Warning: The following contains spoilers from Strange Adventures #8 by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Evan "Doc" Shaner, and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
In Strange Adventures, Mister Terrific has been investigating war crimes committed by the people of Rann against another alien race known as the Pykkts, uncovering Adam Strange's role in this war. The Pykkts were nearly wiped out, but when they attack Earth, the narrative of victims and victimizers becomes hard to distinguish.
Throughout the series, Mister Terrific (one of the smartest men alive) has kept his mind sharp by having his T-spheres quiz him about various trivia. One such bit of trivia might just have hinted at the darkest secrets of the whole war. As the Pykkts invade Earth, Mister Terrific continues to be quizzed by his T-spheres during the fight. The T-spheres provides quote, and as Terrific tries to correctly identify who wrote it, he battles one of the Pykkts. This causes the answer to be drawn out, thereby signifying the importance of the line.
The quote reads, "in practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative life we are compelled to follow truth." The line was written by the 17th Century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza as part of his personal correspondence with his friend Hugo Boxel, who had asked if Spinoza believed in ghosts. It is incredibly significant that Mister Terrific, who has been chasing the ghosts of the Pykkt-Rann War, is given a quote about the nature of what is probable versus what is true.
Tom King's writings frequently quote great philosophers and poets to emphasize themes of his scripts. Strange Adventures questions how the "speculative life" seen in the pulp sci-fi adventure stories relates to "practical life" (ie., "real life"). Adam Strange's adventures killing aliens on a foreign world replicate the "adventures" of European colonizers killing indigenous peoples. Pursuing the ghosts of war requires one to expose the tragedies whose truths were buried.
Fighting against a Pykkt in the close confines of a crash spaceship, Terrific identifies the quote by saying, "Spinoza. Letter to Hugo Boxel. 1674." It takes him two pages to say this as the line is drawn out between blows. Terrific takes the Pykkt prisoner to interrogate.
The invasion force destroyed the US city of Phoenix, Arizona. When Terrific asks why they specifically targeted Phoenix when there were a total of eight cities exposed by gaps in Earth's defenses, the captured alien responds with a name: Adam Strange. Terrific then says he has researched what happened on Rann, and that "Adam Strange was a good man leading a good war."
In a rage, the Pykkt rebukes this as a lie, screaming, "Adam Strange slaughtered my people without honor or dignity! Innocents were rounded up! Prisoners! Women! Children!...There was no war on Rann! There was only genocide!"
This harrowing scene echoes another "interrogation" in the same issue, a flashback to when Adam Strange was brought in to question a captured Pykkt. He was spending time with his daughter when he got the call, and (even though he rarely saw her) he abandoned her to see the chained captive. Strange spoke briefly to the prisoner in his own language before killing him with a ray gun blast to the head. This brings into question Terrific's claim that Strange is a "good man leading a good war."
The truth of what happened in this genocidal war has been buried by propaganda. Similarly, Adam Strange's daughter has gone missing in equally obscure events. Every aspect of the Rannian War is obfuscated. The Pykkts have been all but wiped out, their honorable culture destroyed. But the ghosts of the past continue to haunt those living in the present. Just as Spinoza's words suggest, Mister Terrific can look at what is probable (ie. the convenient propaganda that Strange and the Rannians have spun about their victory), but the truth will not stay buried, and the dead have already come back in the form of this new invasion force.
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