Warning! Spoilers for Strange Adventures #10 ahead!
It’s been a wild and crazy ride on Strange Adventures by Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Doc Shaner, but it appears that all the pieces are finally falling into place, and a traitor is revealed to not only the Justice League, but all of Earth as well. As the Black Label miniseries draws to its impending conclusion, independent investigator Mister Terrific has apparently unearthed the great mystery behind the series, and all signs implicate one person: Adam Strange.
Strange Adventures takes Tom King’s signature multi-linear storytelling technique and puts it to service in building up the mystery surrounding supposed hero Adam Strange, a savior to the people of the alien world Rann in their war against the invading Pyktt, but a mostly unknown figure on his home planet. Unknown that is, until he publishes his memoirs detailing his outer space heroics, which kick off a murder investigation by Terrific at the behest of the Justice League, when what appears to be an angry conspiracy theorist who publicly confronts Strange later winds up dead. Throughout the series, Strange’s present day banalities on Earth are often juxtaposed to his previous heroics battling the Pyktt on Rann, often resulting in more questions than answers.
In Strange Adventures #10, Terrific, a man with an aptitude for aptitudes, reveals his final analysis: that Adam Strange, appointed by the President of the United States to head the government’s defense strategy, is actually working with the Pyktt to bring Earth under their heel. Using Occam’s razor to its full extent, Terrific lays out his reasoning in a letter to Strange’s wife, Alanna, and further claims that the key to Strange’s compliance is that their daughter Aleea, thought dead, is actually alive and a hostage of the Pyktt. The revelation throws much of Strange’s activity since the beginning of the series into sharp relief, and explains how he was able to survive the gauntlet of psychic torture he sustained while captive of the Pyktt and later escape.
Terrific’s reasoning is that Strange made a deal with the Pyktt leadership to throw the invasion of Rann if Strange would later hand over Earth to their control. He came to this conclusion when analyzing the Pyktt’s unprecedented success in their assault on Earth’s defenses and the improbable shooting of Batman in Phoenix, AZ during one such losing battle, as only possible if Strange himself was assisting the Pyktt with information. Given that Aleea’s disappearance would’ve had to have been arranged by Strange himself, this raises the question as to how Alanna will respond to news of her husband’s possible betrayal.
One trick of writing that King has accomplished with his depiction of Adam Strange’s personality throughout the series has been the relative impenetrableness of Strange’s feelings or motivations. In one sense, Mister Terrific could be dead on the money, and Strange could be one of the greatest traitors in the history of the DC Universe. On the other, perhaps Adam Strange has knowledge that the reader does not have, and plans a sweeping redemption for his past crimes such as the killing of unarmed prisoners. Whatever the case, answers should be on the horizon with only two more issues to go. Strange Adventures #10 is on sale now wherever comic books are sold.