Tom King: A Series of Reviews

 


Tom King







    I read a lot of comics and have a lot of favorite writers and artists. I even have some creators that I don't care for. Without a doubt one of the more recent examples is Tom King. He started writing independent series at Vertigo like Sheriff of Babylon, but he really exploded onto the scene after writing the 12 issue maxi series Vision at Marvel. From there he went to DC to work on Batman, and lesser known characters like Mister Miracle and Adam Strange. 

    My familiarity with Tom's work was down to hearing about how awful his Batman run was. I have not read any of the 85 issues he wrote for the character, but I think that he had some interesting ideas for the character that ultimately fell apart in execution. Something that I would could say the same thing for his 12 issues on Mister Miracle, which I have read all of. There are a lot of great character ideas and storytelling devices in that series to explore the troubled trauma of Mister Miracle and his wife Big Barda. A great start fizzled out for me by an open ended ending that rubbed me completely the wrong way. This was the final straw that made me write off Tom King's work as "Alan Moore knock off grim and gritty superhero deconstruction for the sake of it." And so I put Tom King out of my mind for the next five years.

    But then I started to hear rumbling of Tom King's more recent work. How much acclaim it was getting and how much better it was. I watched interviews with him talking about his process and his love of the characters he writes and comics. So I took a gamble on his book Superman Up in the Sky. Superman is a hard character to write for and Tom's handling of it would tell me if he could write something beside his normal clichéd trauma drenched characters. I bought a copy cheap and prepared myself for disappointment. The only problem is that it was a really good comic and definitely one of the best Superman stories of the modern era and one that I would recommend to any Superman fan or those who think that Superman stories are boring.
    
    This has inspired me to reevaluate Tom's career and see if a reread gives me a new perspective or if I'm still left wanting more. 

Only time will tell...

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