Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Wednesday Comics

All in all, a really good read ... The Demon & Catwoman strip looks very promising... Batman, Deadman & Superman too... jury is out on Wonder Woman and Hawkman ... Supergirl & Metamorpho were cute ...

Gonna read it tonight but it looked really good during my browse through of the art.

Some of the art is truly mindblowing and such a diversity of styles. I think most people will find a few strips they really like.

Saw iot at the CBS today but didn't pick up. Waiting to hear if it's worth the $3.99. The newspaper quality was a bit of a turnoff. I think if it was $2.99, I would definitely have picked it up.

$4 is a lot but I haven't been reading anything else so I decided to give it a shot ... I would have liked a more coherent Wonder Woman story but we'll see where it goes ...

The art was fantastic. I really loved the larger than life art of Superman.

The story moved along in most of the strips with a cliffhanger. Someone apparently forgot to tell the Wonder Woman team the format. Crazy, spooky dream sequence? Where's the action?

The cuter strips were cute (Supergirl, Titans, Metal Men). A lot of the strips had a retro feel. Paul Pope's Adam Strange blew me away and I'm not a fan of his stuff.

Loved it. Totally worth the price. Metamorpho, Catwoman & Demon, Supergirl, Flash and Sgt. Rock were the highlights for me. The only misfires were probably Wonder Woman and Teen Titans.

It may have been only sixteen pages, but because of the economy of storytelling the format imposes, I'd say there was double the story you'd find in a 32 page book.

LardLad, the newsprint adds to the charm IMHO, and makes for a great experience.

Highly recommended.

Thoroughly enjoyable and probably the best idea DC has come up with in... well, I dunno, a long time. Yeah, I'd rather it was a bit cheaper but hey, paper is expensive these days.

I also give kudos to DC for trying something ORIGINAL and doing it well.

-Almost every story I found engaging and the lesser known charactes were well introduced.

-Almost ALL of the stories had great cliffhangers.

-Same reason some people love the smell of books I suppose, the paper added to my experience. Also it was easier on the eyes and brought back memories.

I'd like to see removed, the 12 week length requirement that could cause some writers to drag out a storyline to fit, while others struggle to find space and it made more affordable so that it would be something I could get every week. If they could find a way to print locally with locally sold ad space... Local papers are dieing, everything is on-line EXCEPT comics. Sounds like a business opportunity to me.


Made best use of the format?

If I had to pick the one that made best use of the format, I think Supergirl. Most important, there was a complete story. It had a conclusion. The panels were well populated and used to show action sequence. It had humor.

My second place would go to The Flash. Again, well populated panels, a lot of story, two in fact and instead of humor it has that over the top drama of a Mary Worth (though faster paced) or Apt 3G.

Room for improvement

At least ONE Ambush Bug or similar type page to balance out the drama and action and I would prefer more story in the Titans, Batman and Rock strips..

At least one totally self-contained story, no "to be continued." Really, that's a lot of space. If regular comics can do it, so can superhero comics though I'd imagine it would be a difficult write.

2/3rds of the female characters came off a bit fluffy with Wonder Woman shockingly so. Might work but I expected more butt kicking.

For me, the missfires were Sgt. Rock and Teen Titans and if not for the art, Batman.

Neither had much in the way of story or introduction, Rock had NONE.

Rock: Half the panels could have been eliminated without changing the story and those that remained could have been half sized as there was no action and little dialogue. Similarly Batman.

Titans? Just didn't grab me but I have hopes for the next issue.

BB, Which one do you think made best use of the format?


I did like the stories here with the exception of the Wonder Woman story. I didn't like the Teen Titans' art. The Metamorpho art reminded me of Ramona Fradon (as it should have) I'm looking forward to seeing Element Girl.

I wish Paul Pope had used the right color scheme for Adam Strange's costume.

The best art, in my opinion, was Kamandi.

I do like the whole package but also am a bit put off by the price.

Oops, made a cut and paste mistake. I fixed it.

I thought Supergirl made best use of the format. Not necessarily the best of the stories or even my favorite but I enjoyed it a lot and thought that writer really "got it".

I really check out this series but no comic shop here makes that difficult. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up an issue or two while I'm at SDCC.

I really loved this! I heard it was good and knew I'd probably like it - but I really loved it!

What really suprised me was how absorbing it was. I thought I'd fly through the whole thing in about 2 minutes (since it was only one page per character and all) but it felt like it took ages. And the gorgeous artwork looked fantastic on the larger pages. I wish the price of this series were a dollar lower than it is but IMO this comic is still worth the $3.99.

Favourite stories -

* Kamandi (the artwork! THE ARTWORK!)
* Hawkman (I loved the birds' narration. And THE ARTWORK!)
* The Demon & Catwoman (probably the best use of the one page format)
* Metamorpho (Element Girl? YES!)
* Deadman
and
* The Flash/Iris West double-bill.

Though I did really like all of them. If I have to be picky though...

Least favourite stories -

* Teen Titans (the art threw me and I didn't like seeing a new Trident when the current one(s) are perfectly viable characters. Extra points for the Don Hall/Dove sighting though)
* Metal Men (beautiful artwork but is Dan Didio the biggest ego-maniac in the world if he thinks his writing skills should keep him in the company of the likes of Gaiman, Simonson, Azzarello, Baker and co.? Same goes for Berganza over on Teen Titans)
* Superman (probably the least substantial of all of them)
* Sgt. Rock (another probably too-light read)

For those on the fence I recommend picking this book up and giving it a go. If, for no other reason, the fragile format of this series suggests to me that good quality back-issues/used copies will be hard to come across.

Teen Titans seems to be the whipping dog of the lot. Anyone else think it might have been salvaged with a bolder color scheme to offset the dulling of the paper? The story, what little there was, doesn't seem bad.

Quiz: Which strip made best use of Interlac and uh.. who would tell me what it says? My eyes are struggling a bit with it.

Metal Men and Didio: it had a bit of humor (Gold) and I thought caught the characters pretty well. It doesn't seem like a set-up for a twelve week story but maybe that has to do with that mysterious stranger.

Week #2 and Wednesday Comics continues to be the most pleasant surprise I've had in comics for a long while. This is such a fun book.

Top stories for me this week were -

1. Kamandi (amazingly beautiful artwork and perfect one-page storytelling)
2. The Flash (this one is so inventive)
3. Wonder Woman (this one is getting some flack online but it has me spellbound)
4. Hawkman (more beautiful artwork and a really visceral tale)
5. Green Lantern (I've never seen this artist before but now I want a book by him STAT!)
6. Metal Men (Didio actually has a certain old-school charm to his writing)
and
7. The Demon & Catwoman (why am I enjoying a story starring two characters I don't normally like so much?)

The in-betweens -

8. Metamorpho (basically one panel of story but oh, what a funkadelic panel)
9. Adam Strange (I enjoyed this but like Quislet Esq. the color scheme on Adam's costume is really bugging me)
10. Batman (I had to read this one about 3 times to work out what was going on, but I'm still enjoying the mystery)
11. Deadman (not enough happened)
12. Sgt Rock (kinda waiting for this one to pick up)

Bottom of the bunch were -

13. Teen Titans (not content with being my least favourite editor, Eddie Berganza is now vying to be one of my least favourite writers. bad writing in this one, especially whiny Tim. Though I was happy to see the elder Titans show up)
14. Supergirl (this one is waaaaayyyyy too cutesy for me)
15. Superman (awful, awful writing! And who wants a whiny Superman for their one page a week?)

Big shout out to all the artists on this project though. Across the board they are uniformly fantastic!

I really look forward to reading these when I make my CBS run next week. I'm glad there will be a few to read at once. I wonder whether the success of Wednesday Comics will generate any cognitive dissonance at DC about the way they write and draw "real" comics? I think it's great that USAToday is running the Superman strip. DC should offer up other pieces as inserts in the Sunday papers, the way Marvel did with the original Spider-Man issues a few years ago. Of course, what would happen if a kid were intrigued by Wednesday comics and picked up some "real" DC comics? Would he see Supergirl's father get a basketball-sized hole blown in his torso? Would he see Hawkman and Hawkgirl have their hearts ripped out by the reanimated corpses of some of their best friends, and become killer zombies themselves? Would they buy a bunch of "Superman" comics to find Superman completely absent from them? Would they be dilligent enough to find a Teen Titans comic that did NOT involve the brutal murder or character-rape misuse of a teenager? I wonder what DC will look like in the wake of the sick deathfest that is Blackest Night? Whatever, it probably won't be as good as Wednesday comics.

Interesting bit from BeaucoupKevin for those people squeamish on the pricetag:

A good bit of that math is taken away by the larger panels most of Wednesday's comics are using and of course, "lower-quality" paper and all that goes with it.

At $4, I don't expect Wed. comics to sustain or better, increase readership to the point where the price can be lowered.

There has been enough concern over cost that I think they will have to get the price to $3 in order to sustain readership and at that price, get more creative with distribution in order to increase readership.

Wed. comics would make the good gallon of milk to get the people to the store. A nice loss-leader.

I totally blanked on this, and wanted to get it. I will hit the CBS after work tomorrow and hope there's some copies of the issues so far left.

What a great way to get bang for your bucks.

Got it (first two issues), loved it. Lots of variety. Some people have complained about the expense, but I'm okay with it. Only one ad. Biggest surprise: Kamandi. Least liked: Sgt. Rock (just not much happening, yet). This is a great approach to an anthology.

Jeepers, i hope I can get my hands on these! Not sure if my CBR reserved them...

They look worth it for artwork alone, and that's usually not something I say.

Yeah, this book is all kinds of awesomeness. I wish it were cheaper, too, but there's more creativity, imagination and risk-taking in one issue of WC than there will be in the whole extended family of Blackest Night books. I love pretty much all the strips, although the Wonder Woman strip is damn hard to read and follow. It's otherwise too hard to pick a favorite because I love all of them. I will say that since I just dropped all the Green Lantern books because I think Blackest Night is teh suck, I'm thrilled by Busiek's GL strip in WC. The look and atmosphere are awesome and the story has been great so far, too. Hurray for WC! Can't wait to see how DC manages to learn all the wrong lessons from it.

Yeah, I'm kind of waiting for the same thing.


It's bad when I can't give DC all their due because I'm paranoid about how they'll mess it up.

So far IMO all the writers/artists have navigated the learning curve with aplomb.

Simpler is better I think but one idea I thought they might be doing in Hawkman and GL (the aliens looked similar to me) and I thought would be cute is that a couple of the stories end up tying together.

If all the writers are constricted to a 12 issue story, I think that'd be the first thing I'd change. A writer might have a one or two pager that they'd just love to do. I'm thinking particularly of the DC Christmas issues in which someone would write a one or two page heart tugger.

I'm loving Wednesday Comics. The format and variety are great fun. My favorite strips are Kamandi, Strange Adventures, Hawkman, Flash, Metapmorpho, Batman, and Metal Men. That's a lot of favorites !!


Deadman is disappointing. I'm totally confused by Wonder Woman.

At first I freaked out about the obvious 12-page story, although these pages are so big, it's probably equivalent to a 20-plus page regular comic story.

I think it's just really freeing to be able to tell and read a story that doesn't HAVE to fit into current continuity. I don't have to read any of these and wonder when some dumb zombie is gonna pop up and rip Hawkman's heart out.

I don't think there's a strip I'm NOT enjoying, although I DO worry a little about the Superman story. Is this a wimpy, self-doubting Supes from earlier in this decade? Please no. I'm glad that's gone. Wonder Woman is virtually inscrutable -- the pictures are just too small and too monochromatic. Other than those 2 quibbles (and the Wonder Woman story may end up being quite interesting) I'm loving every bit of it. Gaiman's Metamorpho may really turn out to be the greatest superhero of all time.

Wonder Woman sort of fascinates me. It is pretty odd, but it's her dreaming (or maybe not). It has a real teenager feel about it, which I like, Wonder Woman as Supergirl.

I meant to point out, from Metamorpho week #1, Simon Stagg's Legionesque comment: "This journey is much too dangerous for a girl!" But this is 2009, so the girl went along anyways....