Wednesday Comics # 1

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Wednesday Comics # 1 (DC, 2009).



Well, this is almost terrific. With Wednesday Comics, DC is trying a very interesting experiment, showing off fifteen new stories in an oversized format, like the Sunday funnies used to be. It folds out twice to newspaper size, and each feature gets its own page, for fifteen serialized stories.

It's not completely perfect, and I think fans will be spending the next twelve weeks Monday morning-quarterbacking things they might have done differently. I think they missed a trick by insisting all fifteen be serialized adventure stories; surely they could have given the space to the incoherent Wonder Woman feature over to a classic kid's comedy like Stanley and His Monster. The first issue also suffers from each being a set-up page. It might have been nice to join one adventure already in progress. The Flash story almost accomplishes this, and it's pretty fun. Best of all, the stories are continuity-free. That the publisher has spent the last forty years hammering the characters into one timeline is irrelevant here; it's presented as fifteen separate storyline.

Highlights include Kyle Baker's completely awesome Hawkman story - and no, I don't think I've ever used the phrase "completely awesome Hawkman story" in my life before - along with Paul Pope's gorgeously designed Adam Strange tale, which does suffer from some truly ugly lettering. I like Brian Steelfreeze's art on Catwoman a lot, and Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner's Supergirl looks like it's going to become a very fun tale. Dave Gibbons scripts a Kamandi story that will probably be great reading, but while Ryan Sook's artwork is really lovely, I can't help but wish Gibbons drew it as well.

Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred are off to a good beginning on Metamorpho, and while Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock starts a little slower than most of the other features here, you know that Kubert on Sgt. Rock is always worth looking at. I only disliked two of the pages - Wonder Woman and Teen Titans, so that's a pretty good batting average. At $4, the price point feels a bit high, but then again, I think everybody in the house is going to enjoy this comic, so it's probably worth it.