Mystery In Space #81: Another Viewpoint

About a year ago I reviewed Mystery in Space #81. Reader M. Hamilton has some more thoughts on that issue:

That's what "Avatar" and "Alice in Wonderland" were about--going into new realms. new worlds. (Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios President)

That describes the appeal for me of "The Cloud-Creature That Menaced Two Worlds."

Although I enjoyed the recent article on that issue, I was surprised that it didn't include any of the panels which make that issue such an unforgettable visual experience.

When it comes to entering "new realms, new worlds", take a look at the first panel of page 17:

The detail of the background with its narrow color palette of pink, orange and lavender creates a visual impact that, over four decades later, I simply cannot forget. When the story was reprinted in Strange Adventures #241 exactly ten years later, the background was colored differently in light pastel tints which provided a better contrast to Adam's red costume and in no way diminished the beauty of the panel:

If DC ever had an old-fashioned coloring contest, that is the panel which they should use.

Other great panels include:

- Page 12 (the last four panels) which portray Adam falling into an erupting volcanic crater with its searing heat and seething smoke :


- Page 13 (the last two panels) where you can almost hear the hissing of Adam's ray-gun turning water into vapor:


Could anyone ever draw natural phenomena like Infantino? And his work somehow never that had a cluttered look no matter how much detail had been packed into the page or panel:


Concerning the cover of MIS #81, it's totally ridiculous except for the background color. The top edge is an intense lavender which becomes diffused and becomes a light lilac color as it gets lower on the cover. It suggests a desert dawn/dusk and to see a mint cover with its sheen enhancing this color effect is a sight to behold:


That color effect reminds me of the cover of MIS #59 which has an intense green along the top edge, but which get lighter as the eye goes down:


Considering that we are living in times when visual imagery is competing with plot in movies (e.g., Avatar). re-examining the artistic glories of "The Cloud-Creature That Menaced Two Worlds" makes one realize just how far ahead of his time Infantino was.

Comments by Pat: All excellent points! Definitely one of my flaws as a comics blogger at times is the insufficient attention paid to the artwork. M. Hamilton clearly lingered over the drawings on this one. That first page of the third chapter really is something to behold.

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Mystery In Space #81

This book has a lot to offer, with a three-chapter story by Gardner Fox, lots of flashback material and scintillating art by Infantino and Anderson. It's understandably overshadowed by some of the other issues around this period; Planet that Came to a Standstill from #75 and Planets in Peril from #90 are on anybody's short list for the best comics of the Silver Age. But this is an entertaining, if ultimately flawed issue.

The story starts with Adam Strange encountering a New York City policeman, who recognizes him from earlier meetings:

This of course raises the question of how did a NYPD officer see Adam disappear not once, but twice, given the fact that the Zeta Beam only hits in the southern hemisphere?

So I looked at the two stories in question. In the first, Adam is grabbed by some sort of time beam into the future, and then hit by the Zeta Beam. And in the second, Sardath has invented a new beam that can pick up Adam without running the risk of hitting something else. Unfortunately, this only works for that one issue, as Sardath explains:

But in #81, as Adam is trying to explain himself to Officer Boyle, he suddenly spots Alanna walking in New York. After satisfying the cop by parking his car legally, Adam catchs up to her and she explains that Sardath had improved the Zeta Beam so it could take her across to Earth. At the bottom of the page, there's this:

That is a beautiful bit of art by Infantino and Anderson; it's moody and creates the desire in the reader to learn just who it is that awaits the Zeta Beam in Adam's place.

It turns out to be a former dictator of Rann who had been asleep for 1000 years, who introduces himself to Alanna (?) here:

He apparently disintegrates her. We get a long background bit about how Ranagar and Zared had battled it out in a nuclear war that neither won. Now Zar (note the pronunciation is probably equal to "czar") is back with a super-weapon:

That's an iconic Infantino pose; I'd bet I can come up with a dozen or more panels just like that. We learn that Xar has the ability to absorb all the memories of any person. He transfers her memories to an earthling girl who happens to match Alanna's physical appearance best, and arranges for her to be on the scene in New York to capture Adam's attention. Thus Adam doesn't bother meeting the Zeta Beam, making it possible for Xar to ride to Rann instead.

We get some interesting bits of the Alanna/Adam romance, marred a bit by the fact that it's not really Alanna:

But it does highlight a significant difference between their romance and that of so many other characters in the Silver Age. Adam and Alanna had no secrets from each other. They were ready, almost anxious to get married. Indeed, one of the cliches of the series was the ending where Adam and Alanna start to kiss, and the Zeta Beam wears off, sending him back to Earth.

But then, as they're attending the opening of the Adam Strange wing of the Metropolitan Museum, suddenly everyone on Earth but Adam is frozen stiff. This strikes me as a callback to Planet That Came to a Standstill, where the same thing happened, only on Rann, not Earth.

By checking at the Pentagon, Adam learns that the first people to be frozen stiff were on Tasmania. He goes there and discovers an odd-looking weapon. But as he flies back through the Pacific, he encounters the evil-looking cloud creature shown on the cover. There follows a several-page battle between the two which seems likely to end in Adam's death until:

But when Adam returns to New York, "Alanna" has recovered her own memories. He quickly catches the next Zeta Beam, where he learns of Alva Xar's trickery. But this time the fight is very unequal:

How can Adam defeat Xar? Apparently by giving up:

Overall I enjoyed the story, although it seemed a bit padded. It never really was explained how the cloud creature came to be (it was apparently created by the cyber-ray), or why it froze everything on the planet it appeared on. And of course, Adam willed the creature to disappear, not to go back into the raygun.

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Trivia Quiz #29: Adam Strange

1. The Zeta-beam that transported Adam Strange to Rann only appeared where?

2. With what museum was Adam Strange associated?

3. Who was Adam's girlfriend?

4. Who was Adam's girlfriend's father modeled after?

5. What villain picked up amazing mental powers from a rock Adam brought back from Rann?

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Single Issue Review: Mystery In Space #75

Mystery in Space was one of DC's long-running science fiction magazines. It was a generally outstanding title for much of its run, initially featuring mostly one-shot stories. Effective with MIS #53, the cover feature became Adam Strange, whom I have talked about previously.

Up until this issue, it had never been clear that Adam Strange existed in the same "universe" as the DC superheroes. But as you can see, Kanjar Ro (the alien shown on the cover) intends to go after the Justice League of America in this story.

Ro had appeared in the third issue of JLA's own magazine, and the beginning of this story sums up the ending of that one. Superman created a planet in space out of meteors, and deposited Kanjar and three other villains. Using his power ring, Green Lantern surrounded the planet with a force field to prevent the gang from escaping. But through dogged determination, the villains willed a tiny hole in the force field, through which Ro was able to escape:



Well, you can probably guess his answer to their pleas: Go suck eggs! After that the story follows the usual pattern of a new menace appearing on Rann, although there is one interesting difference. Adam had apparently gone to the far-off planet in the previous issue on a teleport machine and not a zeta-beam, so for a change he was not doomed to return to Earth and could remain with Alanna indefinitely.

The menace they encounter are barbarians from Rann who have an oddball crystal, which, when struck, paralyzes Adam and Alanna. They manage to reverse the effect, and Adam figures out that if they plug their ears, they will be unable to hear the vibrations from the crystal and thus immune to the effect. They confront the barbarians again and pretend to be overcome, so they can learn what's behind the sudden attacks:



Yep, it's Kanjar Ro, working to make himself more super than the Justice League. He eventually discovers that Alanna and Adam were not under his control, and imprisons them in a gravity field. But they manage to escape, and Adam hurriedly uses Kanjar's ship to return to Earth, where he hops on the next zeta beam.

Alerted by the presence of the ship, a small contingent of the JLA head to the prison planet that Superman had created, where they learn from the remaining villains that Ro had gone to Rann. Meanwhile Adam, after returning to Rann on the zeta beam, manages to ring the villain's giant gong, thus freezing everybody on the planet, including himself. But when the zeta beam wears off, he returns to Earth where he regains freedom of movement. He goes to Kanjar Ro's ship, where he discovers the remaining JLA members. Together they head off in the ship for Rann.

But when they arrive they discover that Kanjar Ro was too powerful to be affected by the gong, and was just waiting for the rest of the JLA members to arrive so he could defeat them all. He seems to be making good work of it, too. Several people express a little pity for Adam, who has no superpowers, but he uses his mind to come up with the way to defeat the villain:



Unfortunately, the illness he feels is a symptom of a problem: He learns that he cannot remain on Rann for more than a year because it would kill him. So he is forced to return to Earth once more and wait for the zeta beam.

Comments: This is generally acknowledged as one of the finest DC stories of the Silver Age. It won fandom's Alley Award for the best story of 1962, presumably both for the clever plot and the appeal of crossovers back in that era when they were rare. Excellent script by Gardner Fox and terrific art by Infantino and Anderson.

One interesting oddity: Although the story highlights that Kanjar Ro's goal is to become more powerful than Superman, in fact Supes is one of the few JLA members who is not defeated by the villain in the final chapter. Batman explains that the Man of Steel is busy on a mission in Kandor. I suspect, although I don't know, that Weisinger would not give his consent to a story where Superman is defeated by a villain whom Adam Strange then proceeds to best.

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Adam Strange Cliches

DC introduced Adam Strange in Showcase #17, (Nov-Dec 1958). He was an archaeologist, who, in an attempt to escape bloodthirsty natives, jumped a 20-foot chasm and suddenly found himself trasported across millions of light years of space to Rann, an alien world remarkably populated by humans, including the lovely Alanna and her scientist father Sardath.

It turned out that Adam had been picked up by chance by the zeta beam, a ray that Sardath had been sending towards Earth periodically. He arrived on Rann just in time to save it from some disaster or other, and after a few weeks the zeta beam would wear off, sending him back to earth. Fortunately, he always seemed to know the locations where the next few zeta beams would hit.

Although the series was excellent, I'm going to focus today on the ways it was a little cliched. For example, in every episode it was required that Adam deal with some problem catching the zeta beam:











And inevitably it seemed that whenever Adam arrived, some crisis would hit Rann either just before or shortly after:











Indeed it was this latter cliche that led to one of the major problems with the series. More on that in a later post.

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