Evolution Conquest
ADAM is the third chapter of 1988's Evolutionary War crossover and stars the Silver Surfer, Super-Skrull and the Eternals. Written by Steve Englehart with art by Joe Staton, the story sees the High Evolutionary make an alliance with the Eternals and the Surfer and Skrull forming an unlikely alliance themselves against the Evolutionary's plans.
For the most part, this is a damn good story. Again, it's pretty sparse in terms of moving along the story arc of the Evolutionary War, in fact the High Evolutionary only appears on the first few pages, but unlike the Punisher issue this one is just an entertaining story with a half-way decent link to the High Evolutionary.
With that said, Steve Englehart's writing has it's almost traditional flaws. Mantis is crowbarred into the story somehow (Silver Surfer mentions how the most important thing ever is finding Mantis' son) and there's a lot of throwaway references and detailed allusions to specific events in the Surfer's book that if you've not read you'd be pretty confused by. But otherwise, the writing is pretty good and there's some nice character work going on with the Super-Skrull. The only problem is the Eternals are portrayed too much as villains after being duped by the High Evolutionary and despite the climax of the story, they never really learn from their mistake.
The art by Joe Staton is good in places but oddly enough the splash pages present some of the weaker art in the issue. Particularly a splash page of the Silver Surfer breaking out of captivity which really draws attention to the wonky work on the character's face in the image. However, the art highlight is the sequence of panels where the Super-Skrull discovers that since his absence the Skrull race has practically become extinct (a reference to a recent storylines in Avengers and Fantastic Four).
This is a good and fun tie-in to the Evolutionary War with a nice cast of Cosmic characters, but as with the last two chapters, it still feels like more of a unrelated tie-in rather than an actual integral chapter in a story arc. Otherwise, my only complaint is the Eternals part in the story isn't really resolved and nor are the five of them here (Ikaris, Sersi, Makkari, Thena and Karkas) aren't really presented as individuals and rather just an assortment of powerful foes without much personality between them. But honestly, the story is enjoyable enough to overlook these criticisms. ADAM serves as a darn good tie-in definitely but again not an entirely necessary chapter to the Evolutionary War.