Never miss a post! 
Daily Breakdowns 005 - Wednesday Comics
Wednesday Comics is what got me back into a comic shop after an absence of a couple years, and what got me back into picking up "floppies." It won't keep me there.
I like the basic idea of the series--DC superheroes done by top talents in a page-a-week newsprint format reminiscent of the grand comics sections of the '30s and '40s. Editor Mark Chiarello has a track record of good taste and good design. And charging $3.99 a week, while a bit pricey for fifteen pages of content on newsprint, wouldn't be too bad if the stories themselves were good. But...well, I was heading in this direction almost from the beginning, but last night when I read #5 and then decided I'd rather read some more of The Comics Journal than #6, I realized it was time to bow out. I'd probably rather try out a different $3.99 floppy every week than stick with this.
Let's just take a look at the various serials and what went wrong, or hasn't gone right enough.
Batman - Eduardo Risso's art is always good, though he draws Bruce Wayne as rather thuggish. The problem I had was Azzarello's story. I've never thought he had a good take on Batman. The murder mystery is dragging along because Azzarello would rather write one scene after another of unpleasant people sneering and/or flirting with each other, Batman and even Alfred being included in the unpleasantness. Don't care.
Kamandi. Ryan Sook does the best art in here, and as an old Prince Valiant type of adventure serial, Dave Gibbons does okay, yet I think going for that archaic, narration-heavy style is a straitjacket for this story. It keeps it from breathing. Probably the most successful strip here, and that's depressing, because it should be a lot better.
Superman - I don't know what the hell John Arcudi is thinking here, but the more Superman whines about Earth not being his home, the less I like it. The rest of the dialogue is horrendous, too. Pa Kent getting all green and excited about the biofuels exhibit. Bermejo can definitely draw, but the storytelling is a bit stiff, or maybe Arcudi relies on him too much to sell a scene silently. Barbara Ciardo's coloring is more like varnish--really don't like the end result.
Deadman - J. Bullock at least has the right idea here--action-packed, traditional Deadman story that makes use of the larger format for wilder layouts. It's nothing too great, but I guess it falls on the positive side.
Green Lantern - I think Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones have a good handle on this one, too. Good, clean art and the story moves briskly. I'm positive on this one as well.
Metamorpho -Mike Allred is the right choice of artist for a retro take on Metamorpho, and it's kind of fun to read Neil Gaiman not being Neil Gaiman. Just not that fun. Allred makes use of the format, but Gaiman just isn't moving things along well enough. Pet peeve:
Teen Titans - Ugly art by Sean Galloway that then takes its watered-down manga stylistic influence and further mutes the effect with drab coloring. Eddie Berganza's script is uninvolving.
Adam Strange - Paul Pope rarely fails to be interesting. I'm liking this retro space opera well enough, though I'm already looking forward to the next Pope project, you know?
Supergirl - Yes, Amanda Connor has an attractive style suited to cute girl superheroes and their cuter pets. But I'm tired of this story.
Metal Men - Berganza can at least rest assured that there's one editor who makes a worse writer than him--Dan DiDio. There's probably only one writer in the world really made to write Metal Men, and we're still looking for that guy, forty years later. But certainly most other scribes would treat these gimmicky characters with the light touch required, and keep them away from stories with desperate airport terrorists. I'd like to say DiDio is squandering the work of Jose Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan, but I have to say their work here isn't great, although solidly composed.
Wonder Woman - Ben Caldwell takes what may have been an interesting idea--early adventure of Diana, where she has to gather seven mystic something-or-others--and breaks it into what looks like about 50 little, hard-to-follow panels, drenched in hazy twilight colors and clogged with text in a hard-to-read font. It's utterly wrong, and unreadable.
Sgt. Rock and Easy Co. - Adam Kubert writes a story for dad Joe, and while Joe still draws with the best of them, I can't summon much interest. Not bad, but I'm sure if one really wants some Sgt. Rock, there's plenty of it in archive volumes or even quarter bins.
Flash/Iris West - Karl Kerschl had a decent idea on paper--old school Barry Allen Flash time travel story, but we'll give half the page over to Iris' point of view as she's tired of Barry's Flash antics always getting in the way of their marriage. And yet, I don't really buy that Iris is over Barry, and if it's just an act to get Barry to change his act, why is she perpetrating it when Kerschl and artist Brenden Fletcher depict Barry as such a puppy dog who can't take those kinds of emotional games? Iris just comes off as kind of a bitch.
Demon/Catwoman - Glad Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze are getting work. The art is nice. Not really into the premise, as it doesn't really use Catwoman's best qualities (like, being a hot, saucy chick in a leather outfit instead of a panther), but if I was sticking with the book this would be okay.
Hawkman - a really curious effort from Kyle Baker. We get the thoughts of birds. We get terrorists--no, wait, now they're aliens. We get lovely drawing but some seriously wonky coloring. We get painstaking inking and terribly lazy, thick Paintbrush outlines, and a fascination with texture over storytelling intent, such as when an airplane hatch blows open and Baker feels it's important to reflect the explosion on the shiny wing, thereby diluting the effect (it's also drawn too far away). He's probably having a ball here, but it doesn't translate consistently to the reader from panel to panel, nor does it seem to matter much whether it's Hawkman or someone else involved.
Wednesday Comics is a smartly designed, sporadically diverting, well-intentioned dud. It needed maybe two or three killer strips to keep me going with the others, and I just can't find anything better than pretty good.
Christopher Allen
August 17th, 2009
I like the basic idea of the series--DC superheroes done by top talents in a page-a-week newsprint format reminiscent of the grand comics sections of the '30s and '40s. Editor Mark Chiarello has a track record of good taste and good design. And charging $3.99 a week, while a bit pricey for fifteen pages of content on newsprint, wouldn't be too bad if the stories themselves were good. But...well, I was heading in this direction almost from the beginning, but last night when I read #5 and then decided I'd rather read some more of The Comics Journal than #6, I realized it was time to bow out. I'd probably rather try out a different $3.99 floppy every week than stick with this.
Let's just take a look at the various serials and what went wrong, or hasn't gone right enough.
Batman - Eduardo Risso's art is always good, though he draws Bruce Wayne as rather thuggish. The problem I had was Azzarello's story. I've never thought he had a good take on Batman. The murder mystery is dragging along because Azzarello would rather write one scene after another of unpleasant people sneering and/or flirting with each other, Batman and even Alfred being included in the unpleasantness. Don't care.
Kamandi. Ryan Sook does the best art in here, and as an old Prince Valiant type of adventure serial, Dave Gibbons does okay, yet I think going for that archaic, narration-heavy style is a straitjacket for this story. It keeps it from breathing. Probably the most successful strip here, and that's depressing, because it should be a lot better.
Superman - I don't know what the hell John Arcudi is thinking here, but the more Superman whines about Earth not being his home, the less I like it. The rest of the dialogue is horrendous, too. Pa Kent getting all green and excited about the biofuels exhibit. Bermejo can definitely draw, but the storytelling is a bit stiff, or maybe Arcudi relies on him too much to sell a scene silently. Barbara Ciardo's coloring is more like varnish--really don't like the end result.
Deadman - J. Bullock at least has the right idea here--action-packed, traditional Deadman story that makes use of the larger format for wilder layouts. It's nothing too great, but I guess it falls on the positive side.
Green Lantern - I think Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones have a good handle on this one, too. Good, clean art and the story moves briskly. I'm positive on this one as well.
Metamorpho -Mike Allred is the right choice of artist for a retro take on Metamorpho, and it's kind of fun to read Neil Gaiman not being Neil Gaiman. Just not that fun. Allred makes use of the format, but Gaiman just isn't moving things along well enough. Pet peeve:
Teen Titans - Ugly art by Sean Galloway that then takes its watered-down manga stylistic influence and further mutes the effect with drab coloring. Eddie Berganza's script is uninvolving.
Adam Strange - Paul Pope rarely fails to be interesting. I'm liking this retro space opera well enough, though I'm already looking forward to the next Pope project, you know?
Supergirl - Yes, Amanda Connor has an attractive style suited to cute girl superheroes and their cuter pets. But I'm tired of this story.
Metal Men - Berganza can at least rest assured that there's one editor who makes a worse writer than him--Dan DiDio. There's probably only one writer in the world really made to write Metal Men, and we're still looking for that guy, forty years later. But certainly most other scribes would treat these gimmicky characters with the light touch required, and keep them away from stories with desperate airport terrorists. I'd like to say DiDio is squandering the work of Jose Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan, but I have to say their work here isn't great, although solidly composed.
Wonder Woman - Ben Caldwell takes what may have been an interesting idea--early adventure of Diana, where she has to gather seven mystic something-or-others--and breaks it into what looks like about 50 little, hard-to-follow panels, drenched in hazy twilight colors and clogged with text in a hard-to-read font. It's utterly wrong, and unreadable.
Sgt. Rock and Easy Co. - Adam Kubert writes a story for dad Joe, and while Joe still draws with the best of them, I can't summon much interest. Not bad, but I'm sure if one really wants some Sgt. Rock, there's plenty of it in archive volumes or even quarter bins.
Flash/Iris West - Karl Kerschl had a decent idea on paper--old school Barry Allen Flash time travel story, but we'll give half the page over to Iris' point of view as she's tired of Barry's Flash antics always getting in the way of their marriage. And yet, I don't really buy that Iris is over Barry, and if it's just an act to get Barry to change his act, why is she perpetrating it when Kerschl and artist Brenden Fletcher depict Barry as such a puppy dog who can't take those kinds of emotional games? Iris just comes off as kind of a bitch.
Demon/Catwoman - Glad Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze are getting work. The art is nice. Not really into the premise, as it doesn't really use Catwoman's best qualities (like, being a hot, saucy chick in a leather outfit instead of a panther), but if I was sticking with the book this would be okay.
Hawkman - a really curious effort from Kyle Baker. We get the thoughts of birds. We get terrorists--no, wait, now they're aliens. We get lovely drawing but some seriously wonky coloring. We get painstaking inking and terribly lazy, thick Paintbrush outlines, and a fascination with texture over storytelling intent, such as when an airplane hatch blows open and Baker feels it's important to reflect the explosion on the shiny wing, thereby diluting the effect (it's also drawn too far away). He's probably having a ball here, but it doesn't translate consistently to the reader from panel to panel, nor does it seem to matter much whether it's Hawkman or someone else involved.
Wednesday Comics is a smartly designed, sporadically diverting, well-intentioned dud. It needed maybe two or three killer strips to keep me going with the others, and I just can't find anything better than pretty good.
Christopher Allen
August 17th, 2009
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 9:25 AM [Link to this post]
2 Comments:
I'm on the exact same wavelength as you with this title, Chris. I also decided to bail on it this week. The only real draw for me in the first place was Pope and Risso, and while I agree the Kamandi strip was beautiful, three decent pages for $3.99 is hardly worth it. I also found the format kind of a pain to read. I ended up spreading it out on a coffee table, but that's not really comfortable. I think it was an interesting experiment, but it could have been a lot better.
I actually liked opening it and spreading it out. It emphasized the disposable nature of it and that I shouldn't be such a collector and worry about keeping it pristine, because it's impossible. On the other hand, not being able to fold it back totally flat was a pain.
Post a Comment
<< Home