The Sweet Smell Of Newsprint
Posted on July 10, 2009 by andrew
As promised, I want to tell you what I thought of Wednesday Comics. The big news here is exactly what I hoped it would be: The format is outstanding. Unfolding the small pamphlet I brought home on Wednesday night and spreading out the huge, beautifully colored, newspaper-sized comics section just felt… fun, for lack of a better word. Much more so then reading an issue of a normal comic book. The tactile experience was exactly what I wanted.
So what about the quality of the comics themselves? I’ll go into more detail on the individual strips below, but my general impression is very positive. I spent a good thirty minutes enjoying the issue Wednesday night, and then opened it up again on Thursday to admire the art one more time. I expect I’ll do the same again on Monday or Tuesday in anticipation of the second installment. Some of the stories were good, some were alright, and some didn’t really interest me, but the presentation was almost uniformly wonderful. I feel that my $4 was money very well spent.
I don’t know that I would recommend this to everyone, but I do think a fairly broad audience would enjoy it if they gave it a chance. Ultimately, it’s a $4 superhero comic, and if that isn’t your thing, I won’t be able to change your mind. However, if you ever thought superhero comics were interesting but never had the desire to become a regular collector, if you have any interest in the history of the comic medium, or, most importantly, if you’re simply looking for a bit of entertainment of a variety that isn’t often available these days, you might really enjoy Wednesday Comics.
Here’s what I thought of the individual strips.
Solid, if not stellar:
Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Sgt. Rock, and The Demon and Catwoman
These five comics held to the premise of the newspaper page without necessarily going above and beyond. They stuck mostly to exposition in their first installments, which made the initial outing fun but lacking in excitement. The Batman page exemplifies the group: We have the makings of a good Batman story that is well-suited to the weekly one-page format, but all we saw this week was a conversation (albeit an interesting one) between the title character and Commissioner Gordon. I enjoyed all of these strips, but I expect them to improve in future issues.
Specific notes: The decision not to include Green Lantern in the Green Lantern story in any meaningful way made this one feel like too much set-up, even though there was some useful character work going on with his supporting cast. Meanwhile, the Superman story’s art felt a bit too modern to me. It looked like there was some serious computer design going into it, and that clashed a bit with the aesthetic of the rest of the book.
Unexpectedly delightful and Silver Age-y:
Metamorpho, Supergirl, and Metal Men
I (and presumably everyone else anticipating this) thought Neil Gaiman’s Metamorpho would be one of the highlights, but I incorrectly expected the tone to be more on par with the Element Girl (Metamorpho’s female counterpart) tale in Sandman. Instead, Gaiman gave us the epitome of a goofy silver age adventure, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Supergirl gave us the beginning of an adventure involving out-of-control Krypto the Superdog and Streaky the Supercat. What could be more fun? Plus, Amanda Conner’s art was among my favorite in the book. Some of the characters’ expressions were enough to make me chuckle even outside of the story.
I don’t really know anything about the Metal Men, but this story was a great introduction. Oddball robots are being taught about the human world, and they find themselves in the middle of a bank robbery. The robots’ costumes (to blend in with the humans) were awesome, and I loved the twist in the last panel.
The one big disappointment:
Teen Titans
Sadly, this was the one page that didn’t do much of anything for me. I’m not well-versed in Titans lore, so I didn’t recognize a lot of the characters involved, including the villain/narrator. Whereas some of the stories in the issue were a little too exposition-heavy, this one seemed to be a whole lot of narrative exposition that didn’t actually explain the story being shown. Plus, the art wasn’t really to my tastes, but that might just be my preference.
Intriguing, but not quite there
Wonder Woman and Hawkman
These two stories featured some of the best art in the issue, but I felt both were somewhat off the mark. Wonder Woman was incredibly dense, with tons of panels filling the page. I appreciate the effort to give us our money’s worth, but it made the story difficult to follow at times. Hawkman had almost the opposite problem, using a few large panels to convey one big idea. Unfortunately, insofar as it appeared to be a snapshot in time, it didn’t really hook me into a story. Additionally, providing narration exclusively from the point of view of a bird was a cool idea, but it made me feel further removed from the action and therefore might not have been an ideal introduction in this format.
The cream of the crop:
Kamandi, Deadman, Strange Adventures, and The Flash
All four of these strips surpassed my expectations for the Wednesday Comics idea, and I can’t wait to see where the creators go in the coming weeks. Interestingly, three of the four of my favorites featured characters I know very little about, but still managed to grab my attention.
I hate to sound like every comic reviewer on the intertubes with this comment, but Kamandi looked like the perfect Sunday newspaper adventure comic strip with the welcome addition of some modern coloring and printing techniques. Ryan Sook’s art was absolutely spot-on. Plus, the writing (by Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame) allowed Sook to show us all we needed to see of Kamandi’s world without overwhelming us in boring expository dialogue. In one page, we got a full introduction to Kamandi, plus the beginning of a story that could go in any direction. Depending on where exactly the story does go, this could be my favorite strip in the series.
Deadman was much more wordy than Kamandi, but it worked equally well. The design of the page stood out just as well as Wonder Woman, but without running into the same narrative problems. I also think this story was one of the best when it came to plunging us into the larger tale without shortchanging us on an introduction to the character and his world. It was a little bloody, which I wasn’t expecting in this book with its hopefully broad appeal, but the quality of the storytelling should overwhelm that minor concern for most people.
While I know enough about Kamandi and Deadman to get by if they show up in another story I’m reading, I knew absolutely nothing about Adam Strange prior to Wednesday Comics. I mean, I knew he was some kind of space guy with a very 50’s or 60’s sci-fi premise, but that was about it. Fortunately, that was all I needed to know before reading this particular comic. Strange Adventures is about a human who somehow ended up living on another planet and now he fights off crazy space monkeys in UFOs to protect his adopted home. Awesome! I didn’t love it quite as much as Kamandi or Deadman, but it sure is perfect for this format and aesthetic.
Speaking of this format and aesthetic, The Flash’s creative team decided to divide their page into two separate-but-linked comic strips. One stars the Flash doing superhero stuff with a traditional superhero look and the other stars his wife in an old-school romance comic. Very, very cool (so long as the antiquated gender stereotypes in the latter continue to be handled with the appropriate irony). This is a phenomenally clever way to embrace the Wednesday Comics experiment.
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It was really interesting to see how the different creative teams played with the format, particularly the large page they had to use. The Wonder Woman page was a bit too dense, as it seemed to be about 7 traditional pages of content (49 panels I think). The SGT ROCK and TEEN TITANS strips really didn’t seem to use the page that well at all (which was disappointing as a Joe Kubert fan). It seems like the happy medium is from those who tended to treat their page as the equivalent of 2 1/2 to 3 pages of traditionally sized content. It was a pleasantly dense read for only 16 “pages” of content, and well worth the $3.99 cover price.
NERDS!!!!
aced.