I'm thinking of reading a few Adam Strange comics from over the years, but I'd like to know what was the best representative story in which he appeared in the 70s?
I know he didn't star in his own stories in the 70s, but perhaps a JLA/JSA crossover, or a Brave and The Bold?
Most importantly, it'd have to be a story that I could reasonably get my hands on, so one that is available in reprint would be good.
Has Adam Strange's first appearance in Mystery in Space #53 - 'Menace of the Robot Raiders!' been reprinted anywhere? What about Mystery in Space #82 "World War on Earth and Rann!" as well?
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I find it interesting how many Silver Age characters had yellow as a key part of their costumes/uniforms, I guess starting with Space Ranger
Silver Age heroes (and most Golden Age ones) wore primary colors, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they were the easiest to keep consistent in a CMYK printing system. So most heroes wore red, blue and/or yellow, or some combination. Spidey was red and blue, although spiders aren't. Iron Man was red and yellow. X-Men were blue and yellow. Superman, Thor and Wonder Woman wore the whole primary triad.
There were some exceptions, usually with good reason. Green Arrow was trying to look like Robin Hood. Aquaman was trying to look like a fish. Martian Manhunter was green, because "little green men from Mars" was what people expected. Green Lantern was inspired by a green train lantern.
But by and large red, blue and yellow were the go-to colors for heroes. For contrast, villains are usually decked out in secondary colors: green, purple and orange. (See Spider-Man's entire rogues gallery.)
I'm probably telling people things they already know.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
For one thing, I don't think I have ever read a Space Ranger story
In my misspent youth I did buy and read a few Space Ranger stories. I couldn’t tell you which ones. He had a cute sidekick called Cryll, an alien shapeshifter. Think Proty, but bright pink with arms, legs and a face. I think Jack Schiff liked funny looking aliens. He put a lot of them in his Batman stories pre-New Look. When J’onn J’onzz was still in Detective Comics he gave him an orange alien sidekick called Zook, who had miscellaneous powers. (Hey, Schiff came up with a present day space hero in J’onn J’onzz!) Both Cryll and Zook made many appearances in their respective franchises.
"The Alien Invasion from Earth!"
Zeta Beam: "The shores of Lake Titicaca... near Puno, Peru."
A very popular lake in junior high school classes.
Adam is discovered and the aliens shoot him with a stun beam. "Luckily" (i.e., writer's fiat) Adam is able to fall exactly where the zeta beam is to strike.
It isn’t said, but I think he was running toward the target of the zeta beam. He fell and crawled the rest of the way.
Sardath has a spare spacesuit for Adam, but apparently no helmet.
IIRC, his suit and helmet were originally found on a spaceship that wasn’t from Rann.
(They have changed the colors of Alanna's outfit for the sake of simplicity, I guess)
"Of course--the mineral deposits the aliens are seeking aren't on Earth--but here on Rann! This was their objective." This make no sense whatsoever. Why would they land on a planet 25 trillion miles from their destination?
A little hard to figure. The sudden switcharoo of writers and artists seems to have caused a rush job. Jack Schiff may have tinkered with the writing so there are a few disconnects.
He sends up a dummy dressed in his original spacesuit, which the aliens destroy. (No specific mention is made of it, but the decoy is wearing what must be Adam's one-and-only helmet.)
I don’t think the aliens had seen Adam in costume before, so the only reason to sacrifice the helmet was because (apparently) Jack Schiff wanted it gone.
I’ll read MIS 93 shortly. Thought I’d post this for now.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
MYSTERY IN SPACE #93
"The Convict Twins from Space"
As the story opens, "Adam Strange swims to a specific spot in the swift current" to meet the zeta beam. I don't have to tell anyone who has ever swum in a river how difficult it would be to swim to one specific spot and maintain it in a current. Besides, he's wearing his spacesuit (sans helmet). Why doesn't he simply fly to meet the beam, as we have seen him do many, many times in the past?
I’ve never swum in a river and even I know that. I think they were trying to create a new obstacle to make it interesting. Instead they made Adam seem stupid.
Adam arrives on Rann and is met by Sardath who explains that Alanna is overdue from an expedition to the planet Zoe.
Whose daughter did they name this planet after?
Adam takes a ship to investigate and finds her and her two companions frozen in place by pink energy. She explains what happens via telepathy.
So she kept her telepathy?
They soon discover a cone which, by the amount of dust on it, they estimate has been there for 100 years. First, there has got to be a more accurate way of determining how long an artifact has been in place than by examining the dust on it
Dust mostly accumulates from skin cells and hair from people and animals. I think Neil Gaiman wrote a story in which an angel, whose cells don’t die, had a very dust-free habitat.
Inside are two balls of pink energy, sentient criminals sentenced to spend eternity in the cone. It was supposed to stay in space, but was knocked to Zoe by an asteroid field. Blah, blah, blah...
Adam makes a smart move when he ducks inside the cone that the criminals couldn’t break out of, reasoning that their energy blasts wouldn’t be able to reach him (but they almost do, through the holes).
We get to see a truck in the Alpha Centauri system! Adam uses wires to draw some power from the “twins.” Later, when Adam thinks he’s finished, Alanna uses the same trick on a much larger scale to rob them of most of their power.
This story is better than I expected.
Adam defeats them, reseals them in the cone and declares it "ironic" that the aliens were sentenced to serve their life sentence in space but now have to serve it on the planet Zoe. (It's not.)
Would they even know the difference?
Green is my favorite color. The original Doom Patrol was clad in green with brown boots and belts. I wasn’t thrilled when they changed to red and white like EVERYBODY else.
Captain Comics said:
Spidey was red and blue, although spiders aren't.
Anyone who still is able to look at an early Ditko Spider-Man that isn't sealed in plastic (NOT a reprint) should note that Spidey’s original costume wasn’t red and blue. It was Halloween colors: what Crayola called Red-Orange along with Purple. I believe it was at a San Diego Con that I heard Stan G(Goldberg) say that there was a change in printers. The earlier Marvel color palette had changed.
But by and large red, blue and yellow were the go-to colors for heroes. For contrast, villains are usually decked out in secondary colors: green, purple and orange. (See Spider-Man's entire rogues gallery.)
If it was cheaper and easier to print the primary colors, I guess we should be glad that all the villains weren’t clad in combinations of black and blue, black and red……...
MYSTERY IN SPACE #95 - "The Hydra-Head from Outer Space!"
("No, you're a hydra-head!")
Zeta Beam: Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. "Obstacle": A woman at a festival kisses him leaving lipstick on his cheek and making Alanna jealous.
Alanna informs Adam that Zaarb-Ka has escaped prison, to which Adam responds, "The alien criminal from the planet Krite... who utilized his amazing powers over animals to commit thefts." (Dave Wood's use of expository dialogue is blatantly obvious, but he "verbs" the language at a near Gardner Fox level.) He escaped prison with the help of a vopo, a kind of rhinocerous with a suction cup for a mouth. Adam and Alanna fly to the Mogda Hills to join the search, and immediately find him and his henchman Gorgo driving their stolen jet-mobile (a kind of air-car) on the old dirt road leading to the Valley of Caverns where they plan to lose themselves in the maze of caves. Before they can apprehend the criminals. however, they are attacked by a magneto bird under Zaarb-Ka's control. Alanna distracts the bird with juna berries.
They catch up to the criminals, but suddenly, a three-headed beast appears as if from a zeta beam. By the time Adam drives it off, Ka and Gorgo have escaped. Later, Adam confirms with Sardath that zeta beams were also sent to a planet other than Earth, some eight light years away. (Whatever phenomenon turned the communication beam sent to Earth into a transporataion beam also affected this other zeta beam.) The "hydra-head" seemed more frightened than hostile, but it soon appears in the Rann business district... robbing a bank. That the monster was transported to Rann was pure chance, but Zaarb-Ka took advantage of it by placing the hydra-head under his control.
Each of the hydra's head fires a differnt kind of assault: one fires something sticky, one fires a force beam, and one fires blobs of knockout gas, which it now uses to escape from Adam and Alanna. After they recover, Adam finds a leaf from a subterranean mole flower which leads them to the Rann mineral pit. this time one of the heads fires bolts of electricity but, just before Adam and Alanna succumb, the zeta beam wears off and te creature disappears. After that, Zaarb-Ka and Gorgo are easily captured. As a final zinger, Alanna plants a kiss, her "brand", on Adam for the girl in Rio to see.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #96 - "The Coins that Doomed Two Planets"
Zeta Beam: Near a cave in Lima, Peru.
Adam finds six differently-shaped coins in a box in a cave. Each of them has a different object imprinted on it: a boomerang, a clam, an hourglass, a stone wheel, a short sword and a mailed gauntlet. When the zeta beam strikes, Adam is holding three of them, which he gives to Alanna after arriving on Rann. He quickly learns that, after being exposed to sunlight, the objects depicted on each coin become giant menaces. At this point, the story becomes quite formulaic as Adam must confront a defeat a giant boomerang, a giant clam and a giant hourglass (the hourglass reverses time in the immediate vicinity). I will mention at this point that Lee Elias's Rann looks very different from Carmine Infantino's. Elias's buildings look not unlike buildings found on 20th century Earth.
After the three menaces have been defeated, the zeta beam wears off and Adam materializes on Earth about 20 miles from where the zeta beam picked him up. He stops the stone wheel from destroying a native village, and closes the box before the other two coins transform. Adam has appeared as his heroic self on Earth for te first time, but the only witnesses are stereotypal natives who think he's a "flying spirit." He flies off with the intention of destroyinf the remaining two coins, but I have little doubt the coins would have resurfaced had the series survived longer than it did.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #97 - "The Day Adam Strange Vanished!"
This cover reminds me of that of Tales to Astonish #43.
(Generally speaking, I don't like covers which depict action in multiple panels.)
Zeta Beam: "Deep in the Bush Country of Australia." Obstacle: A mob of Kangaroos (that's the collective noun; I looked it up).
Adam arrives on Rann a day behind schedule. He is carrying a vial of purple gas and he has no memory of the last 24 hours. Sardath just so happens to be working on "an electronic helmet designed to jog and refresh the minds of amnesia victims!" Adam remembers materializing half buried in a pile of green sand on a planet with a green sun in the sky. The sand is "funneling" into the ground and Adam is rescued by an alien (or rather a "native" I guess) named Korko-Xeo, who is an agent of the Urbite government. Korko-Xeo is in pursuit of Sharta-Zar and his criminal band. Adam soon learns he is on an asteroid in another dimension. "Scientists of my civilization determined that our planet was doomed," explains Korko-Xeo, so the populace moved to a nearby asteroid which they propell through space "via giagantic ion engines hoping to find another planetary home."
Sharta-Zar and his henchmen have been experimenting with a machine which creates dimensional warps. It is this machine which intercepted Adam's zeta beam. Sharta-Zar's plan is to invade Rann and commit genocide. Employing another one of hid WAGs, Adam concludes, "If the zeta beam is still present in this dimension, it will be here where I first materialized!" and sure enough, it is! I have never heard of the zeta beam just "hanging in place" before and I have no idea why Adam thought it would be, apart from a rather egregious example of writer's fiat. Soon after his memories have been restored, a news report comes in that "citizens of farm district report that some cattle... and a few structures are sudden;y mysteriously vanishing!"
Leaving Sardath to work on a defense against the gas, Adam rushes to the farm districta and ducks into a mid-20th century Earth-style ranch house just before it disappears into the other dimension. There he sees Sharta-Zar experiment on some of the abducted Rannian cattle. The gas vaporizes them. Also, Adam hears Sharta-Zar brag about killing Korko-Xeo. Before Sharta-Zar can fire the deadly gas through the space warp to Rann, Adam climbs about a jet-dozer and pilots it toward the warp machine, destrying it with a load of green sand. Then Korko-Xeo appears, hearty and hale after all. Just as the space warp is about to close for good, the zeta beam radiation wears off and Adam returns to Earth, Leaving Sardath, Alanna and all of Rann left to wonder what happened until the next zeta beam.
This story started out with a pretty good mystery, but it was solved in a panel by writer's fiat. (It's like when Alanna uses "telepathy" when she could have just spoken.)
MYSTERY IN SPACE #98 - "The Wizard of the Cosmos"
Zeta Beam: "The coastal villiage of Fortaleza, Brazil." (Hardly a "village"; it is Brazil's fourth largest city.) Obstacle: Hurricane winds and a tidal wave.
Adam arrives on Rann soaking wet. after a change of clothes, Alann whisks him off to the planet Zulkan to visit the "patriotic fanatic" Yarrok, who greets them with flowers which, when treated with Krotium K, a chemical he synthesized, shoot fireballs. The visit doesn't get any better after that. Next, Yarrok hurls a vial which cancels out gravity under Adam. He manages to save himself, and Yarrok insists that they leave. "My," says Alanna. "He ceratinly lives up to his reputation as an eccentric--a crackpot one, Adam! Even to the symbol of the double sun of Alpha Centauri on his costume!" I don't see how wearing a double sun symbol on his costume makes him "eccentric" or a "crackpot," especially since he hails from the Alpha Centauri system, but I did notice that he wears a ":costume" whereas Adam and Alanna wear "uniforms." They're outfirs, people! Besides, the most striking thing about Yarrok is his facial hair, which, at first blush, looks like a long, droopy mustache. But, upon closer inspection, is actually revealed to be nostril hair.
Then he resorts to outright attacks on Rann. First, he shoots eyebeams from a giant hologram of his own head, which Adam thwarts with a giant mirror. then, he caots the people with Zulkan-13 flakes, which is not a breakfast cereal, but rather some sort of mind-control sludge. Adam thwarts this attack using a cannister of oxygen, which I first thought he used to give the people fresh air to breath, but we learn later he actually used it to blow the Zulkan-13 flakes from their shoulders. Fianlly, Yarrok envelopes Adam in an E-gas cloud, which causes him to expand and dissolve. Before the process is complete, however, te zeta beams wears off and Adam is returned to Earth.
He has only 4o hours to wait until the next zeta beam, however, and returns to find that Yarrok has blocked Rann from its suns and the planet is slowly freezing. Adam wins, however, by sprinkling Yarrok with the Zulkan-13 flakesand ordering him to reverse the process which blocked the suns. Rather than surrendering, however, Yarrok commits suicide.
Second Story: "The Return of Yarrok of Zulkan*"
*(It's his descendant, actually, he too has the same funky nose hair.)
This is a Space Ranger story featuring the "the new Adam Strange."
And that is the end of the Dave Wood / Lee Elias run.
NEXT: The Jerry Siegel / Lee Elias run.
I will mention at this point that Lee Elias's Rann looks very different from Carmine Infantino's. Elias's building look not unlike buildings found on 20th century Earth.
I had a similar observation about Mr. Elias' background work after I reviewed his art on the "Ultra, the Multi-Alien" series which appeared in Mystery in Space shortly after this.
The Ultra series was set in an unspecific future, but far enough from the then-present day that space travel between galaxies was commonplace and life on other planets was well known and communicated regularly among each other. So, at the minimum, a couple of centuries beyond 1965.
Yet, whenever the star, Ultra, the Multi-Alien, returned to Earth, the buildings and interiors and scenery resembled 1950's Mayfield. Nothing futuristic about it, whatsoever.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #99 - "The World-Destroyer from Space!"
Adam arrives on Rann in a kind of pissy mood. That night there is to be a special celebration held in his honor. At the party, Adam dances with a woman named Lurinor. By the end of their first dance, Adam has proposed. The wedding ceremony is held the next day, but it interrupted by the attack of a giant, pink, sentient blob firing bolts of electricity, launching Adam into a paragraph of exposition.
"I recognize it, Sardath! It perfectly fits the description of the legendary monster--the World Destroyer Creature! It's supposed to have exploded the planet Goz, eons ago! It can posess illimitable power! It first seeks out the rare mineral Zymium! After drawing sufficient power-emanations from that mineral it becaomes mighty enough to blast apart an entire planet! Then it absorbs titanic energy from the awesome blast to enable it to be hyper-powerful for additional eons--until its strength wanes, when it repeats the process. Since it's bolts are relatively weak now, it must be searching for Zymium, which does exist on Rann! If the creature finds it, Rann will suffer the same fate that destroyed Goz!"
Geez, Adam, take a breath. How do you know so much about this creature, anyway?
Adam drives it off with the repulsor ray Sardath borrowed from Tony stark, then sets about creating something which will destroy the creatutre forever before it locates the Zymium. As the not-very-imaginatively-named World Destroyer Creature flies back toward Sardath's laboratory, Alanna flies ahead to warn them and the WDC seems to attacks her. In reality, though, it actually saved her from the deadly quills of the Razak bird which swooped down to attack her. After that, the WDC fires bolts of electricity into the ground. Once Alanna sees the marks on the ground, her attitude changes.
Alanna and the WDC arrive at Sardath's lab simultaneously, just as Adam is about to attack the WDC with the one weapon able to destroy it, but Alanna rips the wires from the hand-held device, allowing the WDC to shock Adam. Adam recovers and gives Alanna a big ol' wet, sloppy kiss while Lurinor, in her wedding dress, looks on. Alanna explains that, when she saw that the WDC had berned the letters "AS" into the ground, she realized it must actually be Adam Strange. Sure enough, Adam confirms that, somehow, the WDC intercepted the zeta beam as he was being transported back to Rann and, somehow, their minds were switched. "Adam" arrived on Rann but the "WDC" was shunted into "another sector of space." Both Adam and the creature knew instinctively that any contact "would revert [their] intellects back into [their] own forms."
At that point it's only a matter of repairing the weapon and destroying the World Destroyer Creature. Lurinor seems perfectly happy with the outcome, commenting, "I'm thankful I didn't marry a monster in human form!" Adam then disappears as the zeta beam wears off, leaving Alanna with the final word... er, thought: "I'll have plenty of time [before Adam returns] to make myself look my prettiest for him! I'm not taking any chances!" Ugh. Alanna, what happened to you?
MYSTERY IN SPACE #100 - "The Death of Alanna"
Don't expect too much from this one; it's only nine pages.
Zeta Beam: "Atop a Peruvian cliff." Adam jumps off the cliff which again raises the question why he didn't simply use his jet-pack.
Instead of being met by Alanna (or Sardath) as usual, he is met by five men who inform him that Alanna is dead. She and some others were investigating a space ship which landed near Ranagar. She was the first to enter and was immediately confronted by a pink-skinned alien speaking an alien language. He fires a yellow beam at her, apparently killing her. (I say "apparently" because I assume no one reading this is fooled by her "death." If so, I sincerely apologize for the spoiler.) the alien ducks back in the ship and emerges with a helmet with some sort of tube or barrel mounted on top. Assuming it to be a weapon, the Rannians shoot the helmet, but the alien flees.
Alanna's body lies in state, Snow White-style, in a glass coffin. Adam vows vengeance. He is so distracted, he forgot all about the "death gap menace at the entrance of this perilous valley," which is like a Venus fly-trap if it were a mountain. "This indestructible mountain, half mineral and half-vegatable, traps its prey by snapping its cliff-sides together about its victim!" Richard will be relieved that Adam manages to avoid the "jaws" of the mountain without destroying it. He soon finds the alien, repairing his helmet. Adam attacks, but the alien fires a green stun-ray at him. From behind, the alien is being charged by a tuskor. Adam just tried to kill the alien, but nevertheless, not wanting to see him killed that way, shouts a warning, and the alien "kills" it with a yellow beam.
Adam is still stunned, but notes that the alien then fires a blue beam, after which the tusker revives. Speculating that the alien did not actually kill Alanna, Adam must now save him from the posse and launches into another long-winded explanation. Just then, the alien appears, spouting a long-winded explanation of his own: "Do not shoot--I am friendly, not a foe! I have finally finsihed repairing my communicator-helmet... now I can explain my actions. I am a scientist from a planet in another solar system! I landed upon your world when my craft developed urgo-drive trouble, and badly needed repairs! When the girl you call Alanna accidentally broke a vial containing some deadly disease germs, I knew the germs would kill her very swiftly, unless she was put into a state of suspended animation! This I did! Returning to my ship, I signaled my world for a rare antidote to be sped here via rocket! But one of you damaged my helmet before I could explain... so I fled for my life into this valley!"
Hold on a minute here! That's not "fair use"! I don't remember Alanna braking any vial, containing "deadly disease germs" or otherwise. So I flipped back to page two and, sure enough, there concealed in the all-purple background like a "Seek and Find" puzzle in Highlights magazine, is a broken beaker behind Alanna's hand. At this point, it's simply a matter of reviving her and administering the antidote.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #102 - "The Robot World of Ancient Rann"
After a 12-pager in #99 and a 9-pager in #100 (and no "Adam Strange" story in #101), Adam gets a 16-page send-off and the cover spot in his last appearance in Mystery in Space.
Investigating an ancient Rannian cave, Adam and Alanna discover pieces of robots lying next to cave paintings. There is a yellowish substance smeared on the broken chunks of robot which causes a "tingling sensation" when touched. Suddenly, a "whirling vortex" (which looks like a cross between a Boom Tube and a tornado) inexplicably appears and inexplicably whisks them into the past. They drive off a group of hostile cavemen, but are soon captured by a group of hostile robots. They soon learn that an earlier race of Rannians lived a life of leisure due to their robot servants. But the people were so lazy they eventually built a sentient Robot-Master to oversee the robots. As you might guess, the Robot-Master staged a revolt and overthrew the humans, driving them back to a primative state. On a hunch, Adam smears the yellow substance he found in the cave on one of the robots and causes it to short circuit.
After gifting the yellow goo to the cavemen, the zeta beam wears off and Adam begins to disappear. Adam has never been able to carry organic material with him when he dematerialized before, but this time he makes the wildest of his WAGs yet and grasps Alanna as he begins to disappear. Somehow, they both end up in the time vortex, and Alanna is returned to the present before Adam is returned to Earth. Adam explains: "I had a hunch the zeta-beam would draw me back into the time-vortex, and that I'd be returned to the present era, on Rann--before being teleported back to Earth!" Oh, you had a "hunch" did you? Based on what, exactly? Adam is left with a classic "bootstrap paradox" of where the yellow substance came from in the first place.
This last story in the series is somewhat disappointing because it's so derivative. The "bootstrap paradox" is nothing we haven't seen done before, and better, in EC comics, and the "robot uprising" was done better not only by EC, but more recently by Gold Key in Magnus, Robot Fighter. Still, young readers in 1965 unfamiliar with those sources would have been reasonably entertained.
The Wood/Siegel/Elias "Adam Strange" was good, solid 1950s-era science fiction comics; too bad this is the 1960s.
NEXT: A return to greatness
Re Ultra, obviously the writer extrapolated that in the future the world will be divided between historic theme park zones with citizens required to observe social norms appropriate to their zone, as an extension of contemporary efforts to protect architectural heritage. Hence in #104 Bonnie's father is shown pretending to smoke a pipe, although tobacco will of course be banned.
Seriously, my guess is “Ultra” was at least partly written by Otto Binder. In Mystery in Space #103 he constructs his new name from the names of the planets the aliens came from. This recalls Captain Marvel’s magic word. Binder didn’t create the Marvel Family, but he was the franchise’s mainstay. In #105 the tank is protected by a force field Ultra can’t penetrate, like Brainiac and his saucer in Action Comics #242. The sequence where Ultra is transformed back to Ace Arn and has to evade capture is similar to sequences from Marvel Family stories. One of the villains in Mystery in Space #106 is called Crainiac. The GCD credits #110's story to Binder, and its Pied Piper villain is paralleled by the cover story from House of Mystery #32, which it attributes to Binder.
I've contended previously that Binder ghost-plotted for Marvel in the 1960s. If so, there’s further support: the force-field bit also recalls the Avengers and Kang in Avengers #8 (Binder later wrote an Avengers novel), Ultra’s use of a change device in the later issues is paralleled by the Hulk stories with this element, and the sequence where Ultra watches Bonnie’s family through the window in Mystery in Space #104 is similar to a sequence from the Hulk instalment in Tales to Astonish #70.
The Patchwork Man from the cover story of Strange Adventures #204 is similar to Ultra and the Hulk. It’s my guess that story was by Binder too. There’s an “ulps” p.5. Martin O’Hearn, discussing other stories, takes “ulps” as a Binder tell.
O'Hearn also notes Binder’s use of alliterative names. It's not unique to him, of course, but Ace Arn might be an example.
(edited)
I found the time to read issues 94 through 98.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #94
"The Riddle of Two Solar Systems"
Part one is set in the future and features Space Ranger. As I indicated, this is the first Space Ranger story I have ever read. (I wasn't missing much.) He has a shape-changing alien sidekick named Cryll.
Apparently, Cryll isn’t just a shape-shifter. When he changes he doesn’t just take on the appearance but also the powers/attributes of what he looks like.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #95
"The Hydra-Head from Outer Space!"
No comments on this one.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #96
"The Coins that Doomed Two Planets"
Adam finds six differently-shaped coins in a box in a cave. Each of them has a different object imprinted on it: a boomerang, a clam, an hourglass, a stone wheel, a short sword and a mailed gauntlet. When the zeta beam strikes, Adam is holding three of them, which he gives to Alanna after arriving on Rann.
When the zeta beam strikes, we are told he’s being transported 26 trillion miles. A couple of issues ago they also said 26 trillion, then they went back to the usual 25 trillion. What’s a trillion miles between friends?
He quickly learns that, after being exposed to sunlight, the objects depicted on each coin become giant menaces.
He stops the stone wheel from destroying a native village, and closes the box before the other two coins transform.
On page 11, Adam says that only one of the three menaces activated because Earth has only one sun and Rann has two. I believe they’ve established that Rann has three suns.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #97
"The Day Adam Strange Vanished!"
No comments on this one.
MYSTERY IN SPACE #98
"The Wizard of the Cosmos"
Besides, the most striking thing about Yarrok is his facial hair, which, at first blush, looks like a long, droopy mustache. But, upon closer inspection, is actually revealed to be nostril hair.
We can get him a trimmer for Christmas.
Then he resorts to outright attacks on Rann. First, he shoots eyebeams from a giant hologram of his own head, which Adam thwarts with a giant mirror.
Trying to steal an entire chemical plant, it is picked up intact (like comic book cities). When the mirror stops the theft, we don’t get to see the building crash to the ground.
Then, he coats the people with Zulkan-13 flakes, which is not a breakfast cereal, but rather some sort of mind-control sludge. Adam thwarts this attack using a cannister of oxygen, which I first thought he used to give the people fresh air to breathe, but we learn later he actually used it to blow the Zulkan-13 flakes from their shoulders.
The mind-controlled population is on its way to give all of their valuables to Yarrok. When Adam blows away the flakes, one of the men says “what am I doing out here with my family jewels?”
Finally, Yarrok envelopes Adam in an E-gas cloud, which causes him to expand and dissolve. Before the process is complete, however, the zeta beams wears off and Adam is returned to Earth.
The timing of the zeta beam has saved his butt a few times.
He has only 40 hours to wait until the next zeta beam, however, and returns to find that Yarrok has blocked Rann from its suns and the planet is slowly freezing. Adam wins, however, by sprinkling Yarrok with the Zulkan-13 flakes and ordering him to reverse the process which blocked the suns.
Using the flakes to beat Yarrok was clever. It isn’t Chekhov’s gun, because it wasn’t introduced early in the story. I guessed what Adam had done when we saw the very compliant Yarrok.
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