Exploring the Universe with the DC Super-Stars of Space: Adam Strange, Captain Comet, Space Ranger, and more!

My recent reading of all sorts of DC space comics has taken me to the 1970s DC Comics anthology DC Super-Stars. This ran from March 1976 to January/February 1978, and mixed issues of new material with reprints, in an oversize format (issues were around fifty pages). Four issues in the run had the cover title of "DC Super-Stars OF SPACE," and reprinted material from DC's Silver Age space comics.

The main feature across all four issues was Adam Strange, the man of two worlds. Adam Strange is a human archaeologist who travels to Rann in the Alpha Centauri system by being in the right place at the right time to be hit by zeta beams, which transport him across space. On Rann, he fights evil and romances the beautiful Alanna, but once the zeta radiation in his body dissipates, he returns to Earth, meaning he can never make a home or a family on this distant world. I've read some of the modern takes on Adam, and I own the Adam Strange Silver Age Omnibus, but I haven't gotten around to reading it, so this was my first real exposure to the original adventures of Adam and Alanna.

I enjoyed reading them a lot, more than I anticipated, which I guess bodes well for my eventual reading of the Silver Age omnibus. They're kind of dopey in the typical Silver Age way at times (one has a bad guy threatening Rann with monuments stolen from Earth, including a lake?), but Gardner Fox clearly read a science textbook at some point, and even though the science is fanciful, using concepts like the Roche limit makes it feel "real" in a way Superman's science does not.

The basic set-up of Adam Strange also has a pathos that puts it above other stories of its era: Adam has found his place, but he can never keep it, and even in just these four stories, Fox provides permutations on it so it never gets stale. Alanna is pretty awesome, too: she's not an equal co-star with Adam, but she is smart and cool, and works to get herself out of trouble as often as Adam does. These were fun, and I look forward to rereading them (with better printing) and reading the others.

Other features (most just appearing once) included:

• The Atomic Knights. After a nuclear apocalypse, a group of survivors uses medieval armor to battle would-be warlords. This was okay, nothing special, and a little contrived even by its own standards.
• Knights of the Galaxy. Futuristic space knights. Pretty bad, to be honest, with a weird dose of sexism.
• Space Ranger. Pretty generic stuff, with the usual Silver Age wackiness you'd expect of a subpar Legion story. (Space zoos and shit. Like if a guy can hypnotize all animals, surely he can come up with a better way to make money than this.)
• Captain Comet. I think my enjoyment of these stories (such as it was) is more due to retcons: the post-Crisis DC universe had the Golden Age heroes out of commission by the 1950s, but the Silver Age ones not in place for some time, leaving "throwforward" Captain Comet as one of Earth's only defenders in the 1950s, which gives a little frisson to the loneliness of a man born too early.
• Tommy Tomorrow. The way DC kept tweaking this character over time sounds fascinating, but going by this one story he wasn't a very skilled crimefighter. I'd love to read an omnibus of all his adventures, but it seems unlikely.
• Space Cabby. Funner than I expected.
• Star Rovers. The actual story here was poor, but I loved the basic premise of the Star Rovers: three highly competent people who meet up only to brag to each other and argue. Karel Sorenson is great; you can see why Howard Chaykin made her into a space goddess.

There are some other nice touches, like an in-character letter from Captain Comet in issue #2 (actually by assistant editor Jack C. Harris). The editorial in issue #8 includes promises about what will come in the next issue, #10, but #8 was actually the last DC Super-Stars of Space installment, as the alternating plan went away, and #10 was actually "Strange Sports Stories." Finally in issue #16, we got another science fiction story with the first installment of Star Hunters, but as that launched a series of its own, I'll cover it in another post.

DC Super-Stars of Space appeared in issues #2, 4, 6, and 8 of DC Super-Stars (Apr.-Oct. 1976). The original stories were published in various comics from 1951 to 1964, and were written by Gardner Fox, John Broome, Bob Kanigher, and Otto Binder; penciled by Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Jim Mooney, Bernard Sachs, Bob Brown, and Sid Greene; and inked by Murphy Anderson, Joe Giella, Jim Mooney, Sid Greene, Bernard Sachs, and Bob Brown. The reprints were edited by E. Nelson Bridwell.

Review: Adam Strange: Planet Heist by Andy Diggle and Pascal Ferry

Also-- I have a review of a new Doctor Who audio drama up at Unreality SF, the reunion of the fourth Doctor and the second Romana in Wave of Destruction.

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2005 (contents: 2004-05)
Acquired and read August 2016

Adam Strange: Planet Heist

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Writer: Andy Diggle

Artist: Pascal Ferry
Colorist: Dave McCaig
Letterer: Rob Leigh

After R.E.B.E.L.S. concluded in 1996, DC's space heroes lay fallow for about a decade, minus the occasional cameo here or there. From Omega Men in 1983 to R.E.B.E.L.S., DC had built up a vast outer-space mythos that was largely going unused, except for cameos in Green Lantern tales. DC finally ended that trend in 2004 with Adam Strange: Planet Heist, a story that reinvented space adventurer Adam Strange-- but in a much funner way than Man of Two Worlds.

When Planet Heist opens, Adam is pretty sad: he thinks his adopted planet and family are dead. But soon evidence appears that they might still be alive when bounty hunters try to kill Adam in his Gotham apartment, and he begins an interstellar journey to prove his family is still alive, one that brings him into contact with characters from Hawkman, Omega Men, L.E.G.I.O.N./R.E.B.E.L.S., and even The Darkstars. (Somehow, Bob the Galactic Bum is the only of the 1980s/90s DC space series to go unreferenced.) It's in this "grand tour of the DC space mythos" element that the book really succeeds: DC has a number of fun and interesting space properties, and Planet Heist doesn't just revive Adam Strange for the 2000s, but provides tantalizing hints of many other series, creating a feeling of a Star Warsesque realized galaxy. As someone who had read all the stuff being referenced, it was fun to see old friends like Vril Dox, Doc of the Omega Men, and even Ferrin Colos used in new and exciting ways, and old settings like Maltus, but Diggle writes in such a way that I think you'd enjoy this even if you hadn't read all the stories being referenced: instead you'd be eager to go out and read them. (Similar to how I got into DC's space heroes to begin with through the references in Jim Starlin's Mystery in Space.)

Is this the first meeting between the Omega Men and L.E.G.I.O.N.? I guess they could have met during Invasion!, as they were all locked up in the Starlag, but I don't remember. Though technically Dox hadn't formed L.E.G.I.O.N. yet then.
from Adam Strange vol. 2 #6

Pascal Ferry's artwork is energetic and bold, perfect for a book about outer-space adventures. There's not a lot of gratuitous detail work; Ferry sticks to simple, iconic designs, redesigning almost every character in the book-- to their benefit. Dave McCaig does wonderful work on colors, too, knowing when to go for subdued and gloomy, and when to go for bright and shiny. The final battle is a thing of glory, with everyone coming together against the bad guys in a real powerhouse that is fun to read and watch.

Review: Adam Strange: The Man of Two Worlds by Richard Bruning and Andy Kubert

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2003 (contents: 1990)
Acquired and read April 2016

Adam Strange: The Man of Two Worlds

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Writer: Richard Bruning

Illustrator: Andy Kubert
Color Artist: Adam Kubert
Letterer: Todd Klein

I only just realized that I missed this story in my journey through DC's "space heroes" comics; I should have read it around the time I read L.E.G.I.O.N., though it's not a big deal, as its connections to other comics are slight. The Man of Two Worlds is definitely a product of the time that brought us Animal Man and Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters: this is a darker reinvention of the Adam Strange story. Adam is a archaeologist periodically transported from Earth to the planet Rann by the zeta beam, which allows him to adventure there (complete with jet pack) for a short time before he's zapped back to Earth until the next zeta beam hits. On Rann, he has a wife named Alanna, whose father, Sardath is the inventor of the zeta beam and the leader of the council that rules Ranagar, the foremost citystate of Rann.

It's sort of a modern Doctor Who question, isn't it? What kind of home life must someone have who's like, "Well, I'm going to cut off contact with everything and everyone I ever loved and have space adventures"? Though I'd probably go for space adventures no matter how good my home life was.
from Adam Strange vol. 1 #1

Bruning questions this whole setup in classic late 1980s/early 1990s fashion. Why would Adam be so willing to give up his home planet? Why can't the people of Rann solve their own problems? He explore Adam's family history, and also the political and biological situation on Rann: the planet is sterile, both literally and spiritually. Thanks to technology, reproduction rates and sexual interest are plummeting, and the Rannians lack the spiritual energy to do anything about their own problems. They can't do anything without Adam, but they resent him for that fact, which Sardath is careful to keep from him, since he needs Adam to reinvigorate Rann: Alanna is pregnant with Adam's child, the first child to be born on Rann in a generation.

It's a "dark" and "gritty" take on what was a pretty clear-cut superhero archetype. On Earth for the last time before the "mega zeta beam" whisks him to Rann permanently, Adam visits his sister and his dying father, and remembers the aspects of his childhood that turned him into a loner and an outcast, the kind of person who would be eager to give up his life and start a new one that is fundamentally a fantasy. But for reasons Adam doesn't quite understand, he's afraid of moving to Rann permanently, and he almost cheats on Alanna with Eve Fox, the doctor caring for his father. It would be easy to dismiss this as gratuitous "grittiness," but it really works on a couple levels.