DC Comics’ Brightest Day returned with a strong issue two weeks ago and we can only hope that it’s a sign of things to come for the series. In many ways the book returned to the way it began by shifting the focus around the major players that were resurrected during Blackest Night, namely Deadman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkgirl. After what we felt was a marked decline, things are looking up.

PTB: It Feels like it’s been a while since we did one of these. Did the book ship late or is that us?

KevinMLD: Pretty sure that’s just us being slow.

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Brightest Day #13 is in stores this week, and this is going to be a tough one to discuss. The book wasn’t what either of us were expecting and continued in very much the same vein as issue 12. This time around the focus is on Hawkman and Hawkgirl and their Hawkadventures on Hawkworld. Something significant to their history may have gone down, but as you’ll see it may not be that simple given the context.

Spoilers ahead.

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The world of Brightest Day expands a bit with this issue as more of the resurrected characters enter the spotlight. No progress on Martian Manhunter or Aquaman, but there’s all kinds of Hawk-stuff. Unfortunately, there’s no issue shipping this week, but things seem to be back on track next Wednesday. In the meantime, PTB and I have been discussing issue #4.

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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.