Two Wednesdays Ago’s Comics

I know this is coming almost two weeks after the book shipped, but I was pressed (slightly) into doing this by Kevin (who also reviewed it here). He’s very interested in my DC purchases lately. For anyone who’s not familiar with the Wednesday Comics project, it’s a Sunday newspaper style “comic book” featuring a series of one page stories that will continue weekly over the course of twelve weeks. The quotes are not meant to demean the “book,” I’m honestly not sure what to call it.

I had an immediate reaction to this “book” the moment I laid eyes on it. Newsprint automatically equals cheap in my mind. Even though it’s actually pretty high quality paper, I just thought that there was no way it should cost $3.99. That’s just the price of comics at this point though and it’s one of the more expensive “books” on the shelf (I think most books are still $2.99, for now).

While the format is cool, really cool, I found it hard to read at times since the pages kept folding over on me. The artwork is amazing at that size, but a one page story is just not enough to hook me in. In fact, the Superman “story” hardly even qualifies as a story as they are only about 20 words and it’s the villain basically saying “you’re an alien, Superman.”

The other stories (15 in all) have a lot more substance to them, with the Kamandi story being my favorite, which is saying something since my only knowledge of the character is as a source of comedy as the go to obscure DC character that gets referenced from time to time. The Hawkman story and Strange Adventures come in as strong runners up. I’d love to see where these stories are going, though I don’t see myself coming back for subsequent weeks. I lead a serialized life, but the one page stories are just too low dosage.

Tags: DC Comics, Hawkman, Kammadi, newsprint, short stories, Strange Adventures, Wednesday Comics

Kevinmld said,

I read issue 2 last week. In some ways it was even better than the first issue. The lone exception is the Wonder Woman story. While it’s got a generally cool feel to the art and colors. They cramped way too much into the issue 2 page and I couldn’t always tell what I was looking at. On the other hand, the Metamorpho story in issue 2 is practically a giant splash page.

In your review, it seems like most of your problems with it, are very closely related to the actual format. They just cannot really fit too much story into one page. See my review of wonder woman from issue 2 above. Also, if each issue had just focused on the full story of one character, they’d be abandoning the whole concept of the “book” as a modern version of the Sunday comics section from a newspaper.

I’ll be really curious to see if and how DC decides to repackage this when it’s done being published in the weekly format.
ptb said,

You’re right, the format was definitely an issue for me. I don’t like only getting one page at a time. There were some stories I just wasn’t into, but mainly it was the presentation. I was never into Sunday comics that didn’t begin and end in the same strip. I was certainly more interested in Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes than Prince Valiant or Spider-Man.

Some of the creators did amazing things with only a page, notably the Kammadi, Strange Adventures, and Hawkman stories. The Hawkman was particularly amazing in how much it told with so few panels. The others had too little to pull me in.
Kevinmld said,

The second Hawkman page was pretty badass. That’s all I really have to add.