Wednesday Comics #6

I've been hearing words to the effect that Wednesday Comics #6 is the best issue yet. I don't know if that's the case, but it does seem to contain a lot of very fast-paced character moments that make this a faster read than normal. Nevertheless, my normal favorites are persisting, and everything else is improving, save "Green Lantern."

1. "Strange Adventures" by Paul Pope. Pope amps up the intrigue in this issue as we finally cut away from Alanna's adventures on Rann to see what has been happening with Adam now that he has escaped his captors with help from a random zeta beam. What it turns out, though, is that Adam Strange of earth is not the same young, handsome warrior that he is on Rann, but is instead an aging professor who first found the zeta beams digging around Peru, which is where Adam finds his apartment curiously untouched. Working in Machu Picchu, Strange has a crisis of conscience, and wonders if "all of it has been nothing more than an elaborate dream." This neat ploy by Pope is likely to provoke further comparisons between Strange and Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, and in any case puts a human stamp on what has been to this point pretty fantastical stuff. It also shows that Pope is just as good at crafting devastating visuals out of real-life Incan temples as he is drawing tubular trees and dog-rooster hybrids. The level of creativity in this strip is basically unmatched--I can imagine Pope doing brilliant things with Strange staying on earth for the remainder of the series, just as I can imagine him turning back to the adventures of Alanna. In any case, this is Pope's best work yet.

2. "Deadman" by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck. Speaking of which, I still maintain that Bullock is kind of the dynamic page layout, and this issue is no exception. Bullock's visuals have been pretty cartoony up to this point, but the subject matter here is straight brutal, as we see the aftermath of Boston Brand being stabbed and then falling off some undetermined cliff to his death. Pretty heroic stuff, and the authors really get a lot of mileage through narrating Boston's thoughts upon realizing that he is going to die for a second time, and this time he realizes that he has yet to really go the slow and painful route. Then we get the money shot, of three ethereal women, one of whom Boston was trying to rescue before. What could be going on here? Perhaps these women weren't being killed in the first few strips, but being saved from some greater horror. In any case, Bullock and Heuck have really gotten into what makes Boston Brand such a great character in the model of all those selfless tragic heroes with a laconic side (exhibit A being Spider-Man). I also prefer this appearance to Boston Brand in the first Batman: Blackest Night issue, where he was used more as a plot device.

3. "Flash Comics" by Karl Kerschl and Brendan Fletcher. I suppose I was right about three Flashes showing up, just as I was right that this time travel stuff is sometimes such a headache that it doesn't really seem worth it. Still, I have to give the team credit for jettisoning "Iris West" just as I thought the concept was getting a bit stale. In its place, we have "Gorilla Grodd" by Kerschl and Fletcher, which bears certain similarities to the "Kamandi" strip but we will let that go for now. The time travel stuff still isn't adding up, but I am giving this comic my hearty thumbs up based on the conceptual brilliance of three concurrent strips that I'm sure will all mirror each other in some way toward the end. As for the strips themselves? The Flash does something cool I've never seen him do before: flying through space, he vibrates through time so that he can meet up with earth's orbit. Meanwhile, Grodd goes back in time to conquer the world, but dies of old age. Perhaps we will see even more ideas for strips in the future? Kerschl and Fletcher have what seems to be a stale-proof method at work.

4. "Wonder Woman" by Ben Caldwell. A few weeks ago, I talked about how impressed I was to see Caldwell move the action forward by moving from right to left. This time, Caldwell breaks the mold by having the action continue vertically as opposed to horizontally. Is this difficult to read in any way? To me, no, but then again I never had much trouble reading it once I put a little effort into following the story. Of all the talent involved with Wednesday Comics, I think Caldwell is the one who deserves the most credit for breaking the mold, and telling an engaging story in the process. This time, we get to see the introduction of Etta Candy, with trademark lollipop, as Diana tries to defend her and her uncle against the Great Pendragon, who look suitably vicious in a Disney-like vein under Caldwell's pen. There are fewer extremely tiny panels than usual, and the action is a bit easier to follow. And this time, the book ends on a different note than it has before, suggesting that Caldwell is now serious about moving the story in new and unexpected fashions. I don't mind if he starts going more micro, either.

5. "Metal Men" by Dan Didio, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and Kevin Nowlan. This is the most enjoyable issue of "Metal Men" yet, due to the introduction of a surprise villain at the end that makes a suitably ridiculous first impression (ripping the roof off a bank? Why? And how?). Yes, that's Chemo, one of DC's sadly underused villains, who let's be honest won't be much of a threat against non-organic heroes like the Metal Men. Still, the critical beatdown that ensues will most assuredly be more fun than what has come before. The one problem I can find in this strip is that I think it's about time that DiDio sets a limit on the amount of times that bad guys mistake the Metal Men for crucial hardware: I knew, two issues earlier, than Pretorius' plan would be foiled by Tin assuming the role of the detonator. This is meant to be silly fun, and it works a lot better than most of the other more humor-based strips. I should also say it looks very good as well: thoroughly modern and yet engagingly silly, this is an ideal way of portraying the Metal Men (disclosure: I have not been following the other Metal Men comic). Chemo's last line is also priceless.

6. "Sgt. Rock & Easy Co." by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert. Finally, something is happening, and as I thought it involves the guy taking pictures. Turns out Rock doesn't need Easy Co. to save him after all, as it turns out our mysterious photographer has his own ulterior motive, to either save Rock's hide or use him for his own mysterious ends. It's such a relief, halfway through, that Sgt. Rock is finally able to move from the spot he has been in for the last five weeks. And Easy Co. gets more of a starring role this time, offering their rations to a group of starving refugees, and arming themselves with stars of David. I mentioned earlier that this strip has the potential to become a Nazi ass-beating orgy along the lines of Tarantino's new movie, but I hope the Kubert's take a more character-based approach. Joe Kubert's art looks as classic as ever, and really belongs on a place on my wall somewhere. Heal fast, Sgt. Rock!

7. "The Demon & Catwoman" by Walter Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze. Finally, Stelfreeze's art looks like it fits its oversized medium, and a good deal of what's going on is finally explained. Still no Selena Kyle, though: if I were them, I would drop her from the marquee, as an old-school Etrigan comic is enough to get someone like me interested. The top part of the comic, which provides a fair amount of Morgaine Le Fay's background (for those who aren't already extremely aware) looks like Stelfreeze is finally trying some Kirby-like effects, which is to his advantage. The finally shot of the Demon rising into the sky, his hands aglow and ready to punch something, is dynamic in a very "Deadman" way, something we really haven't seen much of yet. On the other hand, Stelfreeze doesn't really pull off Le Fay's phantasm look, or at least make her as enticing as she seems to think she is, but maybe that's part of the point. With big action ahead, and Catwoman still roving somewhere in the background, I expect greater things in the next six weeks.

8. "Hawkman" by Kyle Baker. There's even less plot than usual, but Baker can't really ignore the tragedy. Somehow, Hawkman has survived even after failing to stop a plane from crashing, and with the rest of the Justice League dispatched to fight off the aliens, Katar has to deal with the collateral damage. He does find a few survivors amidst the wreckage, including the kid with huge glasses Baker has kept showing, and the strip ends with the survivors escaping what's left of the exploding wreckage. It's not often that you get to see a superhero trying to understand how some lives can never be saved (I think of the conversation between Superman and Hitman as a good example), but Baker doesn't let Hawkman think too far before the explosion happens. It also looks good, as always, and big-glasses kid could be the breakout star of the strip, if not Wednesday Comics itself. If nothing else, Baker has taken pains to show how Hawkman is, at the very least, a dynamic and cool-looking character that is not to be underestimated.

9. "Metamorpho, the Element Man" by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred. Sometimes Gaiman's conceptual conceits don't work as well as one thinks they would. The plot advances slightly in the top half of the comic, as Urania and Rex decide to brave a deathtrap involving climbing ladders and battling snakes. Then the Metamorpho fans of America pop up and present to us a game of...Snakes & Ladders, which conveniently contains enough plot intrigue to make me wonder if this is the most thematically dense approximation of a gameboard in comic book history. One interesting note that will come up later: one of the group's antagonist is a Latin-speaking henchman named Algon. Still, it's not like Gaiman seems to have put much effort into making the game compulsively readable: it's about as necessary to read and think about as those earlier splash pages. Although to be honest, I haven't tried playing it, so I might change my mind. Square 58, however, is not labeled anywhere on the board.

10. "Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth!" by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook. There's a big deus ex machina here, and Gibbons' prose continues to do the strip no favors, leaving us once again to focus mainly on the beauty of Sook's art. As usual, the central money shot really shines, where the girl turns out to be a super-warrior who takes out all the ape hordes and Kamandi does his part (seriously, why don't they tie up his legs?). It also turns out, improbably, that Dr. Canus is still alive, and Prince Tuftan has presumably been whisked away to be executed. So now they are on his trail. To be honest, I am yawning in the midst of explaining this very predictable story. Sook's art is the best thing about it. That's it.

11. "Batman" by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Other than a mischievous smile from Batman and some great moody work from Eduardo Risso (rife, as ever, with potential symbolism in the form of cards). Apparently Hardy Stone is a fan of Madame Butterfly, also. Which is to say that this is nothing more than a minor part of what has already been a fairly drawn-out series that looks terrific. I've seen better from the team before, however. My favorite shot is Batman coming throw the window: that's something else that I might want to frame on my wall.

12. "Superman" by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo. Finally, some action, which is what the people wanted, even if it seems like a copout given that the same thing more or less happened in issue 1. Is Superman slightly concerned that his childhood room has been decimated? Will he even talk about it, or will a fight ensue. And what bugged him so much about the alien the first time? These questions will probably be answered after, I'll wager, four or five straight strips of fighting. Apparently people can't handle Superman being in touch with his emotions. Really, I never minded scenes of Clark hanging with Ma and Pa, even if it can at times seem sort of fake pastoral, trying to go the extra mile to prove that this Kryptonian is, for all intents and purposes, human. But that's what makes him a hero, and that is what prevents him from being a dick, like Batman.

13. "Supergirl" by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner. So I was completely wrong about Aquaman showing up in "Hawkman" (and even more wrong in my hope that he would be a part of the plot of "Metamorpho"). And yet he shows up here, in perhaps his broadest and silliest portrayal in years. Certainly, his language doesn't resemble the regal diction one comes to expect from the King of Atlantis (or his occasional propensity for badass one-liners when written by Grant Morrison), and instead what we have is a kind of dickish "high executive of the seas" who is enlisted to help Supergirl deal with her unruly pets. I can already see where this is going (Aquaman: "I talk to fish, duh"), and it doesn't strike me as being particularly funny anyway. Far be it from me to be some sort of fanboy purist--I'll take any iteration of Aquaman I can get. But it's simply not as clever as it thinks it is, and at times it's downright annoying. Hands down, the worst Aquaman cameo yet in Wednesday Comics.

14. "Teen Titans" by Eddie Berganza and Sean Galloway. What's most annoying about this particular issue of "Teen Titans" is that, with the spotlight on Blue Beetle, we get what is possibly the most overt "I'm a Hispanic hero" pandering in superhero comics since Bat Hombre made his debut. It's not racial bludgeoning in the manner of, say, Black Vulcan, but still, Blue Beetle's thought captions seem fairly unrealistic for someone in the heat of battle (for instance, he seriously refers to himself as "your typical Tex-Mex teen," which I'm sure your typical Tex-Mex teen wouldn't actually do. We also get the reveal that Trident is Arthur Light's son, which is only intriguing in that this book may take place in recent continuity. That's all I have to say about that.

15. "Green Lantern" by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones. Joe Dillon gets the point: he refers to Hal Jordan as "you crazy hothead," which of course no one outside a comic book would ever do. The adventures of Hal Jordan, superdick, continue, and are as uninteresting as ever, although at least this point the momentum-crushing flashback seems to be finally over. It's interesting: this comic, "Teen Titans" and "Supergirl" are constantly in my bottom three, making me wonder if I am simply too tough on stuff more oriented towards kids. More likely, I just find them an insult to my intelligence.

Wednesday Comics #5

In which it seems that most of these comics get better each issue, some are seemingly on a plateau (for better or worse), and a few, just a few will probably turn out to be bad ideas.

1. "Metamorpho, The Element Man" by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred. What a comeback! This resembles the kind of offbeat modernist take on one of the hoariest of silver age concepts that Gaiman seemed to have been promising in the first issue, before being sidetracked by massive splash pages and cutesy reader inquiries. My continuing quest to detect Gaiman's authorial "voice" within this story may be a fruitless one, as this story is constructed almost deliberately to lack the weight and density of a normal Gaiman story, but I will make do with vaguely British dialogue and the continuing presence of Urania Blackwell. In this issue, it turns out for some reason that Simon Stagg brings along a catering crew to his many adventures, but unfortunately the French cuisine is almost spoiled when someone unseen unleashes deadly poison chlorine gas. Rex and Urania, using their 8th grade chemistry skills, figure that using their powers to combine sodium and chlorine will create a rain of table salt. The French chef complains in a stereotypical way, and really all of this is over the top, but of course with Allred at the helm it's all meant to look arch and pop and we expect this sort of ridiculousness. I wonder if Gaiman will have this go deadly serious at some point, however, given what we know of Urania. I wouldn't put it past him to backtrack on all this nouveau-pop stuff and attempt some of his old meta-tricks. My personal favorite touch: Java snacking on his buffalo, unaware of the deadly chlorine gas killing everyone else.

2. "Batman" by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. This comic also gets points for improving drastically this week, in part because we finally get to see the title character in action, doing one of the things I love seeing him do the most--chilling in the batcave, mulling over clues, and getting harassed by Alfred. It's also the best-looking strip I think Risso has done so far, due to a seriously odd take on Alfred that certainly brings out some of the butler's dormant Semitic features (I kid, maybe?). Risso's big-lipped take on Wayne is also, as far as I can tell, highly novel, as most artists still tend to draw him as a broad-shouldered, blandly handsome rich guy whose haircut never changes (come on, at least Superman had a mullet for a little bit). Azzarello has Alfred do one of the things he always does best, which is make vague comments about Bruce's sex life, which always makes Bruce uncomfortable. As for how this fits into the larger story, I'd say that Azzarello would be taking the easy way out if he were to have Bruce being set up by the femme fatale of the last issue. I expect a lot of double-crosses in the next seven weeks, but surely Batman has handled far harder cases. Still, this issue shows more promise than the last several.

3. "Deadman" by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck. The perennial underdog continues its story with aplomb as we continue with the increasingly desperate adventures of Boston Brand, the depowered Deadman who is now forced once again to use his acrobat skills. As one would imagine, being dead for as long as Brand has has made him pretty rusty. Bullock is good at crafting forward-momentum in this fight scene and it all looks so great, particularly the money shot at the end (I think Bullock should get more points than he does for investing at least one panel each with the kind of compositional pizazz that could take decades to perfect). It is here we pause, because it seems that the demons have succeeded in killing Brand, so where does he go now? Is he dead for serious? Will he just come back again? It's possibly the single most engrossing narrative in Wednesday Comics, as well as the most consistently good. If you get Bullock and Heuck on a monthly Deadman book, I will buy it.

4. "Strange Adventures" by Paul Pope. We continue the adventures of the newly-escaped Alanna, hiding under a gnarly tree with the rooster-dog of last issue. No Mandrillus sphynx monkeys this time, unfortunately, which will cost Pope a few points, but seriously: Pope has managed to corner the market on old-school sci-fi visuals that are like amphetamine-driven versions of pulps past. Pope's evocation of Strange's zeta beam makes a brief comeback, but more important, I can look at the middle panel of Alanna in shelter, with its mangy trees and bizarre stalactites, forever. I'm curious to see what Adam is up to now but I wouldn't really mind if Pope kept up the story of Alanna indefinitely.

5. "Wonder Woman" by Ben Caldwell. Caldwell continues his rejiggering of the Wonder Woman mythos by having Diana come into contact with Priscilla Rich, who in the regular DC universe is known as Wonder Woman's arch-nemesis Cheetah. At this point I think Diana is getting the idea that these aren't particularly normal dreams, and this gradual realization is partially why I can handle how repetitive each self-contained story seems to be, especially as we realize that Diana is gradually finding all the tools she needs, this issue the quest being for the tiara of the Sakyamunis. If DC wanted to do some sort of "ultimate" take on the character, they would be wise to use this as the blueprint. As usual, people are leveling claims to the effect that there's too much going on in each issue, as if that's ever an issue, and as I keep saying, it's still a lot easier for me to follow than something like, say, "Teen Titans." Especially, with having a recognizable villain like Ms. Rich, I think the way "Wonder Woman" is set up encourages new readers to absorb this strip as discrete episodes that could or could not be part of a larger narrative. Caldwell's choice of layouts, splitting linear panels into horizontal and vertical strips packed with detail, is unmatched here or elsewhere. This man needs more respect, and less discouragement from people who think this comic does too much.

6. "Hawkman" by Kyle Baker. Not much happens this issue, and both the aliens and the Justice League are nowhere to be found, leaving Katar alone to deal with a plane that seems to be heading for its doom. The funny thing here is that it seems like Hawkman fails, only managing to steer the plane into an island where we can only presume no one is going to make it out alive. And yet that would seem like a bummer for anyone who has been reading and enjoying Hawkman as much as I have, leading me to believe that maybe (just maybe) Aquaman is going to come to the rescue now that they are, at the very least, on land. Baker is good here at mixing Hawkman's fruitless attempts to steer the plane using nth metal technology and showing brief snapshots of hapless passengers, a few of which we have seen before, as they prepare for the worst. It does seem uncommonly horrible and serious for a comic like this, particularly given America's recent track record with plane crashes. Still, Baker's photorealistic yet expressive style makes this a comic that is always fun to watch even when very little actually happens. I think I read somewhere that Baker was already able to finish all his comics months before deadline, which is even more astonishing given how much detail seems to be already present.

7. "Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth!" by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook. Speaking of money shots, Sook puts his at the beginning of the comic as opposed to the end, and it's quite a good one: from left to right, we have Prince Tuftan attacking a rifle-bearing ape with a sword, and knocking said ape off his motorcycle; in the middle, we have Kamandi tackling another ape, this one holding a bazooka; and to the right, in the background, we have the smoldering crater of what was once Dr. Canus' blimp. This is the stuff great films are made of. The rest of the comic, speciesism aside (Kamandi crying, "we are not animals, we are human!" before roundhouse-kicking the ape leader, which as you know is both true and false), is quality art as well, and the writing lags only slightly. Working in this particular style, it is easy to tell that Gibbons is no great prose stylist, and much of the description here is unnecessary given what we can tell of the action. Wednesday Comics was conceived at the outset as a project where art was supposed to be as or more important than the writing talent, and that is never more obvious than in this beautiful-looking but slightly vacant piece of work.

8. "Flash Comics" by Karl Kerschl and Brendan Fletcher. It is getting more and more difficult to tell what is happening with this comic. I know, it's time travel, and that in itself is supposed to be sufficient reason to not ask too many questions, but what exactly is the relationship between the Flash and Iris strips, at this point? Are there three Flashes running around? Is the one from the future the one that's consorting with Iris? Perhaps they were unrelated all this time. Seriously, though, without the Flash comic to back it up, "Iris West" is completely pedestrian, so I hope the links are made more clear as the comic continues. Similarly, I can't really tell what's going on with either Flash in the other comic, other than one is floating in space, mabe, and one is frozen in a block of ice. Or maybe one of them went through time, and the other managed to escape the block of ice and is now floating in space. I dig Kerschl's take on Gorilla Grodd, a villain who tends to be overused. I just hope that Kerschl and Fletcher go the "hey it's old-school Flash, so therefore, here's time travel" route, and really work on integrating time travel elements in new and interesting ways.

9. "Sgt. Rock and Easy Co." by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert. This strip continues to get the award for looking great even as virtually nothing continues to happen. This time, we are almost, almost on the verge of Sgt. Rock being capped after several weeks of torture and critical beatdowns at the hands of Nazis, and of course the very idea of the Nazis successfully shooting Rock in the face gives me chills. Fortunately, that doesn't happen, but for a stupid reason: the guns is jammed. Seems like the sort of convenient and hoary excuse utilized by first-time writers, if you'll forgive my impetuousness. Still, how can I fault this comic when it looks as good as it does? Damn, it is vibrant. All the detail here is in this faces and hardware, and backgrounds are virtually non-existent, a true nod to the silver age and further, to the era of episodic strips. I do wish that the plot would advance a little bit (we don't even get anything interesting from the side adventure with easy company), but maybe next time...

10. "Metal Men" by Dan DiDio, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan. This strip isn't as enjoyable here as it has been in recent weeks, and the entire contents herein, where Magnus has a conversation with a fellow scientist who plans to kill himself out of jealousy, seems redundant and silly. DiDio was getting a few good cracks here and there before but this issue is almost as deadly serious as it is implausible, which is always a bad combination. Still, even without the yuks of the Metal Men, the comic looks great and seems to be building itself towards a spectacular scientist beatdown in week 7 or so. "I resemble that remark" is corny, though, and should have been excised, I don't care if it is silver age-ish or what. Not much else to say about this comic, so deliberately middling week after week.

11. "Supergirl" by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner. Conner gets major points here for the last panel, which shows an exasperated Supergirl threatening to take a newly calm Krypto and Streaky to the supervet, or whatever. Unfortunately, Baker's "Hawkman" covers more or less the same territory this week (seriously, it's been a bad time to do plane crash stories for a while now) and Baker does a better job coming up with a finish that leaves me expecting more. I have to admit that Conner's Supergirl does look great, though, more like a teenager than we have come to expect. Everything else is inconsequential by comparison, and I am surprised by how much more good press this is getting than something like "Deadman."

12. "The Demon and Catwoman" by Walter Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze. I'm not sure why this couldn't have just been a Demon comic with Catwoman as the occasional guest star, as Selina has been running around in cat form for several issues running and hasn't really done a damn thing as a result. I also can't figure out Etrigan's rhyme scheme for the most part. It occurs to me that I haven't talked about Stelfreeze's art yet, for the simple reason that nothing about it really jumps out at you, although it's not like he makes anything hard to follow. This comic does seem like it isn't really utilizing the larger page to its full effect, as all the panels here are big enough to shrink down to normal size without losing much of the flavor (kind of like "Sgt. Rock" except in that case one can enjoy the pock marks on Sgt.'s face in better view). I love a Demon story as much as anyone else, but this comic hasn't even begun to delve into the Kirby-inspired wackiness that great writers have been able to utilize. Maybe if we see some more action, I will change my mind.

13. "Superman" by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo. I've been on record as saying that I have been enjoying this Superman strip more than a lot of people, but even at this point I think it's beginning to lose me. It looks great, really, particularly in how Bermejo splits the page evenly between Kryptonian and earth-related happenings (often without even separating panels), and Krypton's red landscape is particularly brilliant. Still, this is all stuff we've seen so many times already, and we are already in the fifth issue. A bit of intrigue is allowable in the last panel, but not much. Great storyboards for a video game? Maybe. A gateway strip for an innovative new serialized comic? Not really. Pathos will only get you so far, even with a character like Superman.

14. "Teen Titans" by Eddie Berganza and Sean Galloway. I am still unable to tell if everyone is on an ocean or what exactly is going on. There is something new and odd here that could work in succeeding issues--telling the story from the position of medical caretakers who can't stand the ways in which superheroes so brazenly risk lives and the lives of others. But of course, this doesn't go too far, as we are witness to superheroes acting truly and selflessly to save Blue Beetle, who apparently doesn't make it. Is this supposed to be a strip about the unintended consequences of collateral damage caused by superhero fights? Or is it merely trying to sound like something that novel when in actuality the idea isn't really there, and instead we have a hodge-podge of random Teen Titans interacting in ways that really don't make sense? It depends on what Berganza and Galloway are planning in the future.

15. "Green Lantern" by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones. In this issue, Hal Jordan flashes back to the time when he knew someone who was almost as much of a prick as he is. That man was Joe Dillon, who you remember turning into an alien earlier. If you think "hotheadedness" is a great and original character trait that hasn't been beaten to death by comics already, you'll probably love the interaction between these two douchebags as they try to compete for the opportunity to go into space. As usual, Jordan is unsympathetic and really quite loathsome when it comes down to it; similarly, this comic has very little else going for it. This is probably the worst work I have ever seen from Busiek, a usually brilliant guy. Oh well, we can't always be 15 for 15.

Wednesday Comics #4

I apologize again for this being late. I have several excuses: last week I had to fly down to Des Moines in order to be a groomsman at a wedding (which involved having to do lots of stuff including posing for a million pictures and eating delicious free food). Then I had to come back and prepare myself adequately for the GREs, which I finished not a few hours ago. With that behind me, I shall do issues 4 and 5, hopefully in quick succession. I know I'm being quite repetitive at this point (which is always the case when I attempt art criticism), but damn, this keeps looking better and better. And this time, "Metamorpho" makes a comeback.

1. "Wonder Woman" by Ben Caldwell. I've had it with the naysayers of this comic, those who say that it's "too hard to read" or hard to get through. When was the last time you had a good old-fashioned challenge reading a comic book? When was the last time you picked up something like Finnegan's Wake solely for the challenge of it, to immerse yourself in something lofty and experimental at the expense of your own sanity? Not that I am necessarily prepared to compare Caldwell to Joyce, but who knows? He's a young man. As far as I know, Caldwell is seriously breaking the mold here by separating one of the sequences here through redirecting the reader's eye leftward as opposed to the way cartoonists have done it for 100 years. For a little bit, I couldn't tell what was going on. Then I did, and boy was I impressed. Comics have tried all sorts of experiments, but a Western comic that asks you to redirect your eyes in the middle of the page? Fairly unique. Additionally, the colors seem to get better on this comic, everything looking less washed out, and the negative space showing up more clearly than ever. Think of how much this comic tries to cram, and notice how it does it so well: over the course of a page, Wonder Woman visits the underworld, fights some "black dragon goons" (we never get a good look at them, which I suppose is a Caldwell trick at this point), gets zapped by some beams of light, and this time seems to be seriously lost in sleep, suggesting that there is a linear point to WW waking up at the end of each issue (by the way, for those complaining that not enough of these are self-contained, this is probably as close as one will get). I hope Caldwell gets more respect in the future, and I encourage him to go further micro, as history will vindicate him as a new kind of talent in the future.

2. "Hawkman" by Kyle Baker. It seems like it would be difficult to pull off a Justice League strip within these pages, but it is inevitable at some point, so kudos for Kyle Baker for integrating the rest of the DC universe into Hawkman's comic in a way that makes me feel excited about a Hawkman/JLA team-up. We see Batman and Hawkgirl in silhouette, as well as a brilliant Baker rendition of the watchtower, zipping along and battling Makkorthite ships like something out of Star Trek, only better. Meanwhile, Hawkman fights the alien monster that has grown considerably since last week, and Baker's artistry really nails the beast and also illustrates how a regular-sized guy like Hawkman could take him down: through the carefully-placed application of sound effects of course. We end with a cliffhanger, with Katar having to chase down a plane falling to its death, finally having a purpose due to the fact that no other flying superheroes around (that's what I like to think Hawkman adds to the team, anyway: he flies better than most superheroes). I also must add that I am pumped that Aquaman was mentioned and I hope that he shows to back Katar up. Please let this happen.

3. "Deadman" by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck. For the fourth time, Bullock comes up with a page that looks beautiful and frameable in a way that most of these pages are not: dividing the comic halfway between a splash page of Kalak attempting to slice Boston Brand, and the right side of the page, which advances the action a bit and allows Boston to show off his acrobat moves, which he rarely gets a chance to use. A lot of the stories in Wednesday Comics have divised good ways of drawing issues devoted entirely to fights that don't seem like cheating for those who are looking for discrete elements of plot to be revealed each issue: I think, in terms of this, Bullock and Heuck are ahead of the pack. I think these guys should be working on a Deadman animated series, which of course would never happen, but why not? Boston is, I believe, a novel take on the tragic, conflicted yet laconic hero, and he still looks very cool.

4. "Strange Adventures" by Paul Pope. In which we finally get to see Alanna, whom I've maintained is probably getting her best treatment in a long time, show her warrior side, and Pope gets to get out the implied grotesquerie. I will once again give Pope the award for best single panel, the circle on the botoom that shows Alanna riding on some sort of rooster dog across an endless expanse of grayish space. Full disclosure: I think this comic will continue being in the top five simply for the way in which Pope draws those Mandrillus Sphynx Monkeys. Have they showed up elsewhere? I was never the biggest Adam Strange fan. Pope is also very funny (the guard who finds Alanna to be disgusting due to her lack of hair) and knows how to imply bloody retribution without actually showing it. The best thing about this comic, however, isn't the characters but rather the whirling landscapes that make me think that this is the comic to read on acid (if there's one comic you don't want to read tripping, I would suggest "Supergirl").

5. "Metamorpho, The Element Man" by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred. Thank you Gaiman and Allred, for doing something slightly satisfying. This is by far the best issue of "Metamorpho" yet, which so far has been extremely uneven, although I must say my reaction has something to do with the return of Urania Blackwell, inevitable as I know it must have seemed for some ever since hearing about the project. You may remember her from an early issue of Gaiman's Sandman where she was extremely depressed but unable to kill herself due to her elemental powers. I wonder if that will be hinted at here. In any case, this doesn't really sound like the Gaiman I imagine, but then again I wonder if my conception of Gaimanism has relied too much on Sandman and not enough on his ability to tell tense adventure stories when he needs to. Gaiman injects a little throwback sexism (to remind readers that this is retro, of course), and a mystery silhouette (not Dr. Stagg?) explains what the Star of Atlantis is. I hope this is another comic that leads to an Aquaman cameo. I hope that's where every single comic goes from here, seguing into an Aquaman cameo. Of course, Gaiman's retroisms are ably assisted by Allred, who does this sort of stuff all the time. I daresay it's the best-looking thing he has ever done.

6. "Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth!" by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook. This is also, I think, the best issue of "Kamandi" yet, with the style seeming more relaxed than before and Sook really letting loose with the Kirby craziness (a talking tiger brandishing a sword and gun jumping in the way of Kamandi and a bunch of ape soldiers), and he makes it look good. There is also, I presume, a bit of an homage to the whole Hindenberg dust-up (or maybe Gibbons is just referencing The Rocketeer). Compared to the other stuff Kirby was capable of, Kamandi was never the most original of creations (come on, Planet of the Apes), but it did provide Kirby the opportunity to make some awesome pictures. Also, I liked the way parts of the Kamandi-verse were integrated into Final Crisis last year. This is a comic that could easily go downhill, but for now I think it is getting better. Will the girl serve a purpose?

7. "Superman" by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo. I'm surprised by the amount of bad reviews this comic keeps getting, mainly I think for the Superman/Batman dialogue that seemed uncharacteristic for some but at least for me illustrating something that would make sense in their relationship: that is, that there's a lot of stuff that Clark can't talk about without being berated. And a man can only hurt so much before he has to go home. Arcudi nails Ma and Pa Kent, really in the way I described last week, and there's a sort of pathos here that one doesn't see in other, more madcap strips. Leave it to critics to charge Arcudi with failing just because he is trying some character as opposed to plot-based. Nevertheless, this is pretty basic stuff, and I can't imagine even Arcudi can squeeze a convincing emotional arc out of this in five issues. Bermejo is great as well, really excelling in these sorts of statuesque arrangements, his evocation of a state fair Norman Rockwell-esque to merit its conclusion (although we could always see more). I hope Arcudi doesn't break down and start doing plot stuff just because that's what people expect. Just leave the alien from the first issue alone, and concentrate on Clark and his occasional depressive bouts. That makes for good reading.

8. "Sgit. Rock and Easy Co." by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert. I'm putting this on here mainly because it looks cool, as the plot is still paper-thin, although I don't know if that is pretty normal by Sgt. Rock standards. Certainly, watching Mr. Rock get his ass beat for four consecutive issues doesn't have nearly the effect on me it probably would if I actually knew much about the property. Still, he's in there for diversity's sake (war comics being an underrated property for too long) and plus this is Joe Kubert. The funny thing about Kubert is that for a guy with such old-school credentials, the level of detail he puts into each panel is startlingly modern. The welts on Rock's face look shockingly brutal, and the Russian lady doesn't look like a nondescript woman but rather someone who has gone through what one would bet she would have had to go through. There's only so much more I can take of this, however, until it becomes Saw or something similarly brutal/voyeuristic. Hopefully the Kuberts don't go the route of laying massive amounts of retributive pain on Nazis to make us feel better (which seems to be what Quentin Tarantino's new picture is more or less trying to do). This is a consistent comic with beautiful art. While not exactly advancing at the pace I'd like, it is far from unsatisfying.

9. "Flash Comics" by Karl Kerschl and Brendan Fletcher. Unfortunately, I have had to take this once-brilliant comic down a peg as the central conceit seems to not allow for the storytelling opportunities I imagined at the beginning of the series: I hope this is a minor setback. There seems to be less of a relationship between "The Flash" and "Iris West," as I know one doesn't necessarily follow the other, but with time travel being a basic plot point, I thought that wouldn't matter. Maybe the better thing to do would be to read all the Iris strips in order once they are all collected, and then all the Flash strips, but again, I thought Kerschl was going to have them refer to each other in unexpected and offbeat ways. You might also notice that, aside from Caldwell, Kerschl is cramming as much in the page as anyone, and for this reason alone I continue to trust him. He's very good at detail, and he manages to integrate disparate figures like the Flash and Gorilla Grodd into the panel in ways that look almost (but not quite) non-ridiculous. If I had to guess, I would say I enjoy the Iris strip more than the superhero one.

10. "Metal Men" by Dan Didio, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan. I also have no idea why this strip isn't geting more respect, considering that it is trying to do humor and does it I think more respectfully than Supergirl. This time however, the strip ends on a semi-serious note, with one of the robbers threatening to suicide-bomb the entire bank. Didio allows for some good observations (why is Mercury colored that way?), and works in an uncomfortable romantic subplot between Platinum and Doc Magnus. Didio is surely covering a lot of territory and making use of every panel he has, and the art is even more game, illustrating the slight seriousness of the situation in spite of the goofy antics of the Metal Men. Didio's idea seems to be to have the Metal Men do something goofy and put more people at danger as a result: it's a new play on the superheroes-doing-more-harm-than-good archetype. Or maybe it's meant to be straight-up silly. Nevertheless, I give Didio points for the dialogue here.

11. "The Demon & Catwoman" by Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze. Here is an example of a comic that seems exciting and well-done but leaves very little impression. While the vibe here is very new-school decompressed storytelling, the two leads seem to lack much in the way of personality, which I understand is easy enough to do with Etrigan and Catwoman (Jason Blood was always the more interesting guy, anyway). Also, I don't really get how Etrigan sometimes rhymes and sometimes doesn't (unless there's a sonnet scheme that I'm not really detecting, the kind of thing Alan Moore did in Swamp Thing). The comic also ends on an odd note, with the Catwoman creature sort of stuck in mid-air, Etrigan having taken her out easily, and we wonder if perhaps decompression is the wrong word to use. I just worry that a lot of this action won't be followed upon, but perhaps with Etrigan on his way to fight evil, things might either pick up or slow down. Either way, I'm fine.

12. "Batman" by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. This is not Batman's best week. The noir vibe will only go so far when the hapless hero and femme fatale seem incapable of anything other than cliches. Surely, this wouldn't seem too far out of place in "Rex Morgan," if the silhouettes were creepier. I have alarmingly little to say about this edition of Batman. This is some sort of strained comic book idea of what constitutes flirting for rich people, and it's disconcerting not because we believe Bruce Wayne isn't capable of this but because Azzarello is treading on such worn material. Risso's art is good at suggesting that there are things already at work that I am not perceiving (playing with bat shadows and casual could-be-symbols). Azzarello is basically setting this up like 100 Bullets, so I can only imagine there will be some mindfuck five or six issues down the line. I'm sure, when it happens, I will realize how stupid I was.

13. "Teen Titans" by Eddie Berganza and Sean Galloway. Galloway's style, as confusing as ever, is at least not impenetrable like last time. I am able to tell now, for instance, that Triton managed to do some damage against the Titans ambulance ship, or whatever it is. Yet new confusions arise. How did Triton get back up there? Was he there in the first place? Where is everyone now? I gather that they are in some sort of water at the end. Were they near an ocean? Was I supposed to recognize this before. I blame my own severe ignorance. Triton is not a villain I'm very excited about, to be honest, as he seems to be very much part of that quasi-badass villain mode that was so popular in the 90s. Still, there is some intrigue here. What did the Titans do that was so horrible, as to not deserve any honor? Perhaps the unmasking of this boring villain will explain something. I suppose that is what will happen. Maybe it will be time travel. Whatever.

14. "Green Lantern" by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones. I have to make clear that I am preternaturally biased against Hal Jordan, if I hadn't acknowledged that already, and this comic didn't help change my conception of Jordan as an essentially smug, overbearing, callous asshole. Even the Human Torch has an iota of self-doubt. Meanwhile, Busiek basically writes Jordan for what he is, a prick, talking to some other prick we saw change into an alien last issue. In all, this strip is moving at a snail's pace, and Busiek isn't doing the best job at having some sort of hook to draw us in each issue. All we see here are two douchebag white guys talking shit to each other. At least Jordan's inexplicable Eskimo sidekick isn't around this time...

15. "Supergirl" by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner. I can't write about this strip without sounding like a dick. I know it will probably get better. Conner's facial expressions on Streaky are priceless. Nevertheless, this is by far the most inconsequential seeming comic included here, and nothing really happens that didn't happen last issue as well. It seems Palmiotti can only go so far with this idea (pets gone rogue!) and it is really starting to show. Beyond that, I don't want to say anything that will only make me sound stupider once I have read it in its entirety.