Wednesday Comics - thoughts?

Fysh

It occurs to me that we're nearly at the end of Wednesday Comics and we haven't had any discussion of it on here.

I've been enjoying Wednesday Comics for the most part - the format appeals to me as a throwback to the likes of Krazy Kat and Little Nemo. While I haven't enjoyed every strip, I have appreciated the diversity of material - and there have been enough great strips to outweigh the ones I haven't enjoyed so much.

The great:

• Batman
• Green Lantern
• Strange Adventures
• Wonder Woman
• The Flash

All of these have been great, working within the format and with artwork that has made proper use of the freedom available with bigger pages.

The best of the lot is in my opinion Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman, a strip that consistently crammed in far more than should have been possible in one page. Some reviews have complained about the colour being muddy or the lettering unclear; I haven't had a problem with either.

The Flash strip and Paul Pope's Strange Adventures would both be close seconds, for their gorgeous artwork and use of space and layout. The Flash in particular had a great little contrivance of having the first few pages told such that there were 2 stories going on in tandem, one concerning the Flash and the other concerning Iris West.

Green Lantern and Batman don't quite reach those levels of greatness, but both strips feature great artwork and lean writing that makes for an enjoyable yet accessible story featuring characters that have in recent years become bogged down with extensive continuity and plot minutiae.

The good:

• Kamandi
• Deadman
• Metamorpho
• Supergirl
• The Demon And The Catwoman

Kamandi is, of all the strips, probably the one that has most faithfully mimicked the storytelling style of the old Sunday Comics. It's been an enjoyable action story with very nice artwork.

Deadman has been similarly enjoyable, though I suspect that the story could probably have been compressed down to 8 pages without losing a great deal. The artwork has something of a Kirby influence which serves it well, and there are enough moments of inspired usage of space to make it feel worthwhile as an oversize read. The colour palette helps set the mood as well.

Metamorpho has been an odd one. I took a while to warm to it, because I usually don't like overly-self-conscious "harking back to the Silver Age" comics. This was compounded by the crappy "Metamorpho fans of America" jokes in the second and third issues. Once things got moving a bit more, though, some interesting uses of space (particularly a two-page spread about 2/3 of the way through) came up. I don't think I'd want to read much more of this, but the story itself worked.

Supergirl I was expecting to find boring, as I tend to find almost anything involving a character whose name starts with Super. The artwork really carried this, setting just the right tone of playful fun and action. The story is fluff, but in a fun way and told with enough humour that it doesn't grate. The Aqualad scenes were pure gold, and the Doctor Midnite scenes were good too, especially for his expressions.

The Demon and the Catwoman confused me a bit, because I didn't really get the point. Reading an interview about it with Walt Simonson, it makes more sense knowing that it's intended as a sort of follow-up to an existing series, but it works quite well once you're a couple of pages in. What could have been an otherwise boring comic is oddly made more interesting (to me at least) by the presence of a character who speaks in iambic pentameter. I can actually see the potential for this to have been fleshed out further, though it works just fine as it is.

The rest:

• Superman
• Teen Titans
• Metal Men
• Sgt. Rock & Easy Company
• Hawkman

Superman was pretty much what I expected, to be honest. I've never found the character or surroundings in any way interesting, really, and this didn't offer me any reason to change that opinion. The one good moment in this strip was on the second page, during his interaction with Batman. The artwork was quite pretty, but I found the story dull. Still, gotta take the meh with the good.

Teen Titans felt patchy. There were some nice ideas, but the first page was a complete mess that didn't flow or make any sense. The colour scheme let it all merge together rather than stand out, and the story was odd - jumping around in a confusing sort of a way considering how simple it turns out to have been. There were some neat touches like the choice of narrating characters in a couple of the early strips, but those were offset by some dreadfully cliché riddled writing in other parts. A shame, because I suspect it could have been much better.

Metal Men. I've never really heard of these characters, and haven't seen much of their appeal here - they're robots, but each made of specific metals, and all shapeshifters? And led by a generic comic-book genius who treats the lone female of the group as his personal inflatable stainless-stell sex-doll? The story was all right, and the art was quite nice, but as someone who's never heard of these characters it didn't elicit much of a response.

Sgt. Rock & Easy Company is an odd one. For most of the series I've disliked this, because it's been the least experimental in terms of layout and use of space. The story's been no great shakes either; I've read any number of stories like it in those Commando pocketbooks or Victor for Boys annuals years ago. But at the same time, when I look at the artwork and get past the fact that it's using simpler colouring, there's an economy of line that's a lovely change from the current trend towards over-rendering. Again, not so much bad as could have been better.

Hawkman is the only strip of the bunch that I thought was bad, and even then bad is probably the wrong word. I loved the framing device on the first page, and there have been some glorious images, but as the strip has progressed the artwork has become more and more jarring - a baffling combination of what looks like traditional pencil/inkwork, block colouring, photomontage, and computer-textures. By the time I reached the last couple of pages, it's a chore to read because I look at a panel and I don't see a moment of the story, I see a bunch of discordant elements that don't sit well together.


All in all, I've really enjoyed this and I'm glad to have picked up the single issues (not something I say often). It seems there will be a collected edition out at some point, but the entire appeal of this format was to read them as single pages week to week, not in a book. Especially not if the page sizes are reduced - I can't imagine how Ben Caldwell's work could be reduced, for instance. I don't know that I'd be interested in Wednesday Comics 2, though - as a one-off experiment it's been fun, but I would prefer that DC accept this as proof that readers will support experiments in different formats that don't have continuity baggage attached, and find more new things to try.