Strange Adventures, the upcoming twelve-issue limited series by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Evan “Doc” Shaner, will now fall under the Black Label banner, joining Superman: Year One, Batman: Damned, and other prestige format limited series in DC’s effort to establish new, evergreen titles for future collections. With the creative team working under Black Label, the book has been given a 17+ age rating.
On this decision, series editor Jamie S. Rich said, “As Strange Adventures was coming together, we had to take a step back and look at what made the most sense for the project. Since its tone and themes are more in the vein of Mister Miracle than, say, Tom King’s work on Batman, we decided that it made more sense to give Strange Adventures its own space, where Tom, Mitch, Doc, and Clayton could follow the story to all the different places it might take them.”
This decision comes on the heels of King’s recent appearance on the Word Balloon podcast, where he stated that the book had a more mature tone, with the first issue even containing a brief sex scene.
King also provided a statement: “Like Mister Miracle, Strange Adventures is hugely ambitious. Unlike Mister Miracle, this isn’t another tale of one man’s angst or trauma or recovery. Strange Adventures is fundamentally about something larger, deeper, and darker; it’s trying to speak to the nature of truth and how our assumptions about that nature can tear us apart.”
This news is hugely welcome. King and his collaborators work best in a limited series format, but working under the Black Label banners affords its creators some more wiggle-room in the scope and style of their storytelling.
Strange Adventures #1 hits comic stores on March 4 at $4.99. Check out both covers as well as some preview art below. For the cover fanatics out there, both covers are of the card stock variety.
