King comes along and takes another esoteric character I had never heard of and manages to make a pretty subversive and transgressive narrative. At the start, we have Adam Strange’s return to earth and the publication of a fictional book, about the account of the war on Rann, where he met his wife, had a daughter, and repelled an alien invasion. He’s now a celebrity, and the limelight is ever so bright.

When an accusation from a fanatic about How he won the war on Rann raises questions about his account, Mr Terrific (another esoteric hero I’d never heard of) is commissioned to dig up the truth; with the notion from Strange endorsing this, ostensibly, to have him exonerated. But things get far more twisty. There’s a dual narrative of past and present, the past possibly being the actual fictional book that was printed, but I’m not sure that was ever expressly said - it just seems initiative based on what unfolds.

As the truth is being dug up an alien invasion is also coming for earth, and we slowly learn who this Adam Strange is, who is leading the force against the invasion, as he did on Rann.

What makes this very nearly perfect is how it transgresses from the comics to the real world immediately. It’s about fiction itself. The veracity of memoir and the stories we tell ourselves being who we actually are, and then the commodification of that. Comics are absolutely a form of story that resonates with the morality tales of myths, which is why they’re so successful. But What is a hero in modern times in modern war? What is good and bad? Through the interrogation of Strange and his actions, as well as what happened to him, his subsequent trauma from the war, we end up with an allegory that’s able to explore a lot of questions while delivering a super hero comic that is actually new and interesting.

It is so hard to find compelling stories that aren’t just regurgitating their own past. Everything about this is interesting because it’s not really a story that would be compelling to read to most readers of super hero comics. It does have some similar beats and some action, but it’s also methodical and slow, as is King’s way. It pokes at nationalism in a way that very few comics do. They gesture at it rather than actually do it, typically. And it’s willing to subvert more expectations, particularly around the hero archetype. It’s absolutely a story for me, but maybe that’s because I’m very bored with typical super hero stories and I am steeped in the lore of comics as a format.