So I was initially super excited that the Mister Miracle team was taking on my favorite character, but two issues in and I’m nervous.
I read a post about the things people hated about TK’s Batman run and it’s a laundry list of things I’d hate to see happen to Adam (in particular, killing/disrespecting supporting characters, treating Batman as a brawler rather than a detective). So far, Adam has primarily demonstrated his heroics with fancy flying and lots of laser gun work (complete with pew-pew sound effects)…and he’s accused of being a colonialist, murderer, and war criminal.
I didn’t love the last three attempts (the re-populate Rann story, his cowardly turn on Krypton, and whatever JLU was) to re-invent AS and I’m hoping this isn’t another writer taking on a character to explain all the ways their original stories were stupid.
Ultimately, WGAF because it’s just comics and the last story is just what you have to deal with til the next story, but I just want to read a good AS tale that honors his roots as a character, but I also realize he’s a fringe character that writers and editors figure they can do whatever they want with. I think the last one I enjoyed was a JLA run Mark Waid wrote. We’ll see how this turns out.
Honestly I don’t like Tom King as a writer at all. Its like he writes every comic story the same, it’s always dealing with a weak man who is depressed and has to have a “mommiewife” bail him out of all this problems.
It’s almost as if he writes himself as all the Main characters. If you look at all the complaints of Tom Kings books you will find they are all the same despite it being a different character or series.
I don’t understand modern writers’ problem with writing a straight-up sci-fi story. You don’t even need to create a new idea; all the standard tropes are amazing.
Crash land on an alien planet; struggle to survive.
Get wrongly imprisoned in an alien gulag.
Get zapped into a digital world; try to communicate to the outside world.
Mechanical malfunction during a prisoner transport; do you trust the prisoner enough to accept his help to survive?
Invited to visit a technological genius who lives on the surface of a dying star. Are his ideas a glimpse of madness? Can you find a way to escape the brutal environment?
I read the first issue and knew immediately it was not for me. It’s more new-age introspective, deconstructionist pablum. King and many of his contemporaries are writing about the “powers” and not the individual. They seem hung on the notion that there are special people among the average population, and therefore must be taken down a few pegs so everyone is–God help us–the same. I guess that’s their warped vision of equality when in truth it’s nothing but homogeneity. Being the same–uniformity-- is the death knell for creativity. Obviously this is a much larger problem in the real world, but as it applies to our beloved medium, sameness just leads to boring comics. @MyRealAlterEgo, I am nervous too, but my anxiety goes beyond Kings’ deconstruction of Adam Strange. Comic books are an endangered species in the pop culture world because of the creator’s disrespect and intolerance for our icons are becoming alarmingly prevalent.
I have been a watcher from afar and am starting to get into the actual comic books (as opposed to the animated series). That mindset has set me back on what I might want to read.
Yeah, see. I want Julie Schwartz and Gardener Fox… I’m not sure TK does. I’d love to see Steve Rude on Adam Strange. Can you imagine?
I don’t think I have quite the same concerns some have voiced. I don’t think TK is leading a vanguard emasculating our stalwart heroes. I’m reading Vision now and dig it. The Batman run didn’t do it for me and I haven’t read Heroes in Crisis. I’d be more available for a “fresh take,” even if it’s a critical one, on Adam if we were getting Adam Strange stories all the time, but we’re not. YMMV, but do what you want with Batman…because the next writer will come along and do something else. We get so little AS content, I’m a little less open minded.
Why do people feel compelled to change the capitalization of a thread title? It’s happened to me twice. I prefer sentence case. Why would it matter to someone enough to edit it?
I personally haven’t had any major problems with King’s books, but I am also not much of a critic. The only Adam Strange stories I have read have been the stories included in the Adam Strange Silver Age Omnibus, and honestly I loved every part of that book. I wish I knew more about the modern history of the character. So far the book feels very different from anything else DC is publishing right now so that part is kind of nice, but I hope King does your favorite character justice. Also, what more modern Adam Strange series would you recommend?
I’m not all that familiar with Adam Strange, but outwitting an alien invasion sounds awesome. I don’t know if King’s doing good or ill with Strange but I wish you and your favorite hero luck!
I know how much it can suck to have a favorite character languish in limbo only to return to prominence with a story that just doesn’t get why they’re great to begin with.
@Clonegeek18@MyRealAlterEgo thanks for the suggestions! My favorite part of the Silver age stuff was that he wasn’t just a guy with a jet pack and a gun. He almost always won by using his brain and other resources. Hopefully this story by king doesn’t lose that, and hopefully these other recommendations don’t have him shooting his way out.
Thru issue five now and I just keep hoping TK has a trick up his sleeve because right now he might as well have just told a new story with new characters for all this resembles classic Adam Strange. Adam is an hot-tempered, violent brute. Alanna is a viscous schemer. I mean, Alanna and Adam were always equals in their stories, but King paints her as a Machiavellian manipulator. Adam is a puppet at best. Sardath and urban Rannians are fascist colonials that don’t even try to hide their racist contempt for other communities on Rann. And while the art is gorgeous, the celebrity faces and little hokey Easter eggs (like the London Underground logo on the rock people’s medallion) are distracting.
On top of it all, King demonstrates naked contempt for the classic stories. Yeah, we know they were from a simpler time, when comics were actually for kids and a simple “science” solution was enough. It’s almost like he’s doing everything he can to show just how stupid he thinks those comics were. You don’t have to write stories about flying magnifying lenses to honor those tales. If you want to make them more sophisticated, pick up a Science magazine, or at least Popular Mechanics.
I’ll see it out because I’m a glutton for punishment and dropping an Adam Strange title isn’t going to get me more Adam Strange, but I’m definitely not enjoying it so far. At this point, I’m even finding myself rooting against Alanna. He’s made her extremely unlikable…not because she’s a smart and powerful woman, but because she’s comes off as condescending and elitist at best and a straight devious racist at worst.
Even under the best of circumstances (and this guy hasn’t seen good circumstances in a while), Tom King has a bout a six issue ceiling. After that, you’re not getting anything remotely good.
So nobody likes when a character is deconstructed? Its what Moore did with Watchmen and Miller did with The Dark Knight Returns. What’s killing comics is everyone wanting the same stories, and handling characters like they’re religious icons. Any writer or artist who takes a different path is hated by a section of fandom because they’re not doing it the way the old guys did. ( I’m in my 40s)