Welcome to our new semi-regular feature Twenty Questions where Heather (a.k.a. My Girl Friday) tracks down the “Who’s Who” of the Alan Moore comic circles whom we then ask twenty questions to. (Original idea or what?)
Our first guest is none other than Peter Hogan past writer of such things as most of the major characters for 2000 AD, stories for THE DREAMING, and THE SANDMAN PRESENTS for Vertigo, among others. He has now turned his attention to Americas Best Comics with two new projects, The Many Worlds Of Tesla Strong, a 64 page one shot book, and the mini-series I was dying to learn more about: Terra Obscura.
We last saw the characters of Terra Obscura in Tom Strong #12, were they had been freed after spending 30 years in stasis. After gaining their freedom, they eventually destroy their alien captor at the South Pole.

Peter Hogan

And now, it my pleasure to bring you:
Twenty Questions with Peter Hogan.

STAN & HEATHER: How did you get involved in writing Terra Obscura for ABC?

PETER HOGAN: I’d already written one project for ABC, a 64pp one-off called THE MANY WORLDS OF TESLA STRONG, which should be coming out in May. Alan Moore had really liked my script for that, and when he asked me if I’d like to do another project I suggested doing something with Terra Obscura, because I thought the characters had real potential, and because as far as I could tell a lot of fans seemed to think so too. Once we got talking about that, it evolved into Alan and I plotting the story together. I’d then go off and write the scripts, and Alan would read them and occasionally suggest a change or two

S&H: What’s it like to collaborate with Alan Moore?

HOGAN: I had a great time, and also learned an enormous amount. With each issue, I’d go up to Northampton for the day and Alan and I would map the thing out page by page. But even though the work was quite focused and concentrated, we still managed to have a real laugh. We’re pretty much the same age – Alan’s six months older than me – so we have quite a few reference points in common. He’s also an extremely generous and supportive person to work with – I think I’ve done my best-ever work on this, and a lot of that is down to Alan’s encouraging and challenging me.

Cover for Terra Obscura #1

S&H: What’s the basic storyline for Terra Obscura?

HOGAN: Well, we begin three years after the TOM STRONG story, and our heroes aren’t in the best of shape. They’ve had to adjust to a world that got along without them just fine for thirty years, and they’ve found that pretty hard. We don’t really go into it that much – though we might in the future – but most of their secret identities will have been blown, their families would have aged and/or died … and the world itself isn’t the optimistic, innocent place that it was in 1969. So they’ve all reacted differently – some are missing, some have retired, some are still active as heroes, some have even turned into villains. S.M.A.S.H. itself broke up several years ago.

At the time we join them, the only one that seems to be doing really well is the Terror 2003 computer program, which is running a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to law-enforcement in three major cities and is on the verge of going national … and of course, this doesn’t go down very well with organized crime. The Mob wants the Terror stopped at any cost. That’s all I’m going to give away, because the story becomes a lot more complicated – and faster-moving – as it progresses.
S&H: What were all the evil villain types doing while the heroes were imprisoned?

HOGAN: Basically, they were running the planet, and they haven’t taken kindly to the heroes coming back. But they especially don’t like the Terror, because the Terror isn’t really interested in arresting people or bringing them to trial. You don’t commit a crime in a Terror town unless you’re tired of breathing.

S&H: How do the science heroes feel about the Terror 2003 and his ‘zero tolerance’ to law enforcement?

HOGAN: They all feel differently … but since he isn’t affecting their individual cities yet, mostly they’re just ignoring him.

Terror Circa 1947

S&H: How much of the world was destroyed by the alien in the Tom Strong story, or was it just confined to the South Pole?

HOGAN: Just the South Pole. It was excavating the Earth from there, hollowing out this huge hole that it filled up with alien machinery. And yes, we will be seeing some of that in this series.

S&H: Do we learn more of what happened on Terra Obscura during the 30 years the heroes were trapped?

HOGAN: Not in any depth. Again, this is something we may explore more in the future.

S&H: In the two-part Tom Strong story we really only got to know Tom Strange, and the rest of the Terra Obscura heroes were only touched upon. How daunting was it to have to basically create a whole world?

HOGAN: Actually, it was incredibly liberating, being able to flesh these characters out without having to take decades of continuity into account … and fascinating to watch them come alive. Also, because there aren’t multi-million dollar movie franchises involved with these characters, we were able to do pretty much anything we wanted to them without the executives-on-high having a coronary and telling us that we couldn’t. Spoiler warning: some people will die in this story.

S&H: Does the series focus on any one character – say Tom Strange – or is it more of an ensemble piece?

HOGAN: It’s an ensemble piece, with different characters coming to the fore in different issues. The first issue is mainly about Carol Carter (Fighting Yank II), Ms Masque, the Terror and Tim. Issue Two is a complete change of scene, and focuses on the Magnet, Lance Lewis and the Ghost. Issue Three introduces the reformed S.M.A.S.H. … and we’ll leave the rest of it a mystery for now.