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Terra Obscura

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Terra Obscura is a 2003 comic book miniseries spin-off from Alan Moore's Tom Strong series. The stories are written by Peter Hogan, and drawn by Yanick Paquette and Karl Story with additional flashback sequences drawn by Eric Theriault. Each story is co-plotted by Alan Moore and Peter Hogan. It was published under Moore's America's Best Comics imprint through Wildstorm Comics, which is owned by DC Comics.

Terra Obscura
Cover to Terra Obscura #1, art by Yanick Paquette and Karl Story.
Publication information
PublisherAmerica's Best Comics
ScheduleMonthly
FormatMiniseries
No. of issues12
Main character(s)See Characters
Creative team
Created byAlan Moore
Written byPeter Hogan
Alan Moore
Artist(s)Yanick Paquette
Karl Story

Origin and backstory

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Terra Obscura first appeared in Tom Strong #11 (January 2001). Terra Obscura is an alternate version of Tom Strong's Earth located on the far side of the galaxy, discovered by Strong in 1968. On his visit to Terra Obscura, Tom meets his counterpart Tom "Doc" Strange, and the team of science-heroes known as the Society of Major American Science Heroes (SMASH). All the members of SMASH are based on characters previously published by Nedor Comics in the 1940s. With the original publisher's collapse, copyrights on the characters were not renewed upon 28 years of creation and so lapsed into the public domain.[1] One of Nedor's many titles was America's Best Comics, and when the coincidence of this was pointed out to Alan Moore, he decided to incorporate these characters into his Tom Strong series.

For their 2000 debut, Moore created a backstory for them, covering the time periods during which they were not actually being published. For the Terra Obscura spin-off, Moore worked out plots with Peter Hogan, who then wrote the scripts.

Publishing history

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  • Collections:
    • Terra Obscura v1 (ISBN 1-4012-0286-1), collects issues #1–6, volume 1.
    • Terra Obscura v2 (ISBN 1-4012-0622-0), collects issues #1–6, volume 2.
  • Special issue:
    • ABC A–Z: Terra Obscura and Splash Brannigan (published in January 2006): Background on SMASH and the superheroes of Terra Obscura.
  • Trade Paper Back Collections:
    • "Terra Obscura: S.M.A.S.H. of Two Worlds" (ISBN 978-1-4012-4280-0) (published by Vertigo in 2014), collects: issues #1–6, volume 1; issues #1–6, volume 2, and "ABC A–Z: Terra Obscura and Splash Brannigan".

Characters

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SMASH members

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Main article: SMASH (comics)

The Four Comrades

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A science-hero team based in New Lancaster who were forced to try to maintain control after SMASH were left frozen in space and time in 1969. By the time the members of SMASH had been released from their captivity in 2000, they had aged and an original member, Tip, had died and been replaced by his sister, Tipper.

They encounter the revived heroes in the inverted city of 'Invertica':

  • Pudge
  • Buzz
  • Tommy
  • Tip (deceased)
  • Tipper

Miscellaneous characters

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  • Dr. X: Occultist and physicist, apparently researching interdimensional travel at his base, Fort X, near the Hoover Dam. He is notoriously reclusive.
  • The Oracle: He can see the future in his dreams and has a special chamber beneath the Pentagon where he is kept safe and his predictions are recorded.
  • Theseus: Not seen since the 1960s.
  • The Gremlin
  • Spectro
  • Black Satan
  • Dr. Voodoo

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Mile High Comics presents... NEWSARAMA.com". Archived from the original on 2005-04-13. Retrieved 2005-05-15.
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