by Victorian Squid » Wed Jul 08, 2009 4:12 pm
I lost the review I was typing up, so I'll be brief. Wednesday Comics smells fantastic and is nearly perfect. The various styles of writing, art, lettering, layout, etc. all evoke the spirit of the old newsprint strips reinvented all over again. The creative match-ups are all so perfect I don't understand why all DC Comics can't be this way. I love the more obscure properties used, I was hoping for less of the A-Listers but the Lee Bermejo art in the Superman page and the logo of the Green Lantern page alone make them really shine as well. If there is one page I am less enthusiastic about, it's the Teen Titans page. The colors don't pop the way the other pages do, and this style is always confusing for me visually. I haven't read TT since Donna married Terry Long's Afro and so I don't get if the blonde (Wonder Girl?) is SUPPOSED to be a midget, or at least a person with abnormally stumpy legs, or what when I look at this. The eyes look like they are mushroomed out, big and cartoony and vacant. I can't relate as easily to characters drawn like this, it's a style I can never quite accept. Speaking of art styles, I haven't taken a close look at Paul Pope's work since we were both art students in Hopkins Hall. It's pretty interesting to remember old class critiques and look at his Strange Adventures page. Everything I felt were technical weaknesses in his early pre-published work is refined to stylistic elegance here. The lettering even looks familiar. Nice work, Paul! The Deadman strip is perfect, and Mike Allred's Metamorpho is masterful as well. Supergirl and The Metal Men look great and are going to be a lot of fun if these first pages are any indication. The Flash page & the Sgt. Rock page evoke old school DC to such a degree I wanted to see the old DC logo on this thing. I saw Joe Kubert at a con last year and there isn't a classier guy in the business. The Catwoman/Demon page needs more Demon but this is first issue set-up so no big deal, something to look forward to next week. Kyle Baker's Hawkman is, to me, the best single page of Hawkman I've ever seen in terms of art & writing paired.
The only thing I'd change is the Robot Chicken ad. It's the one thing that didn't cohere with the overall design of the issue, but is a necessary evil I guess.
10
In terms of storage, I may store flattened and open, like some store old newspapers (in fact using supplies made for papers). While this would probably be just fine in a golden b&b for a good long time, eventually those folded edges become the most brittle part of folded newspapers in most cases of longer-term acidification. Anyway, I bought 3 of them. I really hope this signals a turn around for DC, and also more properties and creative teams can be given a page after the initial 12 issues are up. Wouldn't it be cool if the second edition of WC were to feature different multiverses instead of waiting for a Grant Morrison extravaganza?