In just two months ECC has compiled two maxiseries and a Batman special from screenwriter Tom King. in the inkwell remains “Rorschach”a luxury compilation that has included additional words and drawings by its cartoonist Jorge Fornés under the new collection “Focus” (which will also publish the “Batman” by Mikel Janín next to, look at you too, King himself). But on the shelves of your favorite bookstore you can already find “Strange Adventures”, the twelve-episode maxiseries that brought Tom King and Mitch Gerards back together, along with the art of the equally excellent Evan “Doc” Shaner.
Adam Strange is a hero famous throughout the galaxy for having defended the planet Rann from an alien invasion that turned into a vicious war. After the death of his daughter in an enemy ambush, he has moved to Earth, his home, with his wife, Princess Alanna of Rann, where he has become a media celebrity thanks to the publication of his book “Strange Adventures” where he recounts the whole story of his war days in Rann. After harsh accusations from a reader in the middle of a signing session, he is found dead the next day with a laser beam through his head. Strange seems the only suspect, but Strange defends his innocence and asks Batman and Mr. Terrific of the Justice League to investigate the murder.
With a pure Hitchcock principle and his obsession with the false culprit, King returns to his affiliates on war conflicts. Let’s remember that this North American author worked as a private contractor for the CIA during the invasion of Iraq in the second Gulf War and has studied the problem of war for resources or the nonsense of world conflicts. With “Strange Adventures” returns to the tone that he already used in the excellent “Omega Men”, Featuring art by Barnaby Bagenda and Toby Cypress: Take a supporting character in the new DC and transform them into a high-flying cosmic political fable. When he mixes geopolitics and superheroes, it usually turns out very well, especially when he is accompanied by his friend Mitch Gerards, who already accompanied him in the sensational “Mister Miracle”, with a script very similar to this new comic. To create a visual dichotomy between Rann’s war past, more akin to pulpy space opera, and Earth’s present, with a noir touch, Gerards called on his friend Evan Shaner to take on the part of Rann, coming to share bullets on some of the pages, each with its own rather different style. This duality is quite meta, since the part of Doc and Rann seems taken from the book that Strange and his wife are promoting at the moment of the story.
“Strange Adventures” does not even exceed “Omega Men” ni a “Mister Miracle”but frankly, I liked it a lot more than his “Rorschach”. I still think that the war comic is much better at it than noir, no matter how many layers of metafiction it adds. I will not add anything more about the plot or its remarkable drawing because you need to arrive completely virgin to this comic.
The same month we find the first issue of the Murciélago series. “A bad day”, a collection of billed one-shots by a different creative duo about a Batman villain. Tom King and Mitch Gerads wanted to say theirs about the Riddler, one of the most famous villains in Gotham City today thanks to his appearance in the movie “The Batman” by Matt Reeves (22). King and Gerards create their Super Riddler, a being so intelligent that one day he stops playing jokes with riddles and decides to blackmail all of Gotham by knowing things about everyone, the names of the policemen’s families or the real one. Batman name. When the clown disappears, only the cruelest psychopath remains. A good approach to the figure of the supervillain.
