"I Genuinely Hadn't Thought About It": Watchmen's Alan Moore Accidentally Introduced Comics' First Interracial Marriage

Summary Alan Moore's creation Tom Strong broke ground in comic book history by featuring the first interracial marriage and family in an American comic.

Moore unintentionally created a significant milestone in comic books, challenging social taboos and fostering representation of diverse relationships.

Despite Moore's distaste for mainstream superheroes, Tom Strong's socially conscious storytelling became one of his most beloved projects.

Thanks to his work on comic books like Watchmen, Miracle Man and Swamp Thing, Alan Moore established himself as his generation's foremost comic book writer. Known for using political commentary as subtext for his stories, the socially conscious author broke down a barrier in the industry without even realizing it.

After departing DC Comics on bad terms, Alan Moore pursued a career in the indie comics space, turning to Image and, later, America's Best Comics. There, he created arguably his greatest project after Swamp Thing in Tom Strong. Co-created with artist Chris Sprouse, Tom Strong was a love letter to the old school pulp magazines Moore had enjoyed as a child. The character of Tom Strong combined elements of Doc Savage, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and even a little Superman. Not only were his adventures thoroughly riveting, but the series actually holds a special place in comic book history. It is the first comic to depict an interracial marriage, a fact that didn't even occur to Moore until after the book was underway.

Alan Moore has made no secret of his distaste for mainstream superhero comics, viewing them as too simplistic and juvenile. In Tom Strong, he attempted to "roll back the tape" to the age of pulp magazine heroes and play it forward, crafting sophisticated but fun stories. In one key way, he believes his book was even more "adult" than the competition.

How Tom Strong Passed A Key Milestone In Comics History

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Tom Strong is set in Millennium City, a retro-futuristic municipality protected by the titular hero. With the aid of his wife, Dhalua, and their scientifically-minded daughter, Tesla, as well as his sapient ape friend, Solomon, and steampunk assistant, Pneuman, he takes on a variety of threats. However, one of the accidental byproducts of the series was Moore's creation of the first interracial marriage (and family) in comics. In 2012, at the N.I.C.E. expo in the UK, Moore explained that of all his comic book work, Strong remained one his favorites.

As seen in a video shared on YouTube by Adam Baker, Moore explained to an audience at N.I.C.E., "I didn't think I was doing anything that special with Tom Strong... but we started getting all these letters in saying how brave I'd been... then I realized it was because we'd presented Tom Strong and he's married to a Black woman. And they have a mixed-race child... that was the first mixed-race marriage that had ever appeared in an American comic book." Moore had never intended to break this record for one simple fact: he assumed that, by the year 2000, it had already been done. To make things all the more impressive, Tesla was later spun out into her own comic too.

Moore's Socially Conscious Series Was A Long Time Coming

The subject of race and representation in fiction has long been a factor in the works of writers, from the first on-screen interracial kiss in Star Trek to the inclusion of Black heroes in Marvel and DC during the 1970s. The Strong family weren't the first interracial relationship in comics, with that distinction going to M'Shulla and Carmilla Frost, who shared their first kiss in 1975's Amazing Adventures #31 by Don McGregor and P. Craig Russell. However, Tom and Dhalua Strong's union was the first marriage of its kind. For those living in interracial relationships even in the 1990s (still a social taboo in some areas), Alan Moore's book laid the groundwork for an important piece of representation.

Source: Adam Baker via YouTube