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maukingbird's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Really kept me guessing and questioning as I went. Gorgeous art balanced by two great artists each covering conflicting and complimenting perspectives.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Blood, Grief, Violence, Genocide, Colonisation, Murder, and War
Minor: Torture
billyjepma's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
"Our lives are stories. Little fictions we tell our friends and our lovers and ourselves. And we spend every moment we have praying to every god we can find…that no one ever discovers that we made all that shit up."
On paper, everything about Strange Adventures makes it seem like a comic tailor-made for me. Some of my favorite creators teaming up for a sci-fi story that marries old-school pulp adventure with a modern, political edge? That's just about everything I look for these days. In execution, the result is a little messier. Granted, the first half of the series had me firmly and contentedly curled around its fingers—I read this as monthly issues until the final installment, where I waited to get my hands on the hardcover collection and read it all over again in a sitting or two. As the series continues, though, it starts to unravel at the seams, as the ambitions of King's story begin to stretch it too far. There's some genuinely terrific, genre-defying work in these pages, but it's far less consistent than it needed to be to land its punches.
It's always refreshing to see a mainstream comic like this unapologetically wrestle with politics, and King is undoubtedly well equipped to take on that challenge. The modern-day comparisons to Strange Adventures are as obvious and telegraphed as they come, but I appreciated them anyway. Using a colorful comic book superhero to interrogate themes of American exceptionalism, violence, and eagerness for both war and figureheads to help it shirk responsibility for that war is an inspired idea that seems nearly too obvious to be real. That said, King's execution of that idea is mixed. His dialogue is reliably excellent, but as the central mystery begins to unfold, King's script starts to buckle amidst its many moving pieces. Like most maxiseries these days, I think Strange Adventures would've benefited from a tighter runtime that scaled back on some of the (admittedly exceptional) spectacles.
The spectacle is outstanding, though, with Gerards and Shaner pulling out all the stops in significant, meaningful ways. Gerards heavier, grimier style works so well for the moral murkiness of the present-day storyline. At the same time, Shaner's vibrant colors and cinematic compositions make the flashbacks/revisionist histories feel every bit as epic as you'd want them to be. There's stuff about the art I don't love—Gerard's version of Alanna looking exactly like Olivia Munn, something he says is intentional, is more distracting than anything—but it's still pretty damn impressive. Shaner has always been a star, and I hope his work on this book catapults him into the renown he deserves.
The ending feels rushed and far too clean, which was probably inevitable, considering how much the book was trying to pull off. Despite the shortcomings, I still admire this comic a lot. King is still one of my favorite writers to read because he takes on big projects like this and isn't afraid to push them in risky directions. I don't think he's quite figured out how to pull them all off yet—with the obvious exception of Mister Miracle, which is as close to perfect as a comic can get, in my mind. It's a mixed bag thematically and narratively, but its successes will stick with me far longer and more meaningfully than its missteps.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Blood
Moderate: Colonisation, Confinement, War, Violence, Torture, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Grief
Minor: Abandonment, Animal death, and Child death
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