DC Comics old-schoolers and new-schoolers team up for new Strange Adventures in sci-fi.

DC Comics’ venerable speculative series Strange Adventures is back from the beyond.

The 80-page Strange Adventures No. 1, released Wednesday by the publisher’s mature Vertigo imprint, collects eight surreal sci-fi shorties from established writers like Paul Cornell, Jeff Lemire and Peter Milligan, artists like Denys Cowan and Paul Pope (above), as well as some promising newcomers.

Check out two exclusive pages below from writer and artist Kevin Colden’s particularly eerie “Postmodern Prometheus.” Picture David Lynch’s uncanny Eraserhead baby starring in the smart-rat classic The Secret of NIMH, and you’re almost there.

Elsewhere in the first issue, Sweet Tooth and Superboy standout Lemire rehabilitates a mutated DC antihero from the ’60s in “Ultra the Multi-Alien.” Doctor Who and Superman: The Black Ring smartass Cornell punches his tongue through his cheek in the alien weirdness of “A True Tale From Saucer Country.” And 100 Bullets hotshots Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso mix up enviropocalyptic noir in “Spacemen,” the first chapter from their forthcoming series of the same name, due this fall.

The reboot is a spirited piece of Strange Adventures‘ storied comics puzzle. After running for 244 issues from 1950 to 1973 and birthing DC Comics C-listers like Captain Comet and Animal Man, Strange Adventures has resurfaced infrequently ever since.

Check out the preview pages and let us know in the comments below if the award-winning Strange Adventures warrants a dedicated timetable or if it’s better as a one-shot genre blast, drifting aimlessly between The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

Sweet lab mutants bite the hand that tortures them in Strange Adventures' “Postmodern Prometheus.”
Images courtesy DC Comics/Vertigo