Countdown to Adventure


By Adam Beechen, Eddy Barrows & Allan Goldman (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-866-9

Spinning out of the weekly miniseries 52, (see Volumes 1-4: ISBN: 1-84576-552-4, ISBN: 978-1-84576-553-8, ISBN: 978-1-84576-604-7 and ISBN: 978-1-84576-624-5) wherein Adam Strange, Starfire and Animal Man were lost in space for a year, this tale of two worlds originally ran as the lead feature in the comicbook miniseries Countdown to Adventure #1-8 (the back-up spot revealing the history and fate of the Forerunner – a living weapon created by the Monitors of the Mulitiverse as a kind of intelligent attack dog): a sidebar saga to the then-ongoing Countdown to Final Crisis.

All caught up? Splendid.

Earthman Adam Strange is reunited with his family on the distant world of Rann when he is forcibly retired as Planetary Champion and replaced by the obnoxious film and Ultimate Fighting celebrity Steven “Champ” Hazard. Whereas Strange solved threats with his wits and good heart, The Champ is psychotically brutal and aggressive, preferring to shoot first and keep on shooting till he’s the only person still breathing.

In San Diego Buddy Baker has returned to his job as a stuntman, since his Animal Man powers are malfunctioning, but at least that’s better than Princess Koriand’r of Tamaran, who has lost her energy-casting abilities completely. For weeks she’s been unconscious in Buddy’s spare room, resting, recharging and not contacting her old super-hero friends in the Teen Titans.

But when Buddy’s son and other people start exhibiting signs of a “Rage-Plague” extraterrestrial contagion experts isolate the city and prepare to sterilise everything in it if they can’t find patient zero, who must have brought the rapidly spreading infection to Earth…

On Rann the same symptoms are ripping through the citizenry, fomenting violence, intolerance and even physical transformations. And then on both worlds the infected begin to chant a phrase Strange, Koriand’r and Buddy last heard from the religious zealots of Lady Styx, a death-worshipping monstrosity they killed a year ago and a zillion light years away…

This interplanetary bio-plague thriller has lots of pace and action, and keeps the tension high, but falls just short of being exceptional or compelling since even newest recruit can plainly see that everything’s going to be all right in the end. Fine for a lazy afternoon but hardly a keeper and adds nothing to the lustre of its stellar, fan favourite cast.

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