Named after the popular Golden Age title from Nedor Publications, America’s Best Comics was an imprint initiated at Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Productions studio at Image Comics prior to Lee selling his company to DC. Beginning in the late 1990s, Alan Moore developed all of the imprint’s titles, and he wrote or co-plotted the bulk of the line. Moore had famously vowed to not work with DC Comics again, but when Wildstorm merged into DC, he honored his agreement to lead the line.
Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill co-created The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a story set in the late 1800s that starred Victorian Age public domain characters created by Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sax Rohmer.
In the first volume, Mina Murray puts together the team of Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Jekyll, and the Invisible Man, to try to stop a war between Professor Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis) and Fu Manchu. The second volume put the heroes into H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, while utilizing characters and story elements from writers like Doyle, Ian Fleming, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Moore and O’Neill’s final entry under ABC was Black Dossier, a “sourcebook” with prose stories, letters, guidebooks, maps, and more.
Tom Strong, created by Moore and artist Chris Sprouse, paid homage to pulp magazines and heroes such as Doc Savage and Tarzan. The title character was a science-based hero, joined by his wife and daughter (who had special mental and physical abilities), Pneuman (a steam powered robot) and King Solomon (a human-like gorilla). The series ventured into different universes and timelines, exploring multiple pulp themes along the way.
Moore and artists Gene Ha and Zander Cannon collaborated on Top 10, a police procedural and superhero mashup. Similar in tone to police shows like Hill Street Blues, the book follows the work and personal lives of police officers in the city of Neopolis where nearly everyone has superpowers. It was followed by multiple spinoffs, including Smax (set after the original series’ conclusion), Top 10: The Forty-Niners (set in 1949), and Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct (taking place five years after the first series).
Moore presented his views on magic in Promethea, co-created by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray. Set in an alternate version of New York City in 1999, the title stars college student Sophie Bangs, who becomes the embodiment of the magical entity Promethea. Sophie studies magic, learns about Promethea’s powers and her past, and ultimately gives in to Promethea’s final mission of bringing about the apocalypse.
Spinoffs within the ABC line included Terra Obscura, a Tom Strong extension on an alternate Earth where the Society of Major American Science Heroes protect the planet. It was written by Peter Hogan, co-plotted by Moore, with art by Yanick Paquette, Karl Story, and others. Tomorrow Stories was a short story collection featuring pulp-inspired characters and others that played on superhero archetypes, from a slate of creatives that included Moore, Rick Veitch, Melinda Gebbie, Kevin Nowlan, Jim Baikie, and Hilary Barta.
America’s Best Comics: A to Z was planned as a six-part series by Peter Hogan and Steve Moore that would present facts and reveal secrets about characters from across the ABC line. Signaling the end of America’s Best Comics, the title ended early after four issues.
Moore effectively ended the ABC imprint deliberately through an apocalypse, which was achieved with the conclusion of Promethea. He then wrote the final Tom Strong issue and a pair of Tomorrow Stories 64-page specials that closed the chapter on ABC characters.
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