The Adam Strange Archives Volume 1

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The Adam Strange Archives Volume 1
pub: DC Comics. 224 page hardback. Price: $49.95(US), $76.95 (CAN). ISBN: 1-4012-0148-2

check out website: www.dccomics.com

Archaeologist Adam Strange ran to Rann on a teleportation Zeta-ray. He found a love in an alien girl Alanna and becomes their world's hero, rescuing them from harm.

All the good that he does there and just when he gets a chance to relax and kiss the girl, that pesky Zeta-ray returns him back to Earth again. Forgive the rhyming verse but it neatly sums up the premise created by Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox scripted with the art of Mike Sekowsky, Carmine Infantino, Bernard Sachs, Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson in the earliest 19 Adam Strange adventures starting from Showcase # 17-19 to Mystery In Space # 53-65.

It wasn't until the early 70s that DC ever credited their writer and artist teams and these Archive volumes have done much to put this in order with not only background detail by Jim Amash about the series itself but also biographies of its creators if you're not already familiar with them.

Although these books, at least when I've seen them in the UK, can be thought of as expensive, buying the original issues, let alone tracking some of them down can be even more so. With this being the 32nd different comic selection from DC, it is slightly more away from their more super-hero orientated releases.

Saying that, Adam Strange still gets to wear what appears to be a red and white zoot-suit although this one also doubles as a spacesuit even if no one else on Rann wears such a costume. Although Amash points out the similarities to John Carter of Mars and Flash Gordon, apart from being thrown into the future, I can also see some similarity to Buck Rogers as well. This is hardly surprising as all these characters drew from each other.

If anything, Adam Strange is very much the thinking man's hero, even in 1958 when he was created, coming up with solutions to problems his 'superior' alien benefactors have naively never thought of. Applying 21 century mindset, the people of Rann are also a little dumb bearing in mind their advanced technology and how they fall down on every alien invasion.

Without Adam Strange eager to find the next Zeta-Beam arriving on Earth, Rann would surely have fallen. The buying public for this book has to be the middle-aged who read the original stories and want to re-live the past. I have to say that cos I think the new generation is likely to think these tales are quaint but then they don't always favour comicbook history. Using an SF world for these tales, even populated by human-lookalikes, helps divorced the imagery from 50s Earth, something DC took some time changing from when I was reading them.

I didn't read many Adam Strange tales when I was a youngster so it was a fascinating experience reading these early adventures. Although this is probably an acquired taste, our demographics seem to indicate DC's target audience is reading here and if this one doesn't appeal, we're bound to see others that will.

Right now, I have to work out the co-ordinates for the next Zeta-Beam and see if a red suited man wearing a funny decorated helmet is waiting to jump out and intercept it and go to Rann rather than anything else in its path.

GF Willmetts

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