Review: Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1

TOM STRONG AND THE ROBOTS OF DOOM #1 (of 6)
Written by Peter Hogan; art by Chris Sprouse, Karl Story.

Tom Strong is, as most of you probably know, a character co-created by Alan Moore (with Chris Sprouse, who's drawing this series). And of course, being a total noob, I know nothing about his previous adventures or what he's all about. So I feel like I'm probably missing something here. Peter Hogan does a good job of providing backstory within the issue, so that what is happening is fairly clear, but I can't help but feel that it would all be a little bit more compelling if I was already familiar with the characters.

In any case, this issue doesn't really get into the meat of the story yet. It takes its time setting up the premise, which is that Tom's evil son has somehow altered history and the present is now under the dominion of a global Nazi regime. This is definitely not an original premise, but it's a fun one (if it's not too offensive to think of anything involving Nazis as "fun"), and I suspect that the real thrills are going to be in seeing how Tom manages to fight his way out of this crazy situation. Oh, and also there's going to be "robots of doom" at some point! (They're only hinted at in this issue.)

So yeah, a bit of a slow start, but a lot of promise. And, oh, my God! Chris Sprouse's art is amazing. Such clean, elegant, beautiful line work. I wish every book I read could look as good as this.

One weird, little complaint, though: What's with the lettering? Why does every character use a different font to speak? It's really distracting. Especially when Tom Strong's font is so much bigger than everyone else's. Does that mean he has a very loud voice or something? Is he always shouting?