The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1040: Wednesday Comics #12, September 23, 2009

Alright, alright, let's wrap this up!

My votes for the best three features in this series are "Metamorpho," "Supergirl," and "Hawkman." Not how I would have seen things turning out when I started the series. Each does something cool or different with the format. "Metamorpho," much like its protagonist, shifts and melts and fits into the tabloid-sized page in a number of different ways. There are traditional panel arrangements followed by a two-page table of elements-as-dialogue/maze that really pushes what one is able to do, visually at least, with this kind of space. The story was okay - clever, but not really that entertaining.

"Supergirl," on the other hand, uses a very traditional technical structure, but tells a story that is just charming. It's nicely-plotted, something interesting happens in every segment - I think what I want to say about it is that it suits the medium of its publication - the newspaper strip. It wasn't trying to be deep and philosophical. It was trying to be entertaining Saturday morning breakfast comics. And it succeeds.

I have to admit that "Hawkman" was not one of the strips I'd have said I'd enjoy - he's never been my favourite character. But in this iteration, told by Kyle Baker, he's much more interesting. Add to this that somehow in the space of these 12 pages, Baker manages to tell us two really awesome, really short, superhero stories disguised as one story. It really is pretty great.

And we're done with Wednesday Comics. Not my favourite series that I've read, but overall pretty cool.

Tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow.

We'll start with early Image stuff. Oh yes.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1039: Wednesday Comics #11, September 16, 2009

Climax achieved! (Not that way - get yer mind out of the gutter!)

All that remains for each story is a brief moment of crisis, and then a denouement. I'll be in a better position to comment on the narratives tomorrow, I think, as I'll finally have all the pieces I need to see them fully. There are definitely strips that got it right, "it" being that feeling of the newspaper comic supplement strip, but there are others that were more 12-page comic stories published as 12 separate pages. There's a difference, I think.

One strip that I'm actually consistently entertained by, and that I've overlooked thus far, is Kyle Baker's "Hawkman." It's good, solid, adventure, full of terrorists, aliens, dinosaurs, and superheroes, and is actually a very interesting look at the superhero in crisis management - (SPOILER) the plane that Hawkman is rescuing crashes on an island populated by ferocious dinosaurs, and his harness is destroyed. And there's no help coming. We get to see what kind of a hero Hawkman actually is, I think. He's brutal, often to the point of savagery, and in that way resembles at his best that other famed comic book superhero survivalist, Wolverine.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1038: Wednesday Comics #10, September 9, 2009

I've figured out the perfect analogy for reading Wednesday Comics. It's like when we had really slow dial-up Internet, and you'd have to wait 20 minutes for a single image to load. You saw the image in little tiny increments, which in a lot of ways took away from the image in its entirety when it loaded. Sometimes the power of a work of art is in its immediacy.

There's another problem I've encountered, and it's one that regular newspaper comics wouldn't necessarily run into. As the series was set up as a limited run, with a finite number of issues, each creative team was aware of how many pages they had, and when the story had to end. As a result, every story in this series is hitting its climax right now. It's hard to maintain that level of emotional investment for all of the stories, and this inevitably leads to a lack of emotional investment in any of them.

And yet, I still think I like the series. Perhaps its the characters they've chosen, or just the sheer size of the art. There's something quite wonderful about Wednesday Comics, even though, as a collection of stories, I just don't think it's working that well.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1037: Wednesday Comics #9, September 2, 2009

Sort of continuing on from my post yesterday, we're seeing each story hit its high point, its climax. I teach a very simple way of understanding narrative to my classes, called "Freytag's Pyramid." It's a very basic tool for thinking through narrative, but quite effective. These newspaper strip styled comics are adhering to the pyramid quite nicely. These climactic moments are presented in a nice array of styles, from Superman's figuring out of his dilemma to the Flash's maddening skipping through time and dimensions. The climax is the highest emotional point in a story. So how is it that a story told in single pages across 12 weeks can have such a thing? Is there not something to the sense of immediacy a climax has when one is reading a novel or a short story? What if you had to read the story in chunks of predetermined length? Would that affect your enjoyment of the climax when you reached it?

I think I might be talking nonsense today. But that's fine - I've given the ol' brain a few weeks off.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1036: Wednesday Comics #8, August 26, 2009

I've been trying to figure out why it is that I just don't have a lot to say about this series. It could be that it's because I'm blogging and reading it at a very busy time - some days, I'll admit, I just don't want to write anything about the comic I'm doing. But I feel like there's been an unusual preponderance of posts for Wednesday Comics that I haven't felt like writing.

But what I think it might actually be is the format itself. A single page of a story isn't really that much to talk about. I could perhaps go on about the art, but, if we're to be honest, the art is the side of comics that I know the least about. Narrative is kind of my jam. And while the pages are pushing their respective stories ahead, each story is so short that these page-by-page installments might actually be too short to offer much insight into their respective plots. Perhaps we need just slightly more information. This might be why Ben Caldwell's "Wonder Woman" works relatively well, despite my earlier misgivings, because it manages to include so very much on one page. There's an arc to the chunk of narrative that's presented in that strip.

Perhaps. Whatever it is, I'll finish out the series, but I'm not really getting too much out of it. I'm tempted to re-read the stories in completion to see if I appreciate it more. I'll let you know how that turns out.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1035: Wednesday Comics #7, August 19, 2009

So let's do the back end of Wednesday Comics.

I seem to recall when I picked this up, it was purely out of excitement over Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred's collaboration on "Metamorpho." I've always been partial to the character, as he for some reason holds a similar resonance as the Doom Patrol, though I don't know that their adventures are really anything like one another. It's just an odd association, I guess. And while it is a pretty good strip, I have to say that the "Deadman" and "Superman" strips are knocking it out of the park. Particularly "Deadman." I've mentioned before, but it's got that DC Animated U look to it, but it's so much more visceral. Quite an interesting combination, and is making for excellent "newspaper" comics.

I'm kind of into the "Kamandi" strip as well - it's set up like a Prince Valiant-style comic, where the characters don't speak in speech bubbles, but in the text boxes that accompany each panel. It's not my favourite style of comics, but it works quite nicely in this pastiche of the old adventure strips.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1024: Wednesday Comics #6, August 12, 2009

Losing my interest in this series, I'm afraid. Though the Superman story continues to be pretty great, as does the Adam Strange strip, the rest aren't really blowing my mind that much. But that's okay - I'm going to take a break for the next little while and start reading Christmas comics - if I can find any that I haven't already read for the project, that is.

I will say that the Deadman strip is actually pretty cool - it's riffing on the DC Animated style (as is Wonder Woman), and it's kind of a cool take on Boston Brand. He's one of those heroes I'm not super familiar with, but whenever he shows up in a comic, I enjoy his sarcasm. Also, should you ever get the chance to read any of Kelley Jones's work on him, do it. Jones is a treasure.

So, tomorrow we'll start with some holiday cheer. I wish I had some Hanukkah comics, or anything else that celebrated the various holidays that happen this time of year. I'm sure there must be some Yuletide ones out there. And, I'm embarrassed to admit, I still don't have all of Grant Morrison's take on the early days of Santa in Klaus. Maybe I'll treat myself to an early present.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1023: Wednesday Comics #5, August 5, 2009

Not quite half way through the series, and I still think the Superman story is the best one. I really quite like the Wonder Woman strip as well, though I think that Ben Caldwell's decision to use tiny, tiny panels in the strip might have been a mistake. Sometimes I have trouble figuring out what's going on.

And that's all the brain I have today. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1022: Wednesday Comics #4, July 29, 2009

Hopefully you'll forgive the brief reviews this week. Not only am I sick (though getting better), but I'm also deep in marking for the end of term. It leaves me with very little brain power at the end of the day.

Wednesday Comics is a pretty great read, though. What I'm curious about is whether, when it was reprinted, the stories were collected together, or the weekly page-by-page format was kept.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1021: Wednesday Comics #3, July 22, 2009

Apologies. Same situation as yesterday. Even typing hurts.
This comic was pretty cool. The Metamorpho and Superman features are definitely my faves.
To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1020: Wednesday Comics #2, July 15, 2009

Really quite sick right now. I thought it was allergies.

I'll say, the "New Frontier" era Green Lantern (and perhaps Flash) stories in this series are excellent. And John Arcudi's take on Superman is really pretty great. The only dark spot is the Titans story, not for its content, but because it was written by disgraced former-editor Eddie Berganza.

Afraid that's all I've got for today. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1019: Wednesday Comics #1, July 8, 2009

There's something to the tabloid size comic. One of the most beautiful books I own is McSweeney's Quarterly Concern volume 13, the comics issue. The entire dust jacket folds out into a tabloid-sized comic. The size opens up so many possibilities, both for larger reproduction to deliver more awareness of detail, or also for sheer size to be able to pack information into. Wednesday Comics takes advantage of the format in both of these ways. There are stories that are little more than a blown up 3/3 grid, but the amount of reproductive detail is just wonderful. And there are others that pack amazing amounts of art into the space. None of them have sucked me in yet, though I remember being a fan of the "Wonder Woman" story in here. As the series goes on, I feel that the artists were starting to experiment with the medium. Some of Mike Allred's "Metamorpho" pages are wonderful.

I'm curious to see if this series works with a shorter wait between comics. When I teach comics, I sometimes include a section about serialization and the effect it has on storytelling. This series was conceived as a weekly series. I wonder if there are things that will come up and perhaps not work when it's being read on a daily basis.

To be continued.