Adam Strange

39 years ago - Adam Strange is born in Nevada.

23 years ago - 16-year-old Adam begins volunteering to assist local archaeological expeditions in Nevada.

21 years ago - 18-year-old Adam goes to college to study Archaeology.

17 years ago - 22-year-old Adam writes his thesis on the technology of the Incas. He graduates, and travels to Peru to work a dig there.

13 years ago - 26-year-old Adam is struck by the Zeta Beam, and is teleported to the planet Rann. He is attacked by a Predator on the great planes of Rann, and is saved by 22-year-old Alanna, who takes him to her father Sardath, the inventor of the Zeta Beam. Temporarily stranded, Adam helps Alanna defend Rann, falling in love with her. He battles Ulthoon, who is cast into deep space. The effects of the Zeta Beam wear off, returning him to Earth, where he begins to hunt for incoming Zeta Beams to continually return to Rann & Alanna.

11 years ago - 28-year-old Adam works with the Justice League on Earth between excursions to Rann to stop the Starbreaker from consuming the Earth, warned of it's approach by Adam Blake.

9 years ago - 30-year-old Adam & Alanna protect Rann from Kanjar Ro's pirates.

5 years ago - 34-years-old Adam & Alanna help Koriand'r defend Buddy Baker from Lobo.

4 years ago - 35-year-old Adam's Zeta Beam effect is stabilized by Sardath, letting him choose one planet as his permanent home. He and Alanna are married, and soon their daughter Aleea Strange is born.

3 years ago - 36-year-old Adam is captured and held prisoner by Komand'r's pirate fleet as they raid Rann. Alanna Strange saves him, and together they lead their people to defeat the pirates, imprisoning Komand'r on Rann.

2 years ago - 37-year-old Adam is sent back to Earth when Sardath activates his Zeta Defense system to protect Rann from the Starbreaker. He finds his way back to Rann with the help of Arisia Raab & Tigorr, finding the planet phased out of sync with normal space. He is able to unmake the Starbreaker, letting Rann return to normal space.

1 year ago - 38-year-old Adam helps the Titans get into space to save Donna Troy. Tigorr starts to work with him regularly when Arisia Raab rejoins the Green Lantern Corps.

now - 39-year-old Adam, seeing the incursion of the legions of Lady Styx begins assembling a new Omega Men.

There is something incredibly satisfying about Adam Strange. He's this fantastic throwback to a particular point in the history of science fiction, and his design has absolutely stood the test of time. It's a design that really speaks to people; a quick google search will give you page after page of fanart celebrating and iterating on it. At the same time, his look is so foundational to the whole idea of scifi there's a clear sense that you can kind of go ANYWHERE with him. Adam Strange has had lot of standard episodic Silver Age adventures, but he's also been featured in several much more modern stories as well. We wanted our version of him to capture that feeling of being both timeless and very modern. Let us know what you think!

Adam Strange's Comic History

Adam Strange is a VERY early Silver Age character, debuting in 1958 in issue #17 the classic anthology series Showcase, which has debuted so much of DC's catalog. In the story the Planet & the Pendulum, archeologist Adam Strange is struck by beam from space and zapped to an alien planet where he meets the beautiful Alanna and begins having adventures across her home planet of Rann (although, in these very early stories, he actually kept being zapped to OTHER planets where he would meet Alanna and then return to Rann with her). He would go on to feature in two following issues before he became the cover feature in Mystery in Space, starting with issue #53 in 1959 where he would continue to appear until the mid-sixties, and then in Strange Adventures until the early seventies.

These were classic adventure serial stories, with a distinct feeling of exploration of swashbuckling. They very deliberately evoked characters like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, but the teleporting to an alien planet element actually reaches back even further to borrow from John Carter of Mars. Alanna was also notably a very capable co-adventurer in these early stories. She at times, of course, played the damsel in distress, but her role would probably more aptly be described as a very shapely sidekick.

While Adam did not fit the regular mold of a superhero, he was still a costumed adventurer and was very clearly in the same world as the rest of the DC heroes, appearing regularly in Brave and the Bold and Justice League, often working side-by-side with his fellow heroes. He showed up often enough, in fact, that I believe he absolutely would have been added to the team had his story allowed for it. His leading role in his various anthology series ended in the seventies, and while he would continue to appear in back up features he did not have a major redefining series coming out of the Crisis. Other than an appearance in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, he remained an interesting artifact of the Pre-Crisis Silver Age.

There were, of course, several miniseries that attempted to update him. In 1990 a three-issue miniseries by Richard Brunning brought a LOT of melodrama, but also beautiful new vision of Rann by the Kubert brothers. It wasn't really until the 2004 8-issue miniseries by Andy Diggle, featuring the story Planet Heist, that Adam really started to again regularly appear in DC proper in stories like the Infinite Crisis lead-up miniseries the Rann-Thanagar War, and the follow-up series 52, where he was partnered with Starfire and Animal Man. This threesome would go on to appear in several crossover stories for the next several years.

Post-Flashpoint, by far the highest profile for Adam Strange has been in the Tom King miniseries Strange Adventures, which is a fantastic story, but not one I'd recommend to someone who is a fan of the character. It doesn't go well for him.

Our Adam Strange Story

Adam Strange, more than a lot of other characters, has a very particular divide between his classic Silver Age appearances, which were very episodic and featured him zapping to and from Rann with each issue for a new serialized adventure, and his more modern appearances that do a better job of defining his role amongst the other DC heroes. We wanted to make room for both, giving him a good long stretch of time where he was just constantly hunting for the next Zeta Beam to return him to his adopted planet (as well as at least one adventure with the classic Satellite Era Justice League) before his father-in-law, Sarath, is able to stabilize the Zeta Beam effect to keep him on Rann.

We then wanted to make sure we included many of his more modern interactions with other heroes like his team-up with Animal Man and Starfire, and fighting space pirates like Kanjar Ro and Blackfire. He's going to help the Titans make their way into space to save Donna, and will start to partner with classic space-sidekick Tigorr.

We very deliberately made a specific reference to the events of the Planet Heist crossover. This is the story that sort of repackaged Adam Strange for the future, and we believe the beats there really hold up.

Adam Strange's Costume

We did already talk a little bit about Adam Strange's design, but it does bear a little bit more diving into. Part of what makes this character so compelling is just how CLASSIC he is. He's not just using specific design features of classic sci fi of the 50s, he's actually part of the reason they exist in the first place. This means that so many tropes of various sci fi visuals are coming right from him; I believe you can trace both raypunk and atompunk right to Adam Strange's doorstep.

That said, I do think that there's a reason so many great artists have done so much great work coming up with new visuals for Adam Strange. he's just a fantastically cool character. Whether it's versions of his vintage 50's look, or the updated costume from Planet Heist, or the totally original hooded costume from the animated Young Justice series, or even the brief Mike McKone New 52 design from Jeff Lemire's Justice League United. This is a character that really gets peoples creative juices flowing.

So while I do very much enjoy the classic look, there is certainly no harm in seeing what people can do with it.

Adam Strange's Future

This is a character that a LOT is happening to. As we leave our timeline, Adam Strange is central to one of the biggest building stories in our continuity; the arrival of the intergalactic threat, Lady Styxx. Her forces are sweeping their way across the galaxy, and Adam Strange is the hero stepping up to fight them by assembling a team of some of the most powerful space heroes in DC in the new Omega Men. It's a group I'm really excited about, and Adam is the perfect person to lead them.

Beyond that, Adam and his wife Alanna are among the heroes who are starting out on another big adventure; they're parents. Their daughter Aleea is currently four, which means she's only a year younger than Lian Harper. Aleea Strange is absolutely going to grow up to have adventures of her own, and I can absolutely imagine a world where those adventures might actually happen on Earth, alongside heroes like Irey West and Jon Kent.

Adam Strange might be one of the true great heroes of all of science fiction, but that doesn't mean his daughter can't just go on to be a full-fledged superhero.

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