In 1957 DC Comics editorial director Irwin Donenfeld held a meeting with editors Jack Schiff and Julius Schwartz in his office, asking them each to create a new science fiction hero, one from the present and one from the future. Given first pick Schiff chose to create one from the future, (Space Ranger). Schwartz was happy with the pick feeling that readers would more readily identify with a hero from the present. He conceived the idea of an Earth man repeatedly traveling to a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system using a "Zeta-beam" altered by space radiation. Since Adam Strange was the first Earthman on another planet, he named his character Adam after the Biblical first man.