Wednesday Comics Assessment

The tabloid-style comics experiment from DC that I mentioned in my previous post has now reached three issues and 25% of its 12 week run. So now seems like a good time to make a preliminary assessment.

First, I like it. A lot. This is the first comic in a very long time that has made me want to get to the comic book store on Wednesday. Now, feature by feature:

Batman by Azzarello and Risso. This is not only good but getting better each week. Each page so far has told its own little story in addition to being part of the overall story. That's perfect serial storytelling. I'm impressed, and I'm not much of a Batman fan; this may be the most technically proficient strip of the whole publication.

Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth by Ryan and Sook. This is the most handsomely mounted of the strips, big and brash and yet formal, very much Hal Foster in style. Again, not a Kamandi fan, but I'm finding this great fun. The story is moving along at a good pace.

Superman by Arcudi and Bernejo. This looks good, but is a waste of space and ink. The successful strips in Wednesday Comics are plunging right in and telling a story. Superman is wallowing in self-pity; nothing at all has happened. Just awful.

Deadman by Bullock and Heuck. Off to a somewhat murky start, I'd say, but interesting to look at as Deadman is being buffeted about by forces beyond his control.

Green Lantern by Busiek and Quinones. So far this is only ok, but I have confidence in Busiek; he rarely misfires. The art is nice, and the story is acceptable and is moving at a decent pace.

Metamorpho by Gaiman and Allred. I like this, but only the first page was completely successful. The second and third installments are basically tour-de-force splash pages; nice to look at but doing the storytelling work of maybe two panels. This strip needs to pick up the pace. But I'm still enjoying it.

Teen Titans by Berganza and Galloway. This is just awful. Bad, washed out art, an inexplicable storyline, characters who receive no definition (and too many characters). Along with Superman, the least technically proficient or interesting strip in Wednesday Comics.

Strange Adventures by Pope. From the ridiculous to the sublime. This isn't just good, this is memorable. Paul Pope is actually reinventing Adam Strange as an interesting character and the planet Rann as an interesting setting. I wouldn't have thought it possible; Adam Strange was always the most bloodless of Silver Age creations, or I thought so. Great stuff.

Supergirl by Palmiotti and Conner. It's obvious that some of the creators are deliberately aping a particular Sunday newspaper comic strip, at least in part (Kamandi is doing Prince Valiant, while the Wonder Woman strip is using a Little Nemo in Slumberland gimmick); Supergirl seems instead to be filling a standard niche on the Sunday pages: light humor. Three issues and she's just chasing Krypto the Superdog and Streaky the Supercat all over the place. I'm guessing it just isn't aimed at me, and that's ok. I've basically never read a Supergirl story I thought was worth the effort, and this isn't changing my mind, but it isn't actually offensively bad like Teen Titans or Superman.

Metal Men by Didio and Garcia-Lopez. This is fine but not inspired. After a clever and visually interesting first strip, it's turned into a bank robbery adventure. Nice art, I always liked Garcia-Lopez. But I'm not sure there's a lot of point to this, or not yet.

Wonder Woman by Caldwell. This one is hard to evaluate. The panels are tiny and the action hard to follow, and it's very wordy. Frankly, I can't tell what's going on. The only thing I'm getting is that the adventure is taking place in a very young Wonder Woman's dreams. At least the strip is different; it may take rereading the whole thing to evaluate it. Also, I really like the new logo.

Sgt. Rock and Easy Company by Kubert and Kubert. I was never a fan of war comics, with the occasional exception of the Marvel analogue to this feature, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. So this just doesn't do much for me, and I'll just note that nothing has really happened in three strips. Rock is being interrogated by Nazis. Ok, what next?

Flash Comics by Kerschl and Fletcher. Again, this is divided into pseudo romance strip Iris West and the more conventional superhero strip The Flash. Both are good; different in tone but telling the same story. Very clever. Three pages in and we're already into a standard (for the Silver Age Flash) time-travel story. It's carried off with delirious speed here... of course.

The Demon and Catwoman. Another story that has the pacing right, although we see very little of the Demon so far. Catwoman is playing her usual ambiguous role in the story, and is in big trouble that rather serves her right so far. Not spectacular or breaking new ground, but ok.

Hawkman by Baker. Again a well-paced strip that just plunged in and kept moving fast. The art is gorgeous, the action is exciting, and I'm looking forward to the next installment already.

The overall assessment so far? A fun variety of material every issue, a high standard of quality being met for most of the strips. I think Wednesday Comics is a winner so far.

Wednesday Comics

I have been looking forward for months to the debut of Wednesday Comics, a 12 issue weekly anthology series from DC. The gimmick is that it isn't a conventional comic book pamphlet... it is a tabloid-sized newsprint publication meant to resemble the old-fashioned Sunday newspaper comics. Not the modern ones with the miniscule strips, but the glorious old full-page strips.

The price is $3.99, which is wince-inducing, but I can't say I'm not getting my moneys worth. If any comic is worth four bucks, this is.

Weekly comics are not strictly new. DC ran Action Comics Weekly for a while a couple of decades ago, and they've been publishing three year long weeklies over the past three years: 52 (which was wonderful), Countdown (which was not), and Trinity (which was not to my taste). And Amazing Spider-Man is published almost weekly, about three weeks every month. So it's not unheard of.

But the comic strip style is new. Each strip gets only one page, strange pacing by superhero conventions, but perfectly conventional by comic strip standards. And they've recruited a remarkable lineup of talented artists and writers to do this.

My favorites were Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook (they went for a Prince Valiant narration style that suits the strip); Green Lantern by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones (most of the strip involves drink orders in a bar in the "Jet Age", which I found a nice contrast to the space action in the last panel); Metamorpho The Element Man, with writing by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred (they fully embraced the Silver Age feel of the original strip, and it's glorious); Strange Adventures, with stunning work by Paul Pope, a big favorite of mine (again, full embrace of the Silver Age original Adam Strange); and Hawkman by Kyle Baker (gorgeous art and unusual narration).

The only real disappointment was the Teen Titans page. Unwisely, the confusing current continuity is apparently being used, which means no one but current readers will know who most of the characters are. I haven't the faintest. The art is the least impressive, and the writer chose to do exposition instead of story... and I didn't get anything from the exposition, either.

The Batman strip was ok; the Superman strip blah; the Flash page, interestingly called Flash Comics with a Flash strip paired with an Iris West strip, was interesting. And the Wonder Woman strip might be brilliant, even with pretty but confusing art, but I'm not sure yet. (If they really do it in Little Nemo dream segments each week, I'll be very impressed; also, I really like the new logo.)

I'm looking forward very much to more of this.

Hubris

Last weekend, the Comic Book Legends Revealed column asked the question: when was Dr. Strange's home (in Marvel Comics Greenwich Village) first called the "Sanctum Sanctorum?" Shortly thereafter, the great Dr. Strange blogger Neilalien noted the question and said that he would check when he had time but perhaps some other Doc uber-fan would get to it first.

Well, I thought (and said out loud, too) "That would be me!" Starting from the beginning in Essential Doctor Strange 1, which reprints the earliest stories, and taking notes, I found that the earliest mention of the name was in Strange Tales #128. Just to be on the safe side, I unearthed and checked my copy of the original issue to make sure there hadn't been some sort of editing change. I commented at Comic Book Legends Revealed to that effect, and also emailed Neilalien with my findings, finding that a good excuse to make some observations regarding a recent post he had made. And I thought: job well done.

Or not. Tonight, the master emailed me and with his customary exquisite courtesy pointed out that Doc actually first used the phrase in Strange Tales #125. I ran for my copy of Essential Doctor Strange 1 and yes, there it is on page 4, panel 4. I actually remember looking at that very panel (there were a lot of scenes of the Sanctum that issue), but somehow it didn't impress itself on me.

Ah well. On the plus side, the established order of the universe has asserted itself. I am quite a fan of Dr. Strange - it is my ambition to collect every issue in which appears, even as a cameo, and I am well along in the project - and yet I am but the pupil, and Neilalien is the master. And that is surely as it should be.

Tamam shud!

Michigan's Liquor Legal Environment

This post at the Liquidity Preference blog discusses the topic. The writer makes a key observation:

If the government would get out of the way, Michigan could continue to thrive as a center for micro-distilling. And if not, I’m sure less restrictive states like Colorado will be glad to lure away their businesses.

Yes. If only anyone in Michigan's government would listen to the obvious.

Looking for Summer Reading?

Suggestions for good fantasy reading from Orson Scott Card, via National Review.

Zzang!

On a recent stop at Whole Foods Market in Rochester, I bought a candy bar. An unexceptionable event, you would think, but this was a $5 candy bar (Zingerman's Zzang! Candy Bars "What The Fudge?") in a little box from Zingerman's, the famous Ann Arbor deli. Two comments: $5 is a bit much for a single candy bar, even a 3 oz confection; this is one of the best pieces of candy I've ever eaten.

The box describes it as "Milk chocolate fudge, Muscovado caramel, and malted milk cream dipped in dark chocolate."

This is rather like a Milky Way, only good. Really shockingly good. It was also very rich, though not cloying or overly sweet, and the Cat Bastet and I split it. I ended up with 3/4 of the bar (her tolerance for sweets is distinctly lower than mine), but I ate it in three separate servings over the course of the evening, not all at once. It was worth savoring.

An elegant treat for rare occasions, especially at that price.

Comics in early July

I haven't had anything to say about comic books in a while. After the frustrations of early 2009, there have been a few decent things published, and I'm looking forward to Wednesday Comics from DC next week. Here are a few recent purchases of note:

Reborn 1 of 5. Captain America, famously, is dead, shot down on Manhattan courthouse steps two summers ago. And he's been replaced, to general satisfaction, by his old sidekick, Bucky Barnes. Now, no one has supposed, I would guess, that Steve Rogers wouldn't be back at some point, and any attentive and experienced super-hero comics reader couldn't have read the account of his death without picturing several ways for the writer to get out of it. Well, the method chosen surprised me a little... it's ok, and gives more opportunity for us to see Cap in WW II scenes, which has been a theme of Ed Brubaker's writing during this edition. I just expected something mind-blowing. This is good, though, and the Bryan Hitch art is fantastic. I really like Hitch, who combines a photo-realism style with great dynamism.

Mysterius the Unfathomable 2 of 5. This is way late, the book must have come out months ago, because I think the mini-series is complete. But I just saw the only copy I've seen at all on Wednesday, so I picked it up. Mysterius is a somewhat cranky, even rather sleazy, stage magician who now does investigations. The book is written by Jeff Parker, whom I like tremendously. He's written X-Men: First Class, Marvel Adventures: The Avengers and Agents of Atlas, all wonderful reads. I'd read that Mysterius was good, but wow. I haven't had this much fun reading a comic since All-Star Superman wrapped. The writing is witty, the story moves along briskly, intercut with interesting flashbacks from previous adventures, and the art is stylized and humorous in tone. I'll have to track down the rest of this.

Madame Xanadu 9-11. I first encountered Madame Xanadu in a one-shot by Steve Engelhart and Marshall Rogers many years ago. She was a fortune teller with real magical powers, and has appeared a few times since in various magic-themed DC books. But they weren't written by Englehart or drawn by Rogers, so I didn't pay much attention. The character recently got her own book, written by Matt Wagner. I bought the first couple of issues, which were handsome productions, but found the storytelling style frustrating; it was apparent that the series is tracing Xanadu from her origins (as Nimue) in Arthurian England, but without any editorial comment about what the pace was going to be like. My patience for that sort of thing is limited - serial fiction has some requirements to keep the reader coming back for the next issue, and I didn't think this version of Madame Xanadu was satisfying those requirements. I just happened to glance at a recent issue, however, and found that characters of greater interest, the Phantom Stranger and Zatara the magician (father of Zatanna) were appearing in a story set in the 1930s. Now that was fun. I do like the way Wagner allows Xanadu to be at odds with the other characters and even to make it clear that she's the one who's mistaken in the conflict, and yet sympathetic.

The Government and Efficiency

You would think handling a simple thing like distributing booze from a liquor control commission would be easy enough. I mean, they've been doing it in Washington state since the 30s, right?

Nope.

As I've noted before, I'm not a fan of Michigan's distribution system. They seem to get the liquor to stores ok, but I deeply resent the senseless control over what I can buy for my liquor cabinet. If they'll sell gin at all, why can't I get Bluecoat? If they sell rye, why can't I get Rittenhouse?

I can't wait until the government is running health care. There won't be any problem with that, oh no sir.