Parting thoughts on Wednesday Comics

Wednesday Comics#12 came out today, bringing to an end the 12-part weekly series DC Comics has experimented with; as described earlier, each issue featured a single-page DC adventure hero story serialized in the fashion of an old newspaper comic strip and published at newsprint sizes. Here's my thoughts on the 12 strips of Wednesday Comics:

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Batman This was just a crime story with a little Batman in it, but it was fine, lovely art by Eduardo Risso.

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Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth The story was typical but the actual storytelling was gorgeous; Ryan Sook's art was beautiful and the Prince Valiant-style captions were classy.

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Superman In which Superman mopes about for a few weeks feeling sorry for himself then gets over it. Maybe John Arcudi originally wrote this story for Spider-Man?

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Deadman David Bullock is not a name I was familiar with before so, crown me fool; he's excellent, combining some of my favorite aspects of Jack Kirby's art with Bruce Timm's. He turned in a great high adventure story about Deadman battling demons and did it with panache.

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Green Lantern I can't get too worked up about a character like Green Lantern but this was fine for what it was. I'm not certain whether the story was best told in this format, it feels like a 12-page story done in installments.

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Metamorpho I started out loving this strip but writer Neil Gaiman played it too cutesy throughout; a couple of gags about 60s comics can be fun, but he ran it into the ground. Still, there's a lot to love about Mike Allred's art and Gaiman did deliver him a lot of great visual moments, notably the two-week trip across the table of elements in which Metamorpho transformed himself into each element.

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Teen Titans I have friends who defend this strip because they have a lot of regard for Sean Galloway. Fair enough. That doesn't excuse Eddie Berganza's story, which doesn't simply suggest an inability to write in the format but an inability to write in the medium. The Titans seem to have around 10 members but most of them go weeks at a time without appearing, then suddenly jump into the story between panels. The main villain Trident is apparently supposed to be someone Titans fans would know but then turns out to be someone else altogether and...why did I bother reading this tripe?

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Strange Adventures I've had limited exposure to Paul Pope's work, but this strip convinced me to change my ways. This strip starred Adam Strange in a fast-paced action story that somehow found time for a Dr. Fate guest appearance. I loved everything about it.

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Supergirl I can't believe this became one of my favorite strips! Jimmy Palmiotti's simple story has the super-pets Krypto and Streaky embarking on a series of rampages as they act like disobedient pets (only with super powers). Poor Supergirl has to help her friends and enlists Aquaman and Dr. Mid-Nite along the way. The real star is Amanda Conner whose art was just gosh-darn adorable.

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Metal Men This seemed like a very familiar Metal Men story, what with their number one foe Chemo showing up and most of them being destroyed (don't panic, they always come back). It started out as the Metal Man foiling a bank robbery and seemed like it would be a little more fun than it ultimately was; though we readers put no stock in the Metal Men's lives, writer Dan Didio weighed the story down with their sacrifices. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez turned in some fine art.

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Wonder Woman I gave up on this strip on week two because the work of trying to read it wasn't reciprocated by the entertainment I derived from it. While many creators used the unusual format of Wednesday Comics to blow the art up to mammoth sizes, Ben Caldwell tried to squeeze about four pages on each and it was just too much of a slog trying to make out his tiny panels and discern what reading order was the correct one. I did like the apparent Little Nemo in Slumberland references though. Now that it's over, I guess I'll do the work of trying to read them together.

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Sgt. Rock A fairly typical story of Sgt. Rock fighting Nazis. I'm not sure why Joe Kubert needed his son Adam to write it; surely after 50 years he can write this stuff in his sleep?

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The Flash With Supergirl, this was a fine surprise. Karl Kerschl and Brendan Fletcher played around with the format every week in Flash, turning in homages to soap opera strips, Tarzan, Modesty Blaise, Blondie and even Peanuts, if you can believe it. This was simply a fun super-hero strip each week and it should be interesting to read it together as a whole.

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The Demon and Catwoman This was a slight story but it was all in good fun. Catwoman and the Demon fight his old enemy Morgaine Le Fay and...that's about it.

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Hawkman I don't know what to make of this strip. There's something very off-kilter about the dialogue which suggests that Baker was either trying to mock the super-hero genre (as he did before in Plastic Man) or write it for a kids audience (as a former Tiny Toons creator, he knows something of that). What I do know is that he needs to cut back on the photoshop.

This wednesday's comics includes...Wednesday Comics!

I'm not really a fan of the DC Universe. It seems to be that many of the DC Universe books assume that their audience are heavily invested in the ongoing saga of the DC Universe. Me, I'm heavily invested in the ongoing saga of the Marvel Universe (they pay me to be) so I can't find it in my heart to make room for another shared universe. When I want something different from Marvel's output I look just about anywhere (Vertigo, Wildstorm, Boom!, SLG, Image, Dark Horse, Adhouse) except the DC Universe.

But every now and then, DC does something that I can't ignore. Wednesday Comics is such a project. Along with a fine assortment of creators (Kurt Busiek, Kyle Baker, Mike Allred, Neil Gaiman, Brian Azzarello, Ryan Sook, Paul Pope, Walter Simonson), Wednesday Comics has a fascinating format - it's designed as a series of one-page strips featuring 15 different characters and creative teams. The book itself is fashioned after a newspaper comic section. To wit:

Each of the stories is told as a serial, just as they would be done in a newspaper comics section. Because most of these stripes have to introduce their cast and conflict (some of them don't manage to introduce one or the other) it will take some time to see just how good Wednesday Comics will be; based on this first installment there was one outstanding strip and one underwhelming strip.

The outstanding strip was Metamorpho, which I did not expect. In a single page Metamorpho's cast is introduced and the hero completes an in-progress quest for a giant pearl, fighting off a shark along the way. Then Metamorpho's next adventure is set up. It's refreshing to have so much action and plot in so little space, it breezes by more pleasantly than some of the strips.

The underwhelming strip is Teen Titans. It opens with an odd montage of Teen Titans past and present (for some reason Wonder Girl is depicted three times, twice in the same costume). Then the current Teen Titans - still looking like a montage - fight a mystery man named Trident, who is also the narrator. He stabs one of them through the chest. None of the Titans are introduced by name, which you would think would be a priority. The concept behind the team is barely touched on - Trident calls them "sidekicks of the world's greatest heroes" then goes on about how they're like a family. Only, Trident considers himself a hero and seems to consider the Titans, uh, not-heroes? He thinks he's doing some good by trying to kill the Titans. I'm sure there's a story behind this but it doesn't seem that interesting. I think that this strip - like so much of the DC Universe I ignore - takes it for granted that the audience knows and cares about the Teen Titans.

I think what will draw many people to this project is the opportunity to see some fantastic artwork blown up to immense sizes. Hopefully the stories will be worth coming back for too.