Lanterns Proves Its Time for This Modern DC Classic to Come to the DCU (& It’s Perfect for HBO Sundays)

Skip to content Lanterns has become something of a bone of contention among superhero fans since it ended. On the one hand, there’s a part of the fandom that thinks that Lanterns is a fantastic example of what you can do with a superhero story when you don’t look at the source material as a shackle. However, there’s another part of the fandom who wanted all of the four-color trappings of the comics; in Lanterns’ particular case, they wanted the costumes, the constructs, the big sci-fi. They didn’t want the more quiet storytelling. they wanted the spectacle. While this could be a problem in the years to come for the DCU, it doesn’t have to be.

DC Comics has done a fantastic job of using the ideas behind the superhero in a variety of ways. Whereas Marvel has always mostly done straight-up superhero stories, DC took the ideas of the superhero and put them in a variety of genres, leading to stories that were able to be grounded in a way that would appeal to a casual audience and still made use of the fantastical aspects of the DC Multiverse. One of the things that I personally loved about Lanterns is that it felt like a DC comic and there are numerous stories in the publisher’s canon just like it that could be brought out of the comic pages rather easily. They’d make the fans who liked the grounded aspects of Lanterns happy, while also satisfying the people who want something more fantastic. One of the best examples of this stars a Silver Age legend and took readers for one of the wildest rides of the 2020s – Strange Adventures.

Once upon a time, Strange Adventures was an anthology series in the 1950s, telling various types of stories, with a focus on sci-fi. It was basically a comic version of the pulp anthologies of the day, and eventually it would introduce a hero that would feel at home in the sci-fi serials of the Golden Age – Adam Strange. Adam was an archeologist who found himself pulled to an alien world, one that had been devastated by a nuclear war. Adam was strong and virile, welcomed into the society as their newest savior. He fell in love and found a new home. However, there was a twist.

He was transported by the Zeta Beam, pulled across millions of light years, but the Beam would wear off and send him back to Earth, forcing him to ride the next Zeta Beam back to Rann and his wife Alanna. He’d end up teaming up with the various cosmic DC characters and appearing in the big crossovers somewhere in the background, but like many Silver Age DC characters, he’d get less and less popular over the decades. Eventually, he was basically a relic of another time; fans liked him, but they weren’t clamoring to see him.

This is where Tom King came in. The Lanterns co-creator was a big deal in late ’10s DC and was especially well-known for taking important but unpopular characters and telling character-defining stories with them. He worked especially well with artist Mitch Gerads, their Mister Miracle miniseries one of the most beloved books of the 21st century. King was coming off a string of hits and it was announced that he and Gerads, along with artist Evan “Doc” Shaner, would give readers a new Strange Adventures series.

This 12-issue series would pick up with Adam and Alanna on Earth, the world celebrating him for saving Rann from an invasion by the savage alien race known as the Pykkt. He’s on a book-signing tour, telling the harrowing story of the invasion and the loss of his daughter to the aliens, and is blindsided by a protestor, who calls Strange a monster for his actions. The world is talking about his actions, and it’s not all adulation This becomes the point of the series, as the Justice League decides to investigate his actions just as the Pykkts return, except this time, they attack the Earth.

Gerads handles the art on the modern day sections, which follow Adam and Alanna dealing with the accusation and the new invasion while Mister Terrific investigates him, while Shaner does the flashback sections of the story during the war. Gerads’ gritty artwork fits the tone of the present day sections perfectly, while Shaner’s more clean, traditional style captures a sci-fi war story that progressively gets darker, Shaner’s heroic art juxtaposing with Strange’s actions.

King’s stories are often about the terrible things that people have to do to survive and PTSD and Strange Adventures has both of these in spades. It’s about the lies we tell ourselves to get through the hardest situations and it will chill to the bone by the time you put it down. It’s structured in the same way as Lanterns, with a flashback story informing the events of the present story. The DCU loves adapting King’s work, with Supergirl being based on his Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Mister Miracle getting an adaptation, and the success of Lanterns shows how well something like Strange Adventures could do.

Lanterns works because it is, first and foremost, a story about a man coming to terms with his past and using the mistake of everyone involved in the situation to forge a new path. Strange Adventures works because it’s about what we’ll we do to survive, the parts of ourselves that we’ll give up to get to the next day, and what that means for everyone in our lives. It’s surrounded by a huge event – an intergalactic war involving the most powerful beings in the universe – but it’s a story about what it means to be human in a complicated world. It’s perfectly in the DCU wheelhouse.

The DCU is trying to avoid the mistakes of the DCEU and the comic accuracy argument is one that has already started popping up. DC Studios doesn’t just want to give the world the same kind of superhero stories that they’re getting from everyone else and that means a certain segment of the fandom is going to complain about comic accuracy. This could be difficult if they were Marvel, but DC has loads of stories that feel more like something you’d get from Lanterns than Avengers: Doomsday. These stories could be adapted with the same spirit and vibe as Lanterns and still be perfectly comic accurate.

Strange Adventures is the perfect example of this. It’s a comic that feels like Lanterns – a rather grounded story based on one of the most venerable DC sci-fi franchises. It’s able to be both a grounded story about the consequences of our actions and a big sci-fi war in the stars with massive set pieces and blazing action. It’s the best of the both worlds of superhero stories. It’s everything you could want from prestige TV and hopefully, one Sunday night soon we’ll get to see it on our TVs.

What do you think about Lanterns and comic accuracy? Do you think Strange Adventures would work on HBO Max? Sound off in the comment section below.