A new report indicates Tom King’s upcoming Strange Adventures series alongside artists Doc Shaner and Mitch Gerads will be more contemporary and create great art in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.
DC Comics announced the project at San Diego Comic-Con indicating it would arrive sometime in 2020.
2020
KING • SHANER • GERADS#DCStrangeAdventures pic.twitter.com/7Eg2fFeRsy— DC (@DCComics) July 21, 2019
King followed up the announcement with a quote from Phillip K. Dick, “And he thought, strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”
“And he thought, strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”
—Phillip K. Dick pic.twitter.com/9NtsnsCtDq
— Tom King (@TomKingTK) July 21, 2019
During the panel when the series was announced at San Diego Comic-Con, Newsarama’s Pierce Lydon reported King was asked by DC Comics Publisher Dan DiDio how he was approaching this series differently from others. Lydon notes King plans “to throwaway the themes of his previous works (the Iraq war and his personal trauma).” Lydon also states that King noted he “needs to make something more contemporary and that in the wake of the 2016 election everyone said that we were going to get great art but that he hasn’t seen that great art yet so they’re going to try to do that.”
King previously discussed attempting to capture a “contemporary moment” following Trump’s election in his Mister Miracle series. Speaking with CBR in 2017 about Mister Miracle, King stated:
“It’s our attempt to write a book that’s an epic, Game of Thrones-y superhero book, but it’s also about this contemporary moment. Not in terms of the politics, really. Not, “I hate Trump!” or whatever, because that’s boring. You can just read a Twitter feed and get better information. But in terms of this feeling we all have, this paranoia we all have. You wake up every day, and you’re not in the world you once thought it was. The rules that your parents taught you, the rules of life don’t make sense anymore, and you get this feeling that you’re just trapped here, like you can’t get out, no matter what you do. You’re stuck here. And what better person to talk about this feeling we all have of being trapped in a place in a place we don’t understand than the god of escape?”
The series is expected to feature DC Comics character Adam Strange, who is currently appearing in live-action on Krypton. The title of the series is a classic DC Comics title that was originally released in 1950. The title would be revived in 1999 under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint four a four-issue mini-series. It would be revived again in 2004 as a six-issue limited series titled JSA Strange Adventures. An eight-issue limited series from Jim Starlin would debut in 2009. Finally, a 2011 one-shot under Vertigo Comics would be released in 2011.
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