Today is Wednesday, which means one thing to me—It’s my own personal weekly holiday, known around the Caleb household as Comic Book Day.

Today is a special Comic Book Day though, as not only is it Wednesday, not only is it Comic Book Day, but it’s Wednesday Comics Comic Book Day, the Wednesday on which the first issue of DC’s Wednesday Comics is published.

Like a lot of folks who like great comics, I’ve been kind of looking forward to this book. It’s got several artists contributing who are on my own personal Will Buy Anything From list, including Joe Kubert, Paul Pope, Mike Allred and Kyle Baker. And those are just four of the, let’s see, 28 creators contributing 16 ongoing features starring DC’s biggest, most popular heroes (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash), weirdest, oddball characters (Metamorpho, The Metal Men) and pretty much everything in between.

But beyond that, I’ve been looking forward to this issue because I was so intensely curious about it.

I knew the facts regarding the book (if “book” is even the right word for it), that it would be the size and shape of a regular-sized comic book, but unfold into 14-inch-by-20-inch pages that look and feel like newspaper, thus evoking the sort of comics section that hasn’t even existed since before my life time. But I honestly had no idea how that was going to look, read and feel. Not until I had it in my hands, anyway.

And hey, now it’s in my hands!

I wasn’t quite sure the best way to go about reviewing it, so I figured I would just pseudo-liveblog my reading of it. That is, I’ll review it as I read it. Or rather, I’ll read it, and then review it as I re-read it, so it’s as if I’m reviewing it as I’m reading it. So join me after the jump to read me writing while reading over my own shoulder. Or something like that.

So here’s how it starts out, about the size and shape of a copy of Comic Shop News, only much, much, much thicker.

But then you unfold it once, and there’s an ad for something Robot Chicken-related. And then you unfold it again, and suddenly, look at the size of it!

How big is it? Fourteen-inches across and twenty-inches high look about right; my straight edge is only eighteen-inches long, so I’m not mathematically certain on that point. It’s bigger than most of the biggest comic books I own.

Here it is with this week’s issue of Green Lantern, as well as giant comics like Eightball #23, JLA: Liberty and Justice and The Goddess of War Volume 1:

The logo across the top of the first page does a great job of compromising between the logo of the front of a newspaper and the beginning of a comics section, and features a quintet of characters’ heads in little circles, most of which seem to be drawn by artists who aren’t contributing to Wednesday Comics (That looks like a Jim Lee Green Lantern and an Adam Hughes Wonder Woman, for example).

And as for the comics?

Batman by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso

The 100 Bullets team is a perfect fit for Batman (a fact you may recall from their “Broken City” arc in Batman), and their first installment is well-executed, although a little on the completely generic side. Commissioner Gordon calls Batman via Bat-signal to maybe help him solve a kidnapping that the Gotham police have been unable to solve.

Nice, moody artwork though, and a nicely dramatic, portentous ending. It’s interesting how final that ending seems to be. Like, I know there will be another chapter of this story—eleven more, actually—but read all on its lonesome, this seems to be the story of that one time Commissioner Gordon called up Batman to let him know that he failed to find a kidnap victim, and then the kidnappers totally murdered the guy.

Kamandi by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook

Gibbons may be best known for his artwork, but he’s on writing duty here, with Sook handling the visuals. And good God does he handle them well. If it weren’t for the credit, I might not even realize this was Sook’s work.

And I mean that as a compliment, as it looks like a classic comics adventure strip. In fact, it looks like it could be an installment of Prince Valiant. If they shaved off the bottom row of panels and then shrunk the rest of it to a quarter of its size, anyway.

The story is very much an introduction to Kamandi, giving only the most basic information—that he’s in a flooded, post-apocalyptic New York City, that he’s one of the few survivors, that he took his name from the door of the bunker he lived in with his late grandfather, and so on.

Sook does an awful lot of the “work” here, and that’s really as it should be, especially given the format.

While the Batman comic read like a Batman comic laid out for the unusual format, this reads and feels like a newspaper adventure strip.

I like the “Created by Jack Kirby” banner along the bottom too, which includes an image of Kirby’s Kamandi, or at least a very well done homage to The King’s drawing of the character.

Given the amount of legacy strips in comics these days, the “created by” credits are not only a welcome acknowledgement that real people made these things for DC, but it also seems appropriate given the nature of the modern comic strip as an entity that outlives its creator.

Superman by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo

I’m not so sure Bermejo’s artwork is all that well suited to the context or format. It’s nice work, of course, but it looks far more modern comic book-y than newspaper comic strippy, if that makes sense.

This is another short read, but Arcudi and Bermejo do rather effectively set up a cliffhanger ending in the last panel. It will be interesting to see Wednesday Comics #2, to see how the creators deal with recapping the previous installment in their first panel; that need to re-state what happened previously is a large part of what makes adventure/soap opera strips so damn tedious today.

Oh, and I should note how great the Superman logo really is. Not his S-sheild chest icon, although yeah, that’s obviously cool, but the word “Superman” in that blocky Superman font. Seeing it all gigantic like that across the top of a page of comics really reminded me what a strong bit of logo-design that really is.

Deadman by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck

Speaking of logos, this is the first time I’ve seen this particular Deadman logo (that I remember…maybe it’s from the short-lived Vertigo series? I’m not looking it up! That’s too much work for pseudo-liveblogging). I like it.

And hey, damn, even Deadman gets a “created by credit.” I didn’t even know Deadman was created by Arnold Drake. I have learned something new from Wednesday Comics, and I’m only on page four!

Now Bullock and Heuck are great talents, so it might be a disservice to refer to their feature like this, but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway: It’s very Darwyn Cooke-esque.

I mean that as a compliment, even if it’s not all that fair. It has a lot to do with the clean, smooth artwork, the cartoon-ish style and the crime element of the story.

Oh, and the story? Deadman’s origin, told by Deadman as he floats invisibly onto a crime scene.

This is probably the most fantastically well laid-out page I’ve seen so far (UPDATE: No, it’s the most fantastically laid-out in the book). It looks like Deadman is actually floating through the middle of the plane of the page, intersecting perpendicularly with the page as he reaches toward the reader.

That is awesome.

This was pretty bloody, maybe too bloody for a newspaper strip. It’s artfully, elegantly presented blood, not icky or exploitive blood (if you want that though, holy crap this week’s issue of Green Lantern…!), but I can’t imagine seeing blood like that in a newspaper comic strip.

I know that need not be a guiding creative principle for these strips, but obviously it’s going to be on readers’ minds as they read this.

Green Lantern by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones

When I saw the logo for this feature in last week’s DC Nation page, I wondered if it meant that the GL strip would feature a New Frontier type of feel to it, and that does seem to be the case.

The caption box in the first panel telling us the setting reads “Coast City, California. Call it the Jet Age, the Atomic Age, the Space Age—it was a time for new things, new frontiers…”

Additionally Quinones draws period cars, clothes and appliances. This story is off to a rather slow start, with the title character only kinda sorta appearing in the last panel, when someone asks where Hal Jordan might be, but it’s great looking stuff.

I regard New Frontier as (by far) the best Hal Jordan story ever and, I know I’m probably in the minority on this among regular  DC readers, but  I think Hal Jordan only really works in stories set in the era he was created for. Geoff Johns has managed to wonders for the character as cocky a-hole space cop, but as popular as his GL run is—and I still read it with interest—I don’t like Hal Jordan as a character or hero at all, and his stories on Earth as a superhero never seem quite right to me.

There’s no “created by” credit in this one, but I can see why that would be. The guy who created Green Lantern didn’t create this Green Lantern, and this Green Lantern is actually a recreation of that Green Lantern, keeping the name, a green power ring and…that’s about it, really.

Metamorpho by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred

Part of me thinks this shoulda been the strip USA Today ran today (and will serialize on their website the rest of the summer) because while Superman is certainly a bigger draw than Metamorpho, come on, Neil Gaiman! Everyone loves Neil Gaiman! And perhaps only Neil Gaiman could make The Element Man a household name.

Anyway, this strip is completely fantastic. The Showcase Presents: Metamorpho collection is currently one of my favorite comics, and I could read Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon Metamorpho comics over and over until the pages disintegrated.

This is Neil Gaiman doing a remarkably good Haney impression (“Gee, Sapph.  Any Elemental freak  with metamorphic powers and a crush on you would have done the same—”)

Allred’s art is perfect for this subject matter—I can’t think of any artist today better at capturing the look and spirit of old-school super-comics—and the format.

Teen Titans by Eddie Berganza and Sean Galloway

I really like the art in this. Well, I like the character design anyway; the storytelling is pretty jumbled, with no setting of any kind to ground anything—it’s just a dozen different costumed characters all either posing jumping or falling in a field of white. That’s pretty disappointing, given the room Galloway had to work with here.

This is by far the most current DCU-oriented of the stories, which is perhaps not all that surprising given that the writer is an editor of DCU books. There’s a legacy villain narrating about the fact that there have always been Teen Titans, as we see a four-panel montage of past Titans, and then the current line-up  fights the villain Trident for three panels, and then he stabs Miss Martian through the heart, for your requisite slaughter of a teenage girl.

I’m sure she’s not dead-dead, since DC’s Martians control their bodies on a molecular level, meaning there’s no reason being impaled should actually destroy her, but that’s the climax of the last panel—the grievous “death” of a Teen Titan.

It’s not only not very newspaper comic strip appropriate, but it’s pretty far removed form the spirit of the rest of these stories, which are either divorced from continuity or continuity neutral (That is, I’m sure the Batman story will be one a reader can “count” if they want to).

Given the way the other stories all star the classic or prime versions of the characters—the Supergirl story has red-skirted, belly-covered Supergirl, for example—it seems kind of weird to see Kid Devil, Blue Beetle, Miss Martian and Ravager in here instead of the original team or a team closer to the one that appeared in the cartoon (The logo for this, interestingly enough, is that from the cartoon).

Strange Adventures by Paul Pope

Pope recreates the aesthetic of Adam Strange and Rann by hewing closer to its inspirations, and his own interests. Rann looks like a mash-up of old-school paperback fantasy novels with ancient Earth architecture, while the invading aliens fly around in a ship that looks like it came straight from the original Buck Rogers newspaper strip.

It’s a great look, and Pope is such an incredible designer, I kinda wish DC would hire him in that capacity now and then. Like, this would be a great look for future Adam Strange comics; his Batman: Year 100 would have been a great look for future Batman stories.

Anyway, this is all Pope—writing, art, letters—which makes it feel like the work of an original newspaper cartoonist like, say, George Herriman. Like, you could look at an old Krazy Kat and know Herriman drew it and lettered it, you know? Same with this.

Not that Paul Pope’s Adam Strange comic is the same as Herriman’s Krazy Kat in other ways, although, man, this is a great, great comic. That last panel, where the aliens descend to the ground on ropes while Adam Strange blasts off in the opposite direction to confront them in the sky?

That’s just…wow.

Supergirl by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner

Puppy Krypto! Kitten Streaky!

The Metal Men by Dan DiDio, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan

Along with the Teen Titans strip, I was most worried about this one, as it’s written by a prominent DC editor better known for his editing and tmanagement of the DC Universe and its tone and direction more than his writing.

And I’ve got to say, this is not bad writing at all—I was quite pleasantly surprised, given what little of DiDio’s writing I’ve read before (That nasty Blue Devil vs. The Great Pumpkin short from a Halloween special a few years back, his short run on Superboy). I liked the ridiculous “disguises” that the titular robots wore, each of which make them look far more conspicuous than if they were just appearing as robots, and the ending, in which Gold makes his presence known to a bank robber, was pretty clever.

Good job, DiDio!

This strip is drawn by one master artist and inked by another and, no surprise, the art is therefore gorgeous. This looks like it could have been a real newspaper strip, maybe even more so than Kamandi.

Wonder Woman by Ben Caldwell

Hey, here’s another new logo I’ve never seen before!

I know this story has just started, so this may be premature, but it’s my first impression so I’ll go ahead and give it anyway—this seems like it might be the best Wonder Woman story not written by William Moulton Marston I’ve ever read (Wonder Woman, like Green Lantern, is a franchise I realize I’m way, way outside of the mainstream of DC fan opinion on).

It gets right to the heart of what makes/made the character likable. It’s not the warrior business, it’s not the complicated hard to justify outside of WW II context mission, or the costume. It’s that she’s a young princess, a bit of a blank slate in the way that a fairy tale character might be, and that she has superpowers and goes on cool adventures, with a touch of garbled Greek mythology thrown in.

At least, that’s my reading of the character. And like I said, I prefer the Marston stories to all others, so you may not agree.

Anyway, this story seems to be set at a time before Wonder Woman was Wonder Woman, and she journeys off of Paradise Island in her sleep to discover some of her powers in Man’s World, meets some characters from Greek Myth who give her an intriguing sounding quest, and that’s the end.

There are 49 panels on this page. 49 panels! Jesus, that’s awesome. Think about the next time you reach the second double-page splash in a $3.99  Jeph Loeb comic.

I really like Caldwell’s artwork, but the coloring may not work all that well with this format. It looks a little dark and muddy. Of course, it is set at night and the light sources are glowing purple people, so maybe it will look better in future installments.

Sgt. Rock and Easy Company by Adam and Joe Kubert

Well I guess it wouldn’t be a modern DC comic without a torture scene would it?  That’s all this is, actually, six panels of a Nazi poundnig on Rock, three panels of him saying he’s going to interrogate him.  But hey, at least its Nazis doing the torturing, not Hal Jordan or Ray Palmer. I don’t mind reading about Nazis doing evil things as much I do reading about superheroes and supervillains doing them.

And, of course, it’s drawn by Joe freaking Kubert. I’d let Joe Kubert tie me into a chair, wrap a belt around his fist and punch me in the face repeatedly, as long as he drew pictures of it and gave ‘em to me afterward.

Flash Comics by Karl Kerschl and Brendan Fletcher

The conceit here is the two strips on the page, one is The Flash and one is Iris West; the former focusing on a Flash/Gorilla Grodd encounter in standard comic book looking art, the latter focusing on Iris West’s decision to leave her husband with romance comic type art.

It’s pretty much just your standard Flash comic starring Barry Allen, but the strips interacting is kind of clever. I hope they keep that up

The Demon and Catwoman by Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze

This is probably the weirdest strip, simply in the pairing. The concept is kind of simple and obvious, but interesting because it is a pairing, and of two characters that don’t often share panel space.

Selina Kyle has dinner with Jason Blood at his place—it’s a date!—but she’s really just there to case the joint. In the last panel she’s in her cat-suit and ready to break in. She apparently didn’t read the title panel, or she’d know Blood isn’t someone you want to burgle.

This is the best Stelfreeze art I can remember seeing, which may have something to do with the size of it. As great as Stelfreeze’s work on this is, however, it seems like a grave injustice that we have Walt Simonson  doing a comic featuring Jack Kirby’s Demon, and he’s just writing it, not drawing it.

To rectify this, I recommend DC hire Simonson to write and draw a Demon one-shot or miniseries ASAP.

Hawkman by Kyle Baker

The first shall be the last…that’s in the Bible or somewhere, isn’t it? It was Kyle Baker who kinda sorta  spilled the beans on Wednesday Comics by showing some Hawkman art he was working on for DC on his website. He never said what exactly it was for, but that was the first bit of Wednesday Comics to make it out into the wild.

This is only five panels, and it’s narrated in a melodramatic, almost poetic-sounding fashion by a bird, one of an army of birds being commanded by Hawkman as he flies toward a hijacked plane.

I’m not a Hawkman fan. He’s just one of those characters like Hal Jordan that I just don’t really like on a personal level, but it has more to do with the way he’s written than anything else. (Um, obviously, since he’s not real). I do like the Silver Age and Golden Age iterations, and this seems very much in the Silver Age tradition, from the time when Hawkman was kind of like the Aquaman of the birds.

I only bring this up because the bird who narrates this convinced me that Hawkman is a pretty cool guy after all.

Whew! And that’s the first issue of Wednesday Comics. Well worth the $3.99 cover price, I think. Are you skeptical of that fact? Well, let me attempt to convince you—with math!

I read four new comic books this week. Aside from the one I just got done blathering on about, I read Green Lantern #43 and Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #13, which are both 22-pages long and cost $2.99, and Booster Gold #22, which was 30 pages long and costs $3.99.

Okay, so, because I am insane, I decided to time myself while reading each of my comic books today, and here’s how it broke down:

Wednesday Comics…20 minutes
Green Lantern…11 minutes
Booster Gold…14 minutes
Marvel Adventures Super Heroes…7 minutes

Obviously, I spent more time reading it than any of the books with bigger page counts.

Additionally, I broke out the calculator to determine the average number of panels per page in each of these books:

Wednesday Comics…12.6
Green Lantern…5.3
Booster Gold…4.5
Marvel Adventures Super Heroes…5

So even though Wednesday Comics is only 16 pages long, the size of those pages and the number of panels per each is significantly more than those in other super-comics on my pull-list.

All in all, I think I’ll be looking forward to Wednesdays even more than I used to, and I didn’t even think that was possible.

So, what did you guys think of Wednesday Comics #1? I’m honestly really interested to see how it goes over with other readers, given how unique a comics project it is.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Caleb's reviews, DC Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.