Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Andy Diggle and Pasqual Ferry's Adam Strange...

Enjoy!

When you look back upon it, this Adam Strange mini-series was really quite remarkable. It served to both jump start DC's cosmic characters AND jump start Pasqual Ferry's career as a penciler (it took awhile for the greatness of Diggle to be fully appreciated).

The concept of the series is that Adam Strange (the Earthman who travels between Earth and the planet Rann, where he is the protector of Rann) is on Earth (Strange is forced to spend half of his time on Earth and half on Rann due to a teleportation device called the Zeta Beam) when he learns that Rann was destroyed. His wife and child were on the planet, so he is, naturally, despondent.

However, he discovers that Rann was actually "stolen" before it was destroyed, so he sets out to discover what happened to Rann (and his family).

The best thing about the series is that Diggle really understood why Adam Strange was different - why he was worthy of being the protector of an entire alien planet - Strange was a seemingly normal human, except for his one power - the power of ingenuity.

This is spotlighted in a brilliant sequence when some bounty hunters come to see if he knows what happened to Rann...













As you can see, Ferry's artwork is spectacular.

He was quickly chosen to do one of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers mini-series, and then Marvel wooed him away and he has worked on high profile projects for Marvel ever since (currently doing Ender's Game stuff).

In the process of finding out what happened to Rann, Adam encounters a wide variety of other DC cosmic characters, and effectively jump starts the DC cosmic cast of characters, as a lot of them had been pretty much been in limbo since the cancellation of the first volume of REBELS.

The Omega Men, Vril Dox - lots of great characters were brought out by Diggle and used, and used WELL!

The only downside of this series is that DC then promptly used this mini-series to set up Infinite Crisis and then Diggle was off of the book, which was a darn shame.

But now Diggle is at Marvel Comics, doing a great job on Daredevil and just coming off a great run on Thunderbolts!

Still, Adam Strange: Planet Heist is a great book (even with the annoying lead-in cliffhanger), and well worth picking up!

Oh, I almost forgot colorist Dave McCaig - he kicked ass on this series!