Broken Frontier

DC is excited about Wednesday Comics and they want you to be as well!

When I was a kid, there was only one part of the newspaper that I cared about: the comics. Imagine that. The adventures of Spider-Man, Max Collins’ take on Dick Tracy, Bill Watterson, the last few years of Peanuts. These meant more to me than the release of hostages in Iran or the fall of the Berlin Wall. The only thing more special was Sunday Morning.

On Sundays, the comics got their own section, with bigger strips and color!!! It was most important that I get a hold of them right away, before my brother got crayon all over the back page doing activities. On Sundays, Calvin had blonde hair, Odie was a pale yellow with brown ears, and Opus had a red tongue (most of the time).

Now, DC wants me to get that excited about Wednesdays. This book is a throwback to the origins of the comic book. The first comic books were just that, books compiling collections of the most popular strips from the newspaper. Over the years, they removed themselves from their humble origins, even touting themselves as Graphic Novels to the general population these days.

It wasn’t just a name change though, it was a paradigm shift. With the proliferation of the trade paperback, we have seen comics go from short, concise done-in-one books to decompressed stories told in nice, neat six-chapter segments. The cliffhanger became an oddity, not the norm, but even sadder, the surgical precision of stories told in a confined amount of space became a lost art in the four-color world of costumed heroes.

This title captures that spirit again. Beyond just the newsprint stock, it has a different look on the shelf with its folded up format that becomes a giant page not quite as tall, but wider than a typical modern day broadsheet. It looks like something you might be handed in a metropolitan area, spouting the artistic events and left-sided politics of the area.

Then there are the stories themselves... written and drawn by the brightest stars working in comics today. Names like Neil Gaiman or Brian Azzarello, Michael Allred or Paul Pope. The characters range from DC’s iconic trinity to more obscure treasures like Kamandi. And like the Sunday funnies of my youth, there is a little something for everyone. An example for the most incredulous, there is even a soap-styled Iris West story that matches the melodrama of Sally Forth.

The art is the first thing you notice about the book: the circles filled with teasers of the content inside on the front cover; the amazing visuals of Kyle Baker’s Hawkman... even beyond that though, this is newsprint, but such a dense stock that the lines and colors aren’t muddied like a tattered copy of a Marvel Transformers comic. No, even Bermejo’s painted Superman story holds up. It rivals Ross on glossy paper for sheen and quality.

Like the characters themselves, there are a myriad of styles on display here. The classic look of Joe Kubert’s Sgt Rock is vastly different from the Manga inspired look of Galloway’s Teen Titans, and in turn, both are far removed from the dreamscape sketchiness of Caldwell’s Wonder Woman or the Neon Longue stylings of Quinones’ Green Lantern.

The stories are all basic in set-up, and with the exception of the apparently contained Wonder Woman story, these are all going to be continued in the next issue. Some, like Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock, never quite get going. Some, like Bullock and Hueck’s Deadman, not only take off running but are so dense that they manage to capsulate an entire legendary run on a character while setting an intriguing mystery in place.

Styles run amuck in the writing as well. Gaiman’s Metamorpho matches Allred’s esoteric art. Paul Pope’s Strange Adventures is possible the most aptly titled story ever. Didio plays for yucks in Metal Men and Azzarello writes an emotional Batman piece.

This is an anthology done to perfection. It is also an ingenious package calling yesteryear to memory but clearly standing out as bold in today’s market. Not only that, DC has put its best foot forward in marketing this one. USA Today is reprinting the Superman tales in its Wednesday editions. Pages have been uploaded on DC’s website. Shops were sent a full size version of the Batman page from this issue. The convention panels have been abuzz with the format and the talent.

Wednesday Comics is hype done right and most importantly backed up not only in the comic community but to the wider public as well. Now it remains to be seen if the consumer noticed. This reader thinks that anyone who misses out is just plum crazy.