Published in January 1980, Adventure Comics No. 467 brought back Plastic Man and introduced a new Starman. However, before that issue hit the stands, DC had thought of combining Adam Strange with Plastic Man. They took the idea far enough to have Dave Cockrum and Dick Giordano put together a cover.

But what’s this? It was supposed to be a revival of Strange Adventures? For the details, we need to draw upon the knowledge of Brian O’Neill in the TwoMorrows Back Issue group on facebook:

“World’s Finest was supposed to downsize to 32 pages for 40¢ effective with No. 259 in 1979. It was even advertised to be in that format. But when 259 rolled around, it was still a Dollar Comic. Finally in No. 260 they explained what was going on: The World’s Finest backups at the time – Green Arrow, Hawkman, Black Lightning and Shazam, along with one more new series – were going to be in a Five-Star Super-Hero Spectacular Dollar Comic, and Plas was going to be the other star. But, at the last second of the last minute, they decided to leave World’s Finest alone, forgot about launching another Dollar Comic and instead they downsized Adventure and put Plas in that book.

“As for Adam Strange, shortly before all of this DC planned to revive Strange Adventures as a Dollar Comic, and there was talk of Adam appearing there. I believe he was supposed to have been in Star Hunters, before that book [was cancelled as part of the DC Implosion]. But that Dollar Comic became Time Warp instead. Adam made a single appearance in World’s Finest. It was framed as a Hawkman story since the two had teamed up in the previous issue, but it was basically just Katar and Adam sitting around the JLA satellite catching up as Adam talked about a recent adventure. Finally, Adam got a [back-up] series in Green Lantern in 1980 when the price and page count increased, although I think those stories were mostly stuff that had been in inventory from the unpublished series in ’78 and ’79.”

Half of the Cockrum cover made it to print, but as we have a good scan of the whole original, here it is as something that might have been.

As published.

Scan of the alternate cover art via Heritage Auctions.

The Adam Strange half was an homage to the classic Mystery in Space No. 90 cover by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson.

Art cleaned up and made production ready.

Colour.

Re-created trade dress added.