History
SMASH first appeared in Tom Strong #11 (January 2001). In 1968, Tom discovers an alternate version of his Earth located on the far side of the galaxy, which he dubs "Terra Obscura." Terra Obscura has the same cities as Earth, but different names for them. Most notably, the big East Coast city is New Lancaster. It also shares a similar history as Earth.
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. One of the 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. The history of the characters (both from Nedor and ABC) follow the conventions established by DC Comics and Marvel Comics: the Golden Age of Comic Books, Silver Age of Comic Books, and Modern Age of Comic Books.
Read more about this topic: SMASH (comics)
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