This is "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," a feature spotlighting notable examples of retcons that don't fit into the framework of Abandoned an' Forsaked, which is specifically about stories that outright "overturn" older stories. There are many examples of "retroactive continuity" that do not actively abandon the works of the past. Some of them are minor, some of them are major, all of them are interesting enough to me that I figure that they are worth writing about.

Today, we look at how Alan Moore changed Adam Strange's back story fairly dramatically.

Adam Strange debuted in 1958's Showcase #17 (by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, Frank Giacoia and Joe Giella). He was an archaeologist who ended up being pulled to another planet via a weird beam...

In the second story in the issue, he gets an outfit...

Adam Strange kept the winning streak of Showcase well by getting his own lead feature in Mystery in Space. Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson joined Fox on the series and they KILLED IT...

Here's the thing, though, as good as these stories were (and they were EXCELLENT), they were not really all that popular with the public as a whole. I mean, they were popular enough, but it is not like Adam Strange even got his own series, ya know? He was much more critically approved than he was popular. Man, in the late 1960s, everyone was hoping that he would get his own series again. There were multiple fan awards where he was picked as the character people most wanted to see get his own feature again. However, over in Strange Adventures, they instead just reprinted those classic early stories.

However, Adam Strange hung around the DC Universe even when he lost his lead feature.

He even got married to his alien girlfriend in the pages of the Justice League of America...

So he was a general character who would pop up from time to time.

That's when he had things turned upside down by Alan Moore in the pages of Swamp Thing...

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='So what did Alan Moore do, exactly?']

In a story in Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing (when Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala were the art team), Swamp Thing was seemingly killed, but instead his consciousness was still around and in Swamp Thing #57, it transported along with Adam Strange when the Zeta Beam pulled him Rann, so Swamp Thing went along with him and Swamp Thing formed a new body there. This was the start of a storyline with Swamp Thing traveling the universe that allowed Moore to explore the DC Cosmic Universe.

When Adam gets there, Rann is having trouble with their ecosystem and Thanagar is offering to help them...

Adam Strange is called to duty and as he springs into action, we already get a hint about Moore's new, darker take on the character, as Strange notes that the Rann people look down upon him while also expect him to save them every time he gets there, even if they take him away from his wife. He shows up to kill the new "monster of the week," which is actually Swamp Thing!

In the next issue, Swamp Thing reconstitutes himself and offers to help fix the Rannian ecosystem instead of the Thanagarians. The Thanagarians do not take kindly to this and attack Swamp Thing and Adam springs into action to protect his new friend, and along the way, he learns that he was brought to Rann specifically BECAUSE the planet was sterile and thus they needed their princess to breed with someone from another planet...

It's super dark and what's worse is that this idea was later followed up in an even DARKER Adam Strange miniseries that luckily was then retconned out of existence by Mark Waid during a fill-in stint during Grant Morrison's JLA run.

But it all started with this Moore story which, while really well-written (I mean, holy cow, those pages I showed you - the fight between Adam and the Thanagarian? Earlier in the issue, she mocked him for getting up early to spend time with the water creatures and later in the issue the water creatures save his life. Moore is such a clever writer), but I think it was probably a bit too dark and I'm glad people have mostly ignored this approach in the years since.

Okays, folks, I am sure that you all have other examples for this feature, so feel free to send them to me at brianc@cbr.com!