Trivia / Strange Adventures (2020)

• Creator-Driven Successor: As described by Tom King himself, this series is one to his and Mitch Gerads' earlier work, Mister Miracle (2017). Both stories are extended re-evaluations of daring DC heroes, juxtaposed with the conflicts of mundanity and the need to reconcile with the inherent darkness of their past and present, but while Mister Miracle is ultimately a story about healing and surviving adversity, Strange Adventures is a much more critical tale about how one reacts to evil and confronting it head-on. Even the signature 9-panel grid format of Mister Miracle is evolved with Strange Adventures, which generally features 3 panel rows per page.
• Production Posse: The series once again features writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads working on a comic project, the previous two being The Sheriff of Babylon and Mister Miracle (2017), though this series includes Evan "Doc" Shaner as a second primary artist.
• Reality Subtext: Issue #5 opens with Adam and Alanna discussing Adam's current magnetism to controversy and gossip, along with his currently strained relationship with the Justice League. Adam specifically highlights Booster Gold as a more inherently reckless superhero and wonders why people aren't complaining about him, to which Alanna responds telling him to just avoid the drama, since "It's all just toxic." Tied in with Adam's status as a quasi-Author Avatar to writer Tom King, this appears to be an allusion to King and his own fraught history with Booster Gold, having received massive heat for the character's portrayals in Batman (Tom King) and Heroes in Crisis.
• Teasing Creator: While Strange Adventures was being produced, Doc Shaner posted several work-in-progress pictures on his Tumblr tagged with the series, including inks of Adam fighting alongside Batman, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, and Hal Jordan, and a two-panel preview of Barry Allen encountering an inexplicably elderly-looking Adam. However, these panels were nowhere to be found in the final comic — once it was completed, Shaner confessed that these images were just personal warm-ups to break from having to draw Rann for most of the series, and he posted them out of context to lightly screw with fans.
• Word of God: Doc Shaner on his Tumblr confirmed that the rock people of Rann's underground introduced in issue #5 are Undergrounders, an alien race that was first introduced in Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino's original runs of Adam Strange in Mystery in Space. He also revealed that the Chieftess (a new invention for the book) is also the daughter of the Chief from that series.
• Write What You Know: Tom King admits in interviews that several aspects of his take on Adam Strange are autobiographical to a degree. Similar to how Adam retired to Earth after years "in service" as Rann's hero to become a successful author, King himself returned home from CIA work to devote his focus to writing. He also directly compares the scrutiny Adam faces of his superhero past to critics questioning the legitimacy of his own CIA past, with the story dealing with the frustration and helplessness of being unable to prove who you really are and what you did or didn't do.
  "I know my job is to have imagination, but one of the funny things about this comic is that it was inspired by a very mean tweet someone sent me. It was just the tweet you’re not supposed to read like, 'Tom King just writes comics because he committed war crimes and he’s trying to hide it.' That’s not what I do, but how cool would it be if that’s what I did? That literally sent me off to the track, what would it be like if I was hiding my past?"

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