Not Tom Cruise directly, per se, but the reason DC blocked the publication of a particular story in Alan Moore's Tomorrow Stories series was a sort of pre-emptive attempt not to annoy the Church of Scientology. They do so love their lawsuits, the Scientologists, as everyone from South Park to 4chan have discovered. So you can see the publishers feared similar legal action when Moore penned a story linking the Church's enigmatic founder/sci-fi novelist L Ron Hubbard to Satanist John Whiteside Parsons. Just one of the many, many reasons grumpy old man Moore refuses to work with big comic publishers any more (any Moore?), his reaction to DC's shelving of the story in Tomorrow Stories #8 was to withdraw his approval for a 15th anniversary reissue of his and Dave Gibbon's classic Watchmen. The publishers did not relent, however, and the story remained unpublished until Top Shelf Asks The Big Questions was released four years later. In the anthology, the character of Cobweb had her name changed to "La Toile" and was re-drawn by artist Melinda Gebbie to have a different costume for copyright reasons. Otherwise, the story remained the same as when DC banned it. So far, Top Shelf has yet to be sued by the Church of Scientology. Although, er, sorry if this reminds them.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
