Set your course for Adventure!

I’m happy to see Adventure Comics back on the scene. It’s nostalgic while at the same time progressive.

Seeing that great old logo takes me back to the summer of 1975 when I picked up my first issue of Adventure; #441 which marked Aquaman’s return to a solo feature of his own. He stayed for a couple of years until he was graduated into a re-launched magazine under his own title to be replaced by Superboy. Such was the nature of the title back then; the book had customarily never had a de-facto star like Superman in Action Comics or Batman in Detective. The book had the flexibility of changing it’s star to suit sales, fan interest, or both (probably sales mostly.) I’ll go out on a limb by stating that the greatest success story to come out of Adventure was the introduction, with issue #247 of course, of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The LSH because pretty much a permanent feature of the book by the time issue #300 rolled out and remained so until #380 until flagging sales had them changing places with Supergirl in the back of Action Comics.

It’s this mutability of Adventure which makes it so suited to the comic book market of today. With the current trend of limited run series (some of them very good, by the way; the two different Freedom Fighters series over the last couple of years spring to mind) Adventure fits right in because the book is one big limited run series. That being said, I’m tickled that Superboy and the LSH were tabbed as the first features of the book and I hope they can enjoy a good long run. However, there are plenty of other characters that I wouldn’t mind having an extended stay in the pages of Adventure. The Creeper for one.

I’ve found the first two issues of Adventure to be very entertaining and refreshing. I never really followed Connor Kent before but I like what I’ve seen so far and could really grow to like the character. There’s something reassuring about having the LSH back in a regular series and I hope it will help erase memories of Jim Shooter’s unfortunate departure from the previous one. All in all, it feels great to have Adventure back again.