Strange Adventures #12

[lordultimus]

Tom King: "Mister Miracle, which I think is probably the best thing I ever wrote, is ultimately this warm story about surviving adversity, which is the mood I was feeling at the end of this last decade. Strange Adventures is a much angrier book, a much more caustic book. Mister Miracle was about how we survive through love. But this is about how we react to evil and how we deal with it and confront it. To me, it's a much more active book, and it reflects more of the emotional place I am in now, where I'm done with surviving. I'm ready to fight."

Comments

[silverhammerman]

I look forward to seeing some proper deep dive criticism of this book, now that it's done and can be taken as a whole. I think there's probably some interesting stuff to be gleaned from a close reading.

It repudiates Adam Strange and white saviorism, but at the same time the Pykkts are still kind of mindlessly evil, and the idea that they allowed and encouraged Adam to commit warcrimes against them as part of their own dastardly plan remains troubling. Ending the story with a a white woman (well, alien, but c'mon) dumping her kid on a black man who actively objects but gets steam rolled anyway is... interesting.

[laughing_tree]

While Alanna was traditionally white, Jeff Lemire made her a person of color in the New 52, and Mitch Gerads here clearly bases her on Olivia Munn.

[lordultimus]

She's clearly white in the Evan Shaner drawings, though. And the New 52 Alanna had a completely different backstory.

[laughing_tree]

Arguable...

[lordultimus]

It is, at the very least, far whiter than in the New 52, so if she's supposed to be a POC, then this is probably a case of whitewashing.

[silverhammerman]

True, though I don't think Lemire's New 52 version is canonical anymore, or at least that King doesn't seem overly concerned with it from what I've seen.

I think it could be argued that Alanna is sort of "rhetorically white" in certain scenes, like her weaponizing the media against Mister Terrific, but given how much this series is pushing against the white savior trope, she could be read as non-white as well. Ultimately she's an alien, so I think the way in which she's coded is probably the most important factor.

Yet another reason that I want to see some more intelligent and engaged people than myself talk about the book!

[fra080389]

I don't know the story OR the characters, I'm seeing everything for the first time in this post, and reading this I definitely thought the mother was POC...

[tinygaylaura]

It's a "Criticism" of the white savior narrative that is every bit as good as you would expect such a story to be when written by a middle aged middle class white cisgender heterosexual man

[laughing_tree]

Anything Batman he does is still weak, but between this, Supergirl, and Human Target, I think I'm fully back aboard the King train.

[coldfury]

Man, this must really suck for the like... five or so die hard Adam Strange fans out there.

I think that's why I can't get behind a book like this, ultimately. It could be the best story in the world, but it tears down and destroys someone's favorite character. Maybe it's childish of me, but if you're going to tell a story like this I'd rather it be an Elseworld, or take the Watchmen route of making it all expy's.

[buttz]

Under the old regime a C-lister like Adam Strange would have been killed in a company-wide crossover event after not appearing in any comics for several years and then brought back during the next continuity reboot only to never be used again. I've been a DC reader for a few decades and this story was easily the most (only?) interesting thing that's happened to Adam Strange during that time, so this was easily a win in my book.

[coldfury]

Only if he was a Titan. :)

[deh_tommy]

Hold up, this *isn’t* an Elseworlds?

[lordultimus]

Ehhh.... Black Label books exist on the cusp of continuity, at least. We'll have to wait and see if any of this is mentioned in the mainstream to be sure.

[deh_tommy]

I swear, you could swap his Catwoman, Alanna and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Big Barda around and I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference. They all feel so similar to each other.

Can’t wait for the story where that turns out Wonder Woman is secretly depressed and actually hates her life and mainly saves people to silence the voice in her head that says she’s useless if she’s not helping, or an Aquaman story where he does morally reprehensible things in the name of ensuring Atlantis stays top-dog and Mera chews him out for all his flaws as a person.

[lordultimus]

I think he already did that Wonder Woman one.

[tinygaylaura]

Oh my god why is it real

[tinygaylaura]

Are you suggesting that the man who once put Catwoman in a story where the only word she said was "meow" for two issues might not be good at writing three dimensional female characters?

Let's be clear

[mr_cyn1cal]

This "status" only lasts until, let's say Bendis, just decides to straight up ignore it because he wants to have the Justice League team up with Adam Strange on Rann.

Because modern "Big 2" continuity is literally "The writer with the most pull gets to decide what continuity is."

I'm still massively underwhelmed with King, and I lump him in with Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb as dudes who are just stuck in the loop of writing the same story (dealing with their own trauma) over and over again.