Wednesday Comics - Page 2

Haha!
What with the Bryan Singer shorts and the "What on earth made me think I could talk to you about this!" before flying off in a huff, they're really bringing the gay this week!

...Which is sort of what I was saying earlier. If they were going to pick a strip to put in a mainstream paper, why did they choose the one that reads like a laundry list of everything annoying about modern superhero comics? Angsty, cluttered, static, pompous, and with Batman being a grimacing dick for no reason.

Teen Titans suffers from this in the writing, too, but at least the artwork is clear and appealling (even if the visual storytelling is shit).

Wonder Woman is one I want to like, and in theory I applaud Caldwell's decision to cram lots of panels onto the page, but it's really hard to follow. Also, Wonder Woman hasn't been in Wonder Woman costume in two strips.

Batman, on the other hand, is shaping up really nicely. As burnt out as I'm getting on the character, this is nice stuff, fits the format well, evokes the classic 30s and 40s Batman, and has nice, efficient storytelling. And the story, as standard as it seems, is drawing me in a little, so Azzarello & Risso must be doing something right.

Kamandi is the best strip at the moment. This is the one that could have been in USA Today (although the average reader probably wouldn't have cared for the existing Kamandi material). Beautiful, weird, and exciting (and I'm a guy who finds "Prince Valiant" to be an unengaging strip).

Deadman's getting interesting, although Rama Kushna is a standard-issue Unneccessarily Cryptic Comic Deity who apparently refuses to explain things to her agents for no reason.

Green Lantern is making up for lost time after a first strip in which almost nothing happened. (Why not START with the big battle in this strip, THEN move to the diner?) Anyway, it's already moving away from "The New Frontier" while keeping enough of the tone to be tantalizing. Hey, it'd be cool if the GL movie used the mid-50s southwest/Vegas art design the way the Burton Batman movies used 30s styles. The character feels at home there at this point.

Not a lot happening in Metamorpho, though even with a virtual splash page Gaiman still moves the plot forward. And what's with the little fake ad business? That feels like it's going somewhere and isn't just a pastiche, but maybe I'm just projecting, assuming Gaiman wouldn't just ape Haney.

Adam Strange is glorious. It's now jumped past Metamorpho as my #2 strip. I love that it's as much Tarzan as Flash Gordon, and Pope's art makes everything feel fresh and interesting--reminds me a bit of that Omega The Unknown series by Johnathan Lethem from last year, except cooler looking. An amazing mashup of indie and old-school adventure comics style.

Supergirl feels like fluff, but it reminds me how popular I think the character would be with young girls if DC could figure out how to market to them. Amanda Connor's artwork is what sells this.

Actually, ditto Metal Men. Didio's the only writer who feels like he's trying waaaaay too hard to be campy and old-fashioned.

Sgt. Rock annoys me, because the Kuberts are just delivering standard comics pages and not taking advantage of the format.

I love Flash's use of the format, turning it into two strips.

Catwoman/Demon is an interesting matchup, but hasn't taken off yet. (And I still need the Demon to speak in rhyme, dammit. It's my problem and I'll deal with it in my own time.)

Hawkman seems to be confusing a lot of people. Is it a parody, or is it meant to be straight? Seems like the latter so far, but it's Kyle Baker. Who knows.

I still hate the price tag, but I'm getting more jazzed about this. The amount of setup in the first issue made everything feel a little samey, but now the strips are starting to develop individual personalities beyond the art.

"Super-prozac"? Yeah, that sounds like Batman.

Having Batman be angry and dickish and pick fights for no reason is a sure sign you're in the hands of a hacky modern superhero writer.

Yeah, the out of characters comments, the crazy expressions on his face, and that it was day time? It was just off base in so many ways.

Then of course they have the Batman comic on the front page and it doesn't even have Batman in it. That's what you put on the front page? And I like that 100 Bullets artist a lot but a few of those frames of Bruce Wayne made him look pretty retarded.

My comment was in reference to it being the front page. The first page someone is going to see when they fold open Wednesday comics and think "should I buy this?" and its a Batman comic strip without "Batman."

Finally got these and yeah, the Superman strip is really bad.

But damn, Kamandi! Wow.

Superman sticks out like a sore thumb at this point as the wheel-spinning strip of waaaangst. All the others have a relatively brisk pace and, like, stuff happening. All Supe is doing is sitting around moaning.

Deadman was always cool-looking, but now it's beginning to grab me as a plot, too. The idea of Deadman fighting his way through the netherworld could be cool, and it speaks to Kirby's complaint about the character: "How can you have a superhero without a body?"

I loved the multiple-strip format with Iris and the Flash, but I'm glad that we seem to have left her behind for a while. And that we're getting a very Silver Age story.

Green Lantern seems to be alternating one strip where exciting stuff happens to one strip where everyone sits around in the diner. Yeah, I know, alien bug monster, but it's just setup.

Wonder Woman is frustrating because the art is great, the Little Nemo homage is cool, and I like Caldwell making full use of the layout, but it's just ridiculously cramped and incoherent.

I want to see an entire Supergirl series with Connor on art. I know I'm getting boring about this, but if DC could find a way to deliver this kind of thing to young girls instead of hiding it in comics shops, they'd clean up.

Metamorpho is the one most clearly designed towards eventual collection. Which makes me wonder how they're going to do that--an oversized TPB? How many features would be in each collection? To put them all in together would produce an oversized, 180-page book, which could be prohibitively expensive. Anyone heard about this?

Pope's Adam Strange is the one I can't keep my eyes off of. Hawkman as well. Both are the two I look for the first.

I was wondering as well how they will ever collect these. Just not going to work shrunk down.

I was pretty "meh" on it this week. Kamandi and Strange Adventures remain terrific, and Supergirl was amusing, but otherwise even the best strips seemed to be spinning their wheels this week. I realize that even the most brilliant writers ever are going to have trouble making every single page gripping, but still, that was sort of how the original adventure strips used to work. Busiek in particular doesn't get it at all. he's just telling a 12-page Green Lantern comic. Same with Didio.

Except for Teen Titans, Superman, the always-incoherent Wonder Woman, and the "let's just draw a standard comic page and blow it up" Sgt. Rock, the others are all perfectly fine, but they don't really grab me unless they're doing something clever with the format or introducing new elements. Which almost none of them are this week.

I feel like a lot of these are going to improve when I can read the entire series in one gulp. But it can't be a good sign that I've frequently forgotten what happened the week before.

I don't even think Superman's art is that good. Highly detailed, yes, but static and uninteresting.

Kamandi and Strange Adventures are particularly gorgeous this week. Deadman and Metamorpho both regained my interest after drifting a little. Metamorpho in particular is great for being every bit as insane as its Silver Age namesake. I'm actually starting to think I'd like to see Gaiman do a larger, Supreme-style project that filtered the Silver Age a little more specifically through his own sensibility; in a sense it could be more mythological fuel of the kind he's always riffing on.

Supergirl was about a thousand times more exciting in this entry than the entire run of Superman. Flash is starting to confuse me a little, though--weren't they in the future a week or two ago?

Wonder Woman is just utterly incoherent. It's not just that the panels are small, it's that you can't understand what's going on in them. It's a shame, because I like Caldwell's art.

I just realized: we have two strips in this book with characters whose powers revolve around chemistry. That seems a tad...redundant.

Already finding I don't really care so much about this, only reading a few of them and thinking I'll get back to the others. Wonder Woman was the first one I stopped reading.

Holy shit! Stuff is actually happening in the Superman strip! Boggle!

I agree, Wonder Woman is much more coherent this week, and I like the new take on Etta Candy.

Metamorpho is insane in a wonderful way. Who would have thought that Neil Gaiman would be the one writer who could come closest to approximating the weirdness of the silver age? Not to mention the one obviously trying hardest to do something inventive with every strip.

Hey, did you know the new Blue Beetle is Spanish? Because he is! Cucaracha! He is a Spanish man! Enchiladas! If you don't like it, you deserve naranjas en la cabeza! Por favor, donde este el banos? Dos equis! Una candalabra precarioso!

Pope makes even what should be a filler strip look and feel awesome.

Aquaman's appearance ought to be cutesy and annoying, yet somehow it isn't. Well, OK, it's cutesy.

The faux-romance Iris West strip was neat at first, but they should have ditched it earlier. This is still a great use of the format, though.

I assume that's the Kirby design for Morgana Le Fay in Demon? Stelfreeze nails Kirby's feel better than just about any artist I've seen.

Green Lantern continues to waste time.

Batman is all about the execution. This strip feels a little padded, storywise, but it's well done enough that I don't care.

I'm...not feeling Hawkman, sorry. Not a knock on KB, but this feels rote, when I know he's capable of much more entertainingly weird stuff.

And finally, Kamandi rules the universe.

I didn't know the dinosaur island stuff was coming, so Hawkman really started to click with me this week.

I think Batman really benefits by being the first strip. It's sort of an appetizer before the main course starts with Kamandi.

Deadman: Hey Kids! Mysogyny!

I like Supergirl a lot, but making Aquaman into a huge dick (and Supergirl not being able to figure out that he only talks to, y'know, fish) is pretty off-putting.

As cool as his appearance is, I almost wish Dr. Fate wasn't in Strange Adventures. There's a certain purity to the strip so far that would be better served without crossovers. Plus, as you say, Dr Fate's Dream Quest could easily be a story of his own (well, putting aside that they sorta did that in 52). It's actually interesting that some of the strips are getting to a point where I wish they had more room to explore some of their ideas, whereas some of them seem to be labouring to fill 12 pages.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Stelfreeze's take on Kirby's designs. He actually makes Morgana (Morgause?) look kinda threatening, and definitely sexy, despite the absurd design.

I'll say this for Metal Men: Didio realizes there needs to be a big cliffhanger in every strip.

OK, there had better be some huge payoff to Hal having known this astronaut guy in the past, justifying the two-page flashback. Otherwise it was just wasting time we could have been monster-fightin'.

Kind of a "more of the same" week, except for the first part of Gaiman's awesome periodic table thing. I definitely think that experimenting like this is the right tack to take with this format.

Kamandi is indeed the most epic strip (in the time that Superman's spent moaning and visiting his parents and the Metal Men have foiled a bank robbery, Kamandi's fought a fucking WAR).

And I realize what I'm loving about the art on Strange Adventures: it uses the intimate linework and exaggerated expressionism of an indie book, yet somehow manages to convey classical, immersive, sweeping Alex Raymond/Hal Foster style visuals. Fantastic.

In some ways I wish WB/DC would use this as a springboard for how to work some of these properties in other formats such as cartoons, or even a series of trades. I would love to see a yearly GN from Gaiman of Element Man.

And I will keep up the fact I could look at Pope's artwork all day. Very interested in Battle Boy since he recently said on Twitter:

For those who have enjoyed Pope's work, here is a preview of his Inhumans from Strange Tales

I find it strange how much I am looking forward to Wednesday Comics. Been a long time since I read a strictly superhero piece of work.

Superman defeats aliens with his origin story? What the hell?

Also, I like that he's carefully explaining to the aliens how their own biology works.