Remake & Reboot: ADVENTURE COMICS

In the long and fabled history of DC Comics, the pillars of their like has been Detective Comics and Action Comics. But it takes more than two pillars to hold up a roof, and the forgotten third pillar is Adventure Comics. Launched in 1935, it was first a humor title before segueing to containing adventure stories by superheroes and non-superheroes. And after a long absence and in the current make-up of DC’s New 52, it’s time for a return… and here’s how it should be done.

The Concept:

The New 52 have done a good job as a whole reinventing its biggest characters, but there’s a lot of concepts in DC’s past that could be dusted off and given a second chance. For this all-new Adventure Comics series, I propose for it to be an anthology with a lead story and a back-up story serialized over a set of issues. Some characters have multiple arcs, while some just one depending on popularity.

For the characters themselves, I’d dig into Adventure Comics history and bringing in some non-superhero adventurers like pirate Captain Fear, the spy shop Checkmate, the  private eye Nathaniel Dusk, and the bizarrely cool Adventurers Club. There’s a lot of other characters, teams and concept that could also be explored, it just needs the right creative minds to do them justice and make this new Adventure Comics series a success.

The Creators:

The Writer – Warren Ellis: In 2008, Ellis described his role at Marvel as “their mad scientist in the basement, performing experiments on moribund old properties.” With his time at Marvel waning and DC’s New 52 in need of some more diverse and creative takes on concept, giving Ellis a free rein on Adventure Comics as a staging ground to re-invent some of the many (and sometimes forgotten) gems in DC’s immense library.

The Artists – Alex Nino, Travis Charest, Kevin Maguire, Nathan Fox: To match up with Ellis’ story and dialogue, you need similiarly unique and startlingly gripping artistic voices to match up. Bringing classic DC artist Alex Nino back to the fold would tie in his own legacy with the Adventure Comics title, and seeing rare interiors by Travis Charest would be a treat as well. Then bringing in long-time DC artist Kevin Maguire would allow Ellis to mix some humor in (reminiscent of the excellent Two-Step series he did with Amanda Conner). And finally, Nathan Fox could bring his “rough around the edges” style to gives the series more diversity and could really energize Ellis.