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In a scene that Steven Spielberg might have borrowed for RAIDERS OF THE
LOST ARK, archaeologist Adam Strange discovered a hidden treasure trove in
South American and then had to flee for his life, pursued by hostile
natives. Reaching the edge of a cliff, with nowhere else to go, he leapt
into space and was gone.
That was the scene in DC Comics' SHOWCASE #17 in December 1958, in a story
written by Gardner Fox with art by Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs. SHOWCASE
was the birthplace of the Silver Age of comics, having launched the second
Flash, in SHOWCASE #4 and with the Silver Age Green Lantern coming up in
SHOWCASE #22, Adam Strange was right in the middle of it all.
When he vanished in mid-air, leaping for his life from a South American
cliff, Adam Strange was struck by a beam of energy that had traveled 26
trillion miles from a small planet orbiting Earth's nearest stellar
neighbor, Alpha Centauri. This beam of energy had originally been meant as a
communications beam, but was altered by interference from unknown space
radiation into a teleportation ray. Adam was dragged across the interstellar
void to the planet Rann, a planet similar enough to Earth that Adam had no
trouble breathing, or, once again, running for his life.
Chased by some kind of long-necked dinosaur-type creature, he was rescued
by a raven-haired beauty in a vehicle that looked like a flying boat. She
took Adam back to her home, where she used a 'menticizer' to teach Adam the
language of Rann. This remarkable device allowed Rannian children to speak
from the day they are born. She does not mention whether it teaches these
children anything useful, like using the potty or feeding themselves, no,
it's more important that they can speak on the first day.
The girl, named Alanna, introduced Adam to her father, Sardath, whose
research had caused Adam to be transported to Rann. Sardath looks like your
typical mad scientist super-villain, but though he sometimes appeared cold
and unfeeling, he never exhibited anything resembling malevolence. Rann's
technology was many centuries advanced over Earth's so I have to assume that
Sardath's goggles are for protection or some kind of fashion accessory,
rather than corrective, in nature. I mean, we have had corrective eye
surgery for a couple decades and we can't even teleport ourselves to the
grocery store.
Unlike most of the women in comics, at the time, Alanna was more than
merely 'pretty scenery', it was she who surmised that her father's
'Zeta-Beam' had been transformed from a communications signal into a
teleportation beam. She took Adam on a tour of Rann, where they encountered
the first of many alien adversaries, the Eternals.
The Eternals were your typical big-headed aliens, whose reason for
attacking Rann was their search for a rare metal called 'vitatron' which
they used to extend their lives. Their instruments had detected a source of
vitatron on Rann and threatened to destroy the cities of Rann until it was
surrendered to them.
Since the Rannians had never discovered the miraculous metal, Alanna
decided there could only be one place on all of Rann where the vitatron
could be found, in the city of Samakand, a city which appeared once every 25
years. Adam and Alanna travel to the site of Samakand, just in time for the
city to re-appear. The inhabitants of Samakand had developed a method of
removing their city from normal space, to escape the period of atomic wars
that plunged Rann into centuries of barbarism.
Adam and Alanna managed to trick the Eternals into flying into Samakand,
just as the city phased back out of normal space, where they would be
trapped forever.
Just at the moment of victory, Adam began to fade from sight and was
transported back to Earth and the Zeta-Beam radiation dissipated from his
body, setting the stage for most of his future adventures. Adam would plot
the location of the next Zeta-Beam and traveled all over the Southern
Hemisphere (because Alpha Centauri is only visible from the Southern
Hemisphere and the Zeta-Beam travels line-of-sight) to meet the next
Zeta-Beam. Most of the time, Alanna would be waiting for him, would run to
greet him in ways that Lois Lane of that period never would have greeted
Superman. Lois was too busy trying to trick Superman into marrying her, or
alternatively, ways to reveal his secret identity to the world.
In his first appearance, Adam wore his normal clothes, but soon, he had a
nice, shiny super-hero costume and all-purpose rocket pack. The costume is
classic 1950s super-hero style, right down to the underwear on the outside
and the fin on the head. While I appreciate the 50s style, and all that, I
just think it's a look that's past it's expiry date. So let's lose the fin
and change the wing insignia on the forehead a little. I'll try to keep as
many of the lines of the original costume, as possible, but streamline it a
little and add a few modern touches. As I've said in other columns,
super-heroes make horrible choices in footgear. I mean, the average
spandex-clad do-gooder is wearing little more than slipper-socks to run
around and fight the evils of the universe. One stone bruise and most of
these guys would be out of the running, pun intended. Of the Silver Age
heroes, only the Flash had a good choice in boots, although boots aren't
great for running, no ankle support, but at least his boots has soles and
were designed for traction. Like most other Silver Age heroes, Adam Strange
wore slipper-socks with pointed tops, not much protection, there. So we'll
trade those useless socks in for some protective boots, with
variable-traction soles, in case he has to go for a space walk.
Looking at the costume, there's a very good reason for a space hero to wear
a skin-tight outfit. In a lot of Sci-Fi, the bulky pressure suit is replaced
by a tight-fitting "skin-suit", utilizing the mechanical "squeeze" of the
suit material to produce the necessary pressure, rather than the more
traditional balloon-suit. In fact, early pressure suits worked in exactly
this fashion, being made of rubber panels laced tightly on the pilot. Of
course, in a culture as scientifically advanced as Rann, the materials would
exist to make skin-suits possible. In the comics, these heroes always pulled
the fishbowl helmet out of thin air, to protect them in a vacuum. In my
design, Adam and Alanna are protected by thin bubbles of memory plastic that
snap into place when the pressure drops below safe levels. In Adam's case,
the bubble would only cover the open face of his "helmet".
In place of the rocket pack, I figure that they would fly using something
less primitive than Newtonian reaction-thrusters. It is obvious from reading
the comics that gravity is a force that Rannian science has little trouble
manipulating, so why would they rely on inefficient rockets? I figure they
would have developed some kind of reactionless drive, utilizing anti-grav
technology to fly or hover, as needed.
For whatever reason, fashion doesn't seem to be quite the driving force on
Rann that it is on Earth. In all the years since they came on the scene,
Alanna's outfit never changed. It's no surprise when a guy finds a look he
likes, that he might stick with it for a few decades, but even in comics,
women usually change styles over the years. I didn't change much in Alanna's
look, I like the buccaneer boots.
I got into comics in the 1970s, during a period when DC Comics was busy
reprinting a lot of the early Silver Age material, that's where I first
encountered Adam Strange, Space Cabby, The Atomic Knights and DC's other
early space/sci-fi heroes. Most of it seems pretty hokey, looking back from
the 21st century, but when I was a kid, I ate it up. Then Star Wars came out
and suddenly Flash Gordon-style space adventure just wasn't good enough,
anymore. I'm glad I outgrew that attitude. It's fun to go back and read
those stories, again.
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