1. "Hawkman" by Kyle Baker. You already know why this is at #1 again. Baker finally lives up to his long promise to bring Aquaman into the fold, and the setup is ingenious even if Aquaman himself ends up being only a blip on the page, artistic-wise. Last issue, Katar Hol was in the midst of fighting and making fun of a T-Rex on Dinosaur Island, which ended up not being a good idea. Hawkman's solution is to take advantage of being around the beach front, and he dives into the ocean, with the T-Rex following. The battle seems to be lost until a shark and an octopus do their part and incapacitate the great lizard, just as Aquaman shows up on a giant seahorse to finish the job. Some might be asking if it's wise to have Aquaman of all people to show up and rescue our hero, particularly if this seems to be the end of the series, but Baker has already done a good job of setting this up, without belaboring the overly obvious. And his style--washed out, photorealistic--really shows its worth in scenes where dinosaurs battle with sea creatures.
2. "Flash Comics" by Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher. I suppose we had already seen the end of the dueling Iris and Flash (and occasionally Gorilla Grodd) strips. It seems less and less likely that even Kerschl can fill in enough explanation next issue to make sense of this whole project, but as I keep saying, one of the benefits of doing these sorts of throwback strips is that you can take those old strips' aversion to explanation and scientific rationality and apply it even further. All we need to know is that Grodd has gone back in time and is now the ruler of the world, humans have disappeared, and somehow Iris is still around. As of this issue, she is falling to her death, and a brilliantly composed scene shows Barry and Iris hanging together for dear life as reality crumbles around them. There are great touches here: the Flash flinging himself off a building and vibrating through pieces of debris, the way even Grodd suddenly becomes a sympathetic and tragic figure, and the way the panels suggest everyone is slowly being enveloped into the maelstrom of the eye--there are reasons to believe that this is Kerschl's way of pressing the reset button, but he and everyone else involved with this comic deserves a rest anyway.
3. "Deadman" by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck. As the final battle seems to be over, Boston Brand still has to find a way to get back home. So this is as good a time as any for a bit of exposition. Apparently the innocent women who were murdered at the beginning of the story are actually servants of the evil demon Neron, who is sort of an extra-dimensional entity in competition with Kalak. And of course Brand's romantic adventures ends in heartbreak. Julianna, the one who kissed him, turns into a horrifying debased skull demon, which makes it much easier for Boston to take the Rune-Stone and head home. Boston's heroism in this issue is perfectly calibrated, a far cry from the sort of overwrought exhortations of romance and true love we tend to see from DC Comics (see Geoff Johns' "Barry Allen was dead but Iris tethered him to reality" or other such blather). Brand knows what he's doing, knows he's made mistakes, and doesn't cry about it. Bullock's best work here is the reveal of Julianna for the Neron demon she is, but the whole thing is great-looking, and really demands some sort of animated treatment.
4. "Wonder Woman" by Ben Caldwell. It might seem like an odd time, towards the end of Wednesday Comics, for Caldwell to break from his micro-story managing, and compose 2/3 of a splash page. It's also kind of an odd moment for such a huge image: Dr. Poison explains that Ares wants a new host, and Diana responds by tying Cheetah with her magic lasso and telling her to protect WW's sidekick Etta Candy. We are now completely in full-technicolor territory here, and arguments before about how plain and washed this comic seemed at the beginning have now been proven moot. It's all intentional, and everything Caldwell seems to have done in retrospect looks better and better. Seeing Wonder Woman in full garb is finally a pretty cool thing, and I look forward to Dr. Poison's beatdown. Or Ares'.
5. "Metal Men" by Dan DiDio, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan. I would go on a limb and say that, overall, this is a far more successful comic than Gaiman's "Metamorpho." Or at least it seems that way, as the team rallies to stop Chemo's chemical reaction in the face of imminent death. Some people have criticized the ways in which DiDio's narrative hasn't really settled into a particular niche yet: it started with some broad and silly comedy, and has since slowly ratcheted up the seriousness of the plight of the protagonists, even as the antagonists look more and more ridiculous (not that it's hard to make Chemo look ridiculous). Tin is apparently still dead, but Iron manages to hold on long enough and turn into a giant tire pump, forcing the damaged Chemo and all the other Metal Men to fall into a deep construction site, which explodes. Are we to assume that all the Metal Men are dead now? And are we also to assume that the only one Magnus really cares about is Platinum? And where is Dr. Pretorius now? None of these questions need to be answered, in part because the art is so good here that I defy anyone to not be excited by the battle with Chemo. Good job, DiDio.
6. "Metamorpho, The Element Man" by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred. Again, this is much better, although the twist isn't much (you might congratulate Gaiman in that you hardly see it coming, but the way the story was set up, there's no reason to get excited anyway). Basically, Rex Mason and Urania Blackwell weren't actually dead, but hiding as Krypton gas, and at a convenient moment they take out Algon, the evil Latin Element Man. Everyone is pleased to see the two, except the evil bad guy, who turns out to be yet another giant bug space alien (which brings Wednesday Comics' total to about four, right). That revelation doesn't really go anywhere, but everyone else seems to escape just fine, so we are to assume that everyone is about to be saved (even as Java has no one to carry him). I always felt that this comic worked best when it didn't rely on shtick, so this is definitely one of the best-written Gaiman strips yet. "Metamorpho" solidifies its reputation as the most consistently uneven strip in Wednesday Comics. At least there's some brilliance going on, though...
7. "Strange Adventures" by Paul Pope. This may be the last time (at least for a while) that we see Pope's Mandrillus Sphynx Monkey. So it makes sense that Korgo ends up in a museum with other monkeys, observed by the museum keeperse as some sort of genetic anomaly. Is Korgo able to move, though, or is he some sort of stuffed monkey? Anyway, Pope's art and storytelling techniques continue to make a good Adam Strange tale seem absolutely great. I've ranked it a bit lower this week because it seems that the bulk of this strip's best stuff is now in the past (particularly in the first few weeks), and even Korgo in a museum doesn't given us much of an opportunity to really gauge Pope's inimitable style. All that remains to be seen is some sort of victory speech by Adam Strange, or maybe a reconciliation with Alanna--it's a shame that one of the most endearing facets of this story--that Adam doesn't know if all his adventures on Rann are hallucinations--will probably not end up factoring heavily in the final tale.
8. "Batman" by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. As is the case with nearly all stock noir females, the buxom Luna finally meets her end, and the only real mystery here is whether or not Batman could possibly care more than usual. One of Risso's great contributions to this collection is that he goes further than most artists in varying Batman's emotional responses: as opposed to the stone face we are used to seeing, we get Batman looking surprised, horrified, and amused, and Risso is just more brilliant than anyone in establishing these subtle visual cues. The best panel for me comes after a crying Luna takes out her gun, and you see Batman sort of horrified and yet resigned to what is probably going to happen. On the other hand, Azzarello's story seems to not be anything special, unless I'm still missing something, but this may seem so only because I am so used to Azzarello pulling the floor out from under me. Something this traditional, I never could have expected.
9. "Green Lantern" by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones. Despite the consistently low ratings I have given this comic, I have always at least somewhat admired Quinones' art, at least when he sticks to monster battles and isn't drawing Hal Jordan's bromance with the kind-of villain of this story. This issue is probably the best I have yet seen in part because Quinones is given more room than usual. I still imagine that this took Busiek maybe five minutes to write--something like, "Joe: draw a space battle" I would imagine, but at least Jordan's obnoxious personality is held at bay until the last panel, and Joe Dillon is not around. The one caption that Busiek provides, however, is kind of funny. Obvious question: did Green Lantern just kill everyone? So many questions unanswered. I'm still kind of angry about Busiek's last-minute imposition of an alien battle, but at least he's doing the best with what he can.
10. "Sgt. Rock and Easy Co." by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert. Even with all the action in this particular issue, we barely move beyond snail's pace at best. Sgt. Rock has literally been battling his way outside of this particular enemy camp for about a month now, and while he barely made any progress before, he now finally reunites with his Easy Co. team. Not that he ended up needing them very much. While it seemed as if Adam Kubert was trying to juggle these two storylines so that Easy Co. would help Rock escape, it turns out that Rock basically makes it out of there after being shot in the back four times. That Rock, he's hard. Beautiful art, as usual, and Joe Kubert knows how to bring about the grotesquerie and ugliness of war without having to resort to a lot of gore and guts. I can't say that this was the most intriguing story in Wednesday Comics, but it was rare that I wouldn't enjoy it.
11. "The Demon and Catwoman" by Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze. Another strip comes more or less to an end, and in a way it does so more satisfyingly than what we have come to expect from this particular duo. Looking back on it, "The Demon and Catwoman" has more or less been an endless succession of monologues that haven't really gone so far as to say where these people are or what particular is happening. Though I was expecting a fight between the possessed Catwoman and Etrigan, that didn't really happen either, but my wish is finally granted in that very same way. I have been waiting for Etrigan to do something besides be captured and yelled at by Morgaine Le Fay, and finally he gets to breathe fire and speak in rhyme. When he does that, all that Kirby-esque stuff comes to the fore and I can forget about how little has actually happened herein.
12. "Supergirl" by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner. More alien invasion battles, except these guys don't talk. Conner's art still looks to be pretty good, but considering that Supergirl is battling a bunch of garbage men on the sun, one imagines a more drawn-out battle than what is seen here. It's too much at this point to maybe ask why these people are doing what they do to the super-pets, or whether or not at least these people are consciously aware of what they are doing. A last minute save by Krypto and Streaky promises to make for an exciting last issue, but while most comics did this setup long ago, Palmiotti has saved it for the penultimate issue, and even on a broadsheet there are only so many things you can fit (Caldwell notwithstanding).
13. "Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth!" by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook. Sook's art continues to lack the pizazz it once did, while the story veers even closer into hoary soap opera territory, the kind that at least Jack Kirby could make interesting with the sort of hyperbolic and densely purple dialogue that he was capable of unleashing. Whereas Dave Gibbons doesn't really show a gift for prose, from what I can see. Were you wondering where Orora came from or how exactly she exists when Kamandi is supposed to be the last of his kind? These questions will probably not be adequately answered, now that she has been shot by an ape sniper perched on the ruins of the Washington Monument. Dr. Canus is no help, but at least we know he probably won't be the last dog on earth. "Kamandi" has one last shot before I officially declare it a comic that serendipitously entered a decline.
14. "Superman" by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo. Bermejo makes the most with the giant panels and all that, and unlike Sook he seems to be keeping up a consistent style. Boy, though, does nothing happen in this comic. Even compared to "Sgt. Rock," this seems extremely lacking in every way possible: he doesn't do enough moping around Smallville, he doesn't ever talk rationally, and he battles with aliens could have been condensed into far fewer issues. With no Bermejo depictions of Darkseid or Luthor, there is no way I can distinguish between this issue and, say, issue 9. Hopefully something with Lois Lane is bound to happen next issue. Here's hoping that she dies, or something.
15. "Teen Titans" by Eddie Berganza and Sean Galloway. What a Shyamalanian twist (not a compliment). The bad guy who said he was Arthur Light's son turns out to be Deathstroke the Terminator, which at least explains why someone named "Trident" was capable of taking down the Titans. Still, we don't know who this guy is that is explaining how he knew Slade Wilson is under the mask, and his reasons for doing so seem odd: apparently, Deathstroke is unable to take down the Titans because he looks at them in some odd way as "family." So, in order to take them down for good, he hypnotized himself as Arthur Light's son from the future, unencumbered by any need other than straight revenge. Does this seem like a twist that comes out of nowhere? Yes it does. Even if it didn't though, it still doesn't do much to explain what exactly is happening, where everyone happens to be, and who a lot of the characters are. So is Blue Beetle officially dead, or something? Oh well.
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