Stay tuned, friends and neighbors: I'm confident we'll see a very similar program, albeit without the computerized, fascistic, masked zombie crimefighter, if and when the U.S. suffers another major terrorist attack...)

I might pick up the second mini-series if I see it on remainder (as I did this trade paperback), but I'm not going out of my way to get it. show less

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