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featuring Adam Strange July 19 |
On Earth, Adam Strange zooms with his Rannian rocketpack to meet his rendezvous with a zeta-beam. The beam will snatch whatever it hits to the planet Rann.  Adam has calculated it will strike an ancient Incan temple - and unless he's on time, the temple will get teleported to Rann! |
Adam lands atop the temple just in time for his countdown and -  - is teleported 25 trillion miles to Rann in the star system Polaris. |
Alanna, his "sweetheart", is waiting. "Oh, Adam, I've been counting the minutes till you get here!" Adam says, "Just as I've been counting seconds!" Rann is a semi-desert world with far-spaced city-states. The sky is a soft green. The two lovers zoom toward Ranagar. Is there anything special Adam wants to do? Yes. Investigate ancient ruins here just as he does on Earth. But they barely touch down before a radio emergency summons them to the Rann city council. The councilors report "Aliens have landed on Rann and are demanding a delegation of our people!" |
Soon, "the Earth-Man and Rann-Girl" meet the green blockhead aliens. "What do we want? We want you to surrender, of course!" The aliens usually just take what they want, but they've learned humans like to fight for their property. Adam agrees, "We will fight!" OK, but it's pointless. "Nothing - absolutely nothing - can overcome our vacuumizer weapons!" The aliens will attack at dawn tomorrow. Feel free "to put up a struggle". |
Come dawn, Adam and Alanna lead "the flower of the city's fighting men" to the attack. Adam calls to outflank the aliens and catch them in a crossfire. The aliens' strategy is simple. They push a button on their vacuumizers. Men get turned into gas and sucked into the machines. Ray gun blasts don't harm the aliens. More men are sucked up, then Alanna. Then Adam (as shown on the cover). The surviving Rannians quit. The aliens win. |
And Adam? Dissolved or not, once the zeta radiation wears off, he flashes back to Earth.  His return is doubly bitter. He's been torn away from Alanna again. And for the first time, he's "failed to overcome a menace facing Rann". Still, he has nine days before the next zeta-beam strikes. He'll think of something... |
Nine days later, Adam Strange is zapped by a zeta-beam. He arrives on Rann - to find it barren! He recognizes a tree and lake, but the city is gone! Alanna comes running with the story. She and others were converted to gasses and stored in tanks, then later restored by the aliens. The villains left the people standing and stole the entire city. They have long lives, they explained, so they steal ready-made cities, live in them for a century or so, then move on. The aliens depart in their spaceship. Alanna and the Rannians are distraught. "We'll be living like cavemen! We have no hope!"  |
Adam does. In his week of pondering, he realized the humans' belt buckles and ray guns were not dissolved. The vacuumizers must be set to absorb the carbon in human bodies. "If we were to coat ourselves with different metals - it would be like wearing several coats of metallic armor!" Before the aliens discover the ruse, the Rannians "can come to grips with them, fight them hand-to-hand!" In the next few days, Adam trains Ranagar men like gladiators in wrestling and judo. The aliens are still on Rann, stealing other cities. |
Soon, a surprise attack stuns the aliens. The Ranagar men - painted a glossy black from head to toe - rush across a hundred yards of open space. They stab their vacuumizers to full power, but nothing happens. The men keep rushing. "They've coated their bodies with a transparent solution of liquid iron!" The aliens adjust their weapons to absorb iron. They suck up the iron coating, but now the humans are coated with tin - and they're closer! More frantic adjustments suck up copper, gold, cobalt, barium..." |
"There goes our last coating!" yells Adam. No matter. The defenders of Rann have arrived!  "Let's see how tough these aliens are without their deadly weapons!" |
The "warriors of Ranagar" rip away the vacuumizers and knock the aliens flying. "With no course left to them," the villains surrender. They'll return the cities. Adam and Alanna fly high as the city of Ranagar "reshapes itself out of clouds of floating gas". Alanna beams, "We owe all this to you, Adam! It's time I gave you my - personal thanks... Ohhh..." The zeta-beam wears off. Adam disappears like a ghost. Alanna vows, "I'll be waiting - to give you a great big kiss!" |
A backup story is "Mutiny in High Space". Like, mutiny on the high seas, get it?  |
The other backup story is "Quest of the Star Flowers!" with stunning Murphy Anderson art.  |
Comments Adam Strange was a holdover from the 1950s space craze kickstarted by Sputnik. He lasted a little while longer against the superpowered spandex crowd, even met the JLA in one adventure. Finally Adam got a break when he was ferried to Rann. With no zeta-beam radiation to wear off, he could stay indefinitely. He did, marrying Alanna, fathering a child, and always serving as the champion of his adopted world. Here's a shot of his competition, advertised in this very comic.  |