Terra Obscura - Origin and Backstory

Origin and Backstory

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. 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.