Mania Grade: A

3 Comments | Add

 

Rate & Share:

 

Related Links:

 

Info:

• Title: Wednesday’s Comics #7
• Writers: Brian Azzarello, Dave Gibbons, Dan DiDio, Karl Kerschl, Brenden Fletcher, Jimmy Palmiotti, Kurt Busiek, John Arcudi, Ben Caldwell, Eddie Berganza, Neil Gaiman, Walter Simonson, Dave Bullock, Vinton Heuck, Paul Pope, Kyle Baker and Adam Kubert
• Artists: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Karl Kerschl, Amanda Connor, Joe Quiñones, Lee Bermejo, Paul Pope, Ben Caldwell, Sean Galloway, Eduardo Risso, Michael Allred, Ryan Sook, Kyle Baker, Dave Bullock, Brian Stelfreeze and Joe Kubert
• Publisher: DC Comics
• Publication Date: August 19, 2009
• Price: $3.99
• Series:

WEDNESDAY COMICS #7 Review

WEDNESDAY COMICS #7 Review
© Mania

DC’s most artistically ambitious weekly comic hit the halfway mark a couple weeks back, so I figured it’s about time to weigh in on its progress thus far. It’s not an easy book to review… might be stupid to even try. But as you guys know by now, being stupid has never stopped me before so why not give it a shot?

I’m going to stick with the traditional Mania format of “The Good, the Bad and the Bottom Line”, but rather than simply review the issue at hand, I’m going to go with sort of a “mid-season report” approach and see where we end up.

The Good

Gibbons & Sook’s Kamandi continues to be my favorite feature. Partly because I’m a huge Kamandi fan anyway and partly because I feel like more than any other creative team, these guys really “get it”. I feel like I’m reading Price Valiant, Flash Gordon and Planet of the Apes all at the same time. I generally read it once and then just drool over the artwork for another half hour or so.

I suppose it goes without saying that Gaiman & Allred’s Metamorpho is my other favorite. Filled with a gee-whiz kind of fun that perfectly suits Allred’s style, Gaiman is surprising me by putting the dark-jacketed goth kid aside and having a really good time with this story.

Okay, I have three favorites. Paul Pope’s Strange Adventures is like Flash Gordon on acid. Since Flash Gordon is a lot like Flash Gordon on acid anyway, this story has been a blast to read thus far. Once again, I feel like Pope is a guy who really understands what the assignment was, and the surprise guest appearance by Dr. Fate was much appreciated this week.

Okay, okay… my fourth and final favorite is Flash Comics. I cannot express how much I have been enjoying the separate but simultaneous stories featured in the Flash and Iris West strips. This time-travel conundrum has been a blast to read thus far and keeps getting better with each passing week.

As for the rest of the book: Deadman has been something of a surprise hit for me, as has Supergirl, which I’ve enjoyed every week: and it’s good to see an actual funny story featured in DC’s funny pages. And of course, any time Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Joe Kubert put pencil to paper, magic happens. And who is this Brian Stelfreeze guy on the Demon/Catwoman book? It’s nice stuff. Oh yeah, and Azzarello & Risso’s Batman has been a pretty damn good time too.

The Bad

I skip Wonder Woman every week. It seemed like an interesting story the first week and the art looks good… I think. Actually, I can’t see it. It’s just too cramped and crowded, which is surprising for such a huge page.

Teen Titans is more mediocre than straight-up bad, but it’s certainly not my style. I still read it but I don’t particularly enjoy it. Kyle Baker has the ability to morph his artwork into many different styles, which is cool as hell, but the style he’s chosen for Hawkman doesn’t resonate with me in the least bit.

The Mediocre

I’m adding another category because I think it’s deserved. There’s really very little I’d call “bad” but a number of things I feel aren’t quite “good” either.

Even though I put Batman in the Good, I’m including it in the Mediocre as well, just because I’m just so in love with the current, less-gritty Batman that I don’t need to read another scary Batman story for a while. It, like Green Lantern and Superman, just feels like a page torn out of a comic book rather than a weekly series. Metal Men sort of has that same feel to it. I’d like to stress that none of these stories are bad; I’m actually enjoying all of them. But they just don’t seem to have that same feeling of awesomeness that the better strips in Wednesday’s Comics seem to have.

I’m including the Demon/Catwoman double feature in here, mostly because as much as I think the art is killer, I’m not really interested and just skim it every week… which is odd because I like both characters. Just can’t really get into it. The writing on Hawkman lands it in the mediocre as well (though the artwork fell into the Bad), and Sgt. Rock is good but sort of feels like its treading water a bit.

Cover art for WEDNESDAY COMICS #7

The Bottom Line

I still gotta give it an A. A big fat, blazing A written in 75-foot tall letters in the sky surrounded by patented Kirby Krackle and humming audibly because of the energy blistering forth from it. Actually, I guess that would only be one letter. At any rate, don’t get too close ‘cause you might get burned!

More than any other book, I love sitting down to read Wednesday’s Comics every week. Would it work year-round? Probably not. 12 weeks is likely going to be the perfect length for this first attempt. But I damn sure hope there’s a second attempt in a few months! I love the size of it, the unlimited directions in which the art and stories travel and I even love the stories that aren’t so good: I just love seeing the boundaries pushed and the definition of what a comic book is being rewritten on a weekly basis. I love the fact that I shouldn’t have written this as “the Good, the Bad and the Mediocre”; it should’ve been “The Awesome, the Good and the Not-Quite-as-Good”. That’s a more appropriate description for how I feel about the book as a whole.

Once again, kudos to DC Comics for such a bold direction. Viva la Wednesday’s Comics!