Having Adam Strange share a title with Hawkman put two of DC’s most intellectual heroes together.
Adam Strange always out-thought, rather than outfought, the menaces he ran into on Rann. And Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s Thanagarian Absorbsacon gave them telepathic access to all conscious knowledge on the planet Earth. The device enabled them to easily disguise themselves as museum staffers.
DC editor Julius Schwartz liked his characters to have smarts.
“(W)hen shown actually living on Earth, (Adam Strange) is usually in his penthouse apartment in New York, or in some museum: always an intellectual location of great sophistication,” Michael E. Grost observed. “(T)he main consequence of Hawkman’s alien origin is the flood of scientific devices he and Shiera have brought from Thanagar. Carter Hall also resembles Adam Strange in that he is a museum curator and Adam is an archaeologist who works for a museum.
Hawkman had had two Brave and the Bold tryout runs, but hadn’t yet been awarded his own title. So he began to split a title with Adam Strange in Mystery in Space 87 (Nov. 1963). In this issue, their separate adventures were linked.
In the Adam Strange story, the redoubtable rocket man accidentally acquires a giant super-evolved brain, with some of the brain-wave energy becoming frozen into a rock which Strange teleports back to Earth with him.
The alien rock enhances the intelligence of the criminal Ira Quimby, enabling him to devise super-scientific tools and weapons.
“He builds pinwheels that distort light, making him invisible or making it appear that people have become disembodied limbs floating in space,” wrote Carol Borden. “He also creates ‘air-cycles’ for his I.Q. Gang that look like they use paddle-boat technology so that the gang can fly over Midway City catching loot in butterfly nets. Quimby has also caused all gold objects at an exhibit to fly into the air.”
His flashy crime wave draws the attention of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who put an end to it.
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