With the third issue of Peter Hogan and Chris Sprouse’s Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom, it’s pretty well established that the creators are taking their time telling this story. Three issues in and a lot has happened, but I feel like for the first time in a Tom Strong story, there is no real sense of urgency.
Don’t get me wrong; Nazis have taken over the planet, the Stronghold destroyed, the Strong family murdered, and Tom has traveled back in time to fix it all. In the situation itself, of course there’s urgency. What I mean is that the pacing of the issue, at least compared to what we are used to with Tom Strong, has slowed considerably. If you think about it, in the old Tom Strong series story arcs lasted 1-2 issues on average, so having one story spread over 6 is odd, but a treat.
With that extra amount of story space, Hogan uses it to build the dichotomy between “current” Tom and “younger” Tom, as the two seek a way to save humanity from the evil clutches of the Third Reich. In fact, there’s hardly any action in issue #3 at all, apart from one splash page and a couple of panels towards the end. It’s a testament to Hogan’s writing though that issue still moves briskly and the character developments are interesting enough to keep the reader engaged. Hogan’s building onto one of the most fascinating parts of the Tom Strong character: a man who is beyond genius with enhanced strength and perfect physical physique still makes wrong decisions, a lot of the time.
As for Sprouse’s work, I’m not sure I really have anything else to say that I haven’t said in my past praise of the man. He’s got a knack for it all, layout, panel composition, body language, and whacky sci-fi craziness. If you look at a page of Sprouse’s work - be it in Robots of Doom #3 or anything else - and you don’t love it, you are quite obviously blind.
Even though issue #3 is the midway point, Robots of Doom still feels like it has a long way to go. That’s fine by me; I’m in no rush for it to end.
