It just occurred to me that I managed to totally forget to post my thoughts on the most important mini series DC’s released this year - ADAM STRANGE. Frankly, it rocked - I’ve always been a fan of the character, and Diggle & Ferry definitely didn’t let me down. Now, I’m not one of those fanboys that’s all anal about every detail of a character’s history and continuity. I’m all for simply ignoring the shitty developments over the course of a character’s “life” rather than explaining them away, but Diggle did a great job of touching on the crappy early-90s mini series in order to integrate the one decent idea it had into the AS mythos. As for the rest of the issue, Diggle’s script is about as perfect a balance as you’ll likely find, with enough of a recap for new readers to understand the character, while presenting so much new material that fans long acquainted with AS can’t complain about nothing happening. Sure, there aren’t any majorly surprising twists and turns, no mind-blowing revelations or genre-bending concepts, but that’s not what this series looks to be about. It’s a well above average pulp adventure, and really, there’s nothing more that I would ask of it.

And the art….THE ART. Pascal Ferry has never really been on my short list of favorite artists in this fine medium, but I’ve never had a problem with his style either. Heroes For Hire was fun, his Superman work was even better. This issue alone, however, catapults him into the Best In The Business range. Shot directly from his pencils, there’s not a single page that I wouldn’t like to have hanging on my wall. Ferry has truly come into his own, sliding easily from talking head scenes into balls-out action sequences without missing a beat. Of course, with the wrong colorist, he could have been totally destroyed. Good thing, then, that Dave McCaig is pitch perfect for this book, utilizing one of the broadest color pallettes I can remember seeing in comics in quite some time. Generally, the pages are dark with a lot of muted and dirty greens and blues, but it never gets dreary. Better yet, when Adam appears in his familiar red costume for the first time in the issue against a golden-yellow backdrop, he virtually pops off of the page, which is so appropriate for the character it’s hard to put into words.

All in all, this is another book from DC in the last 4-5 months that will likely not get the attention it deserves. Yeah, I’m sounding a little defeatist, and I hope that I’m completely wrong, but aside from this site, I’m just not feeling the buzz about this book that I want to. So many of DC’s current new projects are so worth more time and press than they’ve been getting, it’s really damned annoying. Hopefully, like I said, I’m completely off the mark on this one, because I’d love to see DC continue to greenlight not only an eventual TPB for ADAM STRANGE, but more DC sci-fi work from the likes of Diggle and Ferry as well. Just this one series is definitely not enough. Buy this freakin’ book.

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