The Wednesday Comics Experience

You might be in a recession if: you see someone kicking a can down the street and you ask them what they are doing and they say "moving."

You might be in a recession if: you wave around a popsicle and call it air conditioning.

You might be in a recession if: your comics are shorter, printed cheaper, and still cost four dollars.

But seriously folks... Wednesday Comics is the much hyped newspaper throwback style comics where each creator takes one page per issue. As I alluded to jokingly above, the big problem with Wednesday Comics is the strange combination of quality and shoddy production. The quality of these high-profile creators' stories makes you want to tear into the thing, but being confronted with an actual newspaper is like being forced to solve a complex puzzle from another solar system. I remember watching my Dad navigating a newspaper as a child and being amazed at his skill in handling that bulky paper. I never got the chance to really master is because, you know, newspapers are dead and all, but now my time has come and I'm too worried about ruining it.

The first issue of Wednesday Comics was an exciting experience. Opening up for the first time and seeing a sad Commissioner Gordon staring at you, or a giant Kyle Baker Hawkman will make nearly any comics fan giddy. The stories themselves are really varied in tone and with all the creators working with a new format, it's awesomely overwhelming.


BATMAN by writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso
"Every time I turn this on, it's like I'm signaling failure." A pretty bold kick off of the first comics you open up to when you unfold the pages. This comic is definitely one of the highlights of the collection. It uses up its page to perfection to introduce us to the story but also to tell its own contained story. If this page was the only page in the whole story, it would somehow make perfect sense.

KAMANDI by writer Dave Gibbons and artist Ryan Sook
This is another really solid page. It tells Kamandi's origin in a simple and direct way. It reminds me of reading an actual action newspaper strip like The Phantom. The art does a great job of making Kamandi and his world look like a contradiction of modern and savage. When he turns around in the last panel with a gun in his hand it's a real surprise. Interesting the story begins after the death of Kamandi's Grandfather.

SUPERMAN by writer John Arcudi and artist Lee Bermejo
Bermejo's art takes center stage here and seeing it in this oversized format is easily one of best parts of the whole collection. The gleaming city of Metropolis and Superman's reaction to the telepathic question from the Madman's Mott-like alien are exclamation point bookends to the comic. The words and panel are chosen carefully enough to be a sort of comic poem. It's strange to me that this of all the comics was picked up by USA Today. This page is so quickly paced that it might not even seem worth it to someone who isn't a comics fan--it's mainly an exercise in art and comics grammar and hero mythology.

DEADMAN by writers Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck and artist Dave Bullock
This is another origin set-up story. It's a little peculiar because his origin is in the title and also in the comic itself. The art here is pretty good--the Deadman in the center being a stand out highlight. This one seems like it will pick up as the story progresses.

GREEN LANTERN by writer Kurt Busiek and artist Joe Quiñones
Good Green Lantern stories are pretty hard to come by, so when I was looking at teasers for Wednesday Comics and saw the art I was pretty excited about this one. The intro box was good giving the story a timeless sort of feel but the rest of the story didn't really back it up. With nothing really notable standing out on the page, it doesn't seem to utilize the format well. The last panel has got me a little hopeful for future installments though.

METAMORPHO by writer Neil Gaiman and artist Michael Allred
Probably the biggest disappointment of the bunch. Allred's art is Allred but Gaiman's writing ruins it. While most of the other comics are mostly homage to the newspaper format, Gaiman goes for more of a campy/satirical approach. Gaiman just seems confused by the format and just decided to write a regular comic story and have it read a page a week, instead of inserting natural breaks.

TEEN TITANS by writer Eddie Berganza and artist Sean Galloway
The origin/explanation of the Titans as a group is solid, but this page falls apart with the Trident character. The art is decent enough, especially the Titans, through the ages does a good job of showing them in their different incarnations developing fluidly. It falls apart with the story and the panels get confusing towards the end.
ADAM STRANGE by writer/artist Paul Pope
Paul Pope is already a master at telling short cut off stories (see: Spiderman Tangled Web) so his Adam Strange is well paced. His art style is definitely modern, even "indie" by some standards, and the first half of the story plays into that showing Adam Strange waking up in his bed and hanging out a little in his house. The second half of the page plays with the sort of camp stuff Gaiman was trying but Pope pulls it off. Strange rattles off a list of sci-fi jargon that just comes off as completely genuine. Pope's art and the calmed introduction of Strange's character allow Pope to do this kind of sincere distance well.

SUPERGIRL by writer Jimmy Palmiotti and artist Amanda Conner
We'll have to wait to next week to see how this one really pans out. Supergirl plus animals is a good mixture but nothing really happens here.

METAL MEN by writer Dan DiDio and artists Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan
Didio goes for camp too, but pulls it off because he just goes for it instead of trying to be too clever or above it all. The joke with Gold being part of their stash and talking to them is actually funny so it works.

WONDER WOMAN by writer/artist Ben Caldwell
Here, Caldwell jams about three pages worth of story into one page. I think it utilizes the format well and the art is really interesting. Having this sort of prequel Wonder Woman, totally modern and neon, makes a sort of weird sense. It's a nice change from the sword-bearing killer that Wonder Woman has turned into recently.

SGT. ROCK by writer Adam Kubert and artist Joe Kubert
Six huge panels of Sgt. Rock getting beat up looks really awesome. These guys obviously know what they are doing. No surprises here but reading Kubert--Joe at least--is all about this kind of hard-ass craftsmanship.


THE FLASH by writers Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher and artist Karl Kerschl
This one sort of suprised me. It divides the page into two separate strips. The Flash's strip is completely action but it's done well with the Flash using and explaining his power in a coherent way that sometimes doesn't happen with the Flash. The panels at the end are well done, enhancing the effect of the Flash's compressed time. The second strip is about his girlfriend Iris done in an Apartment 3G style. Kerschl also changes the art slightly giving it a more dramatic/romatic focus. The combination of the two works really well and makes the other one better. Kind of like a real relationship.

THE DEMON AND CATWOMAN by writer Walter Simonson and artist Brian Stelfreeze
I like where this is headed. Both have these snobby personalities that actually play well into each other. Nothing too spectacular about the panels but the art is good especially the shadow panel of Catwoman. How Catwoman is ever going to tangle with Etragon should be interesting.

HAWKMAN by writer/artist Kyle Baker
Hawkman is similar to Batman and Superman pages by being a story into itself. Told from the point of view of his birds, the story gives insight into Hawkman's strength of character as a leader. It's also a look into the mindset of soldiers of any sort of autocratic governing system and how they value strength and purity. The art is simple but really effective. It matches the tone of the story and takes complete advantage of its format. Even the colors seem to be complimented by the paper.

Madman Atomic Comics #11 (Second-Take)

Either Mike Allred is on the brink of gumming up one of the most satisfying, longest-running independent comics series in recent memory or he is just a bit cleverer than many of his readers give him credit for being. On the surface, the biggest "story" in issue 11 of Madman Atomic Comics appears to be the impending separation of Frank's erstwhile portmanteau wife. Or, wait . . . maybe it is the now completely unvarnished insertion of Mormon cosmo-theology into the Madman universe. Or perhaps it is neither of these things and instead relates to the revelations of Franks true, true identity.

Though it is ultimately of lesser importance to the direction in which the series is going, the wholesale infusion of Mormon theology into the Madman series is nevertheless significant and deserves attention. The fact of the inclusion of such intimate details of Mormon cosmology seems more a reflection of how neatly these fit into the structure of the science fiction and fantasy genres (see also the novels of Orson Scott Card), rather than any sort of attempt to turn Madman into a vehicle for the propagation of Allred's own religious beliefs. Having said that, the sequence in which Madman is knocking on doors in an attempt to get a telephone call through to Dr. Flem's lab is an obvious allusion to the response thousands of Mormon missionaries receive as they canvass neighborhoods seeking converts.


Brandon is definitely on to something when he suggests that Allred treats the issue of the impending separation of Luna Joe as something of an afterthought, which leads one to ask what is really going on with this issue--or the whole series for that matter. One possibility comes from the revelation of Frank's pre-mortal identity: Prometheus. Of course Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is sub-titled The Modern Prometheus; and this, for the first time, identifies Madman with the title character of Shelley's novel, rather than his creation.

This seems like an academic detail, but if one pays attention to the last several issues in this series, Frank is continually going on about making things go back to how they were. Does this simply mean that he wants Joe and Luna to be individuals again? Or that Allred wishes to return the comic to its roots as a forum for "strange adventures that are wrapped around the very affecting relationship between Frank and Joe and Frank’s personal journey away from innocence?"

The problem of course is that you can't go back to the way things were and any attempt to do so would seem the height of hubris. Perhaps in this sense Frank is being compared to Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, who, with the arrogance of his genius tried to give the world the ultimate gift in the form of creating life, only to spend the rest of his life trying to undo what he had done, to his ultimate destruction.

Of course the more obvious comparison would be to Frankenstein's creation, and this not only because Frank was brought back from death. The creature, having been created by Dr. Frankenstein only to be rejected as a monster, spends the course of the novel looking for acceptance--in effect, seeking a replacement for the 'father' who scorned him. This sort of mythical search for a father is one of Frank's obsessions and variously takes the form of his questions about his past as Zane Townsend, his still unresolved issues concerning the loss of Professor Boiffard, and his strained relations with Dr. Flem.


One could also interpret this pregnant choice of names in terms of the Promethean myth itself. Prometheus stole fire from the gods to benefit mankind and was made to suffer eternal torment for his efforts. Frank has touched the hand of God and has the ability to see and know things that the rest of his associates cannot. This knowledge gives Frank insight and understanding, which ultimately allowed him to save the universe from destruction, but it is also a great burden.

There is clearly some rich, if somewhat obvious symbolism to the choices Allred is making in this issue and the series as a whole. The question becomes, then, does this make for a good comic, particularly in light of Madman's history? Readers who judge Madman Atomic Comics solely through the lens of what has come before are likely to come away disappointed. This is understandable, but equally understandable is Allred's insistence on his prerogative in taking his character where he wants to take him and using him to ask the questions that he wants asked.

Despite the somewhat ambiguous response this issue seems to be getting in this forum, there is still a lot to be celebrated about the book. In his weekly haul notice, Sammy mentioned the "dirty, blurred-crayon style drawings" of many of the backgrounds. There is some of this in the series' earlier issues, but it has never been as overt as this and it somehow strikes the reader as a great way to frame in illustrative terms Frank's visit to his childhood haunt. Similarly, the choice of presenting Frank's pre-mortal pal in the guise of Bowie's Aladdin Sane persona, as with substituting Audrey Hepburn's likeness for Haley Fou Fou, allows Allred to maintain something of Madman's fun, pop-cultural legacy in what is ultimately a more serious comic.

Madman Atomic Comics #11

At around the same time as the much-hyped Spiderman “Brand New Day” story arc, over at IMAGE, Mike Allred was busy working on an equally radical comics “event” in Madman Atomic Comics.

The two arcs are an interesting contrast with one another. One is the brave, artistic way to radically change your series and the other, the kinda cheap, hedging-your-bets, maybe briefly pique your monthly sales way to change your series.

Additionally, the “Brand New Day” story arc is way more bizarre and outlandish, involving memory erasure and Devil-dealing and other junk. All Mike Allred did was kinda kill of a major character in an uncheap way.

Joe’s death—and subsequent Joe/Luna Girl merger--was just sort of dropped on readers at the end of issue 7. It was perfect that #8 was word-less, as long-time readers of the series were as blown away and speechless as Frank Einstein himself. “Brand New Day” was announced, harped-over, and justified; Joe’s death was palpable.

In many ways, reader reaction to both continuity shifts was similar though. Readers of both comics were pissed, but Spiderman readers were upset because it was bullshit, Madman readers were upset because something crazy and a little too real had entered their comic book world.

Since then, we’ve had three issues of Madman Atomic Comics, which while successful and highly affecting, have also taken a little bit of a cheap, Marvel-like turn between teasing readers with how this “death”/merger is going to play-out.

This is especially true in the latest issue, which takes a vague, piecemeal approach to dropping information on both Frank’s past and leaves us on a cliffhanger about the de-merging of Joe and Luna. Undoubtedly, Allred’s got something real big in store but it’s getting tedious waiting for it to happen.

It’s also just not really the main pull or appeal of the comic anyway and it seems like maybe Allred doesn’t realize that. The pull of the comic is the strange adventures that are wrapped around the very affecting relationship between Frank and Joe and Frank’s personal journey away from innocence. Sure, all that’s directly connected to who and what Frank was in his former life, but it’s really not why Madman’s interesting.

There’s still plenty to enjoy and what looks like a half-assed, in-betweener issue upon first read, does reward more thoughtful readings. And I think thoughtful re-readings are what Allred’s looks for at this point anyway and I guess that’s cool.

I prefer comics to just be sort of viscerally awesome and affecting, but there’s some of that too. As Frank’s entering the home and the God-like voice begins speaking, we’re met with Frank questioning his like, core sanity for maybe the first time since those first three eyeball-eating TUNDRA issues.


A few pages later, as the Mormon Religio-Cosmology stuff gets really heavy, Frank quips, “Call me a cab. I need to get to the funny farm as soon as possible.” It’s interesting because even as Allred’s sort of tossing out this heavy religious stuff and it seems advocating and asserting its importance to Madman, he’s not afraid to joke about it and in a way acknowledge the reader’s thinking of “What the hell is going on here?”

Framing Frank’s journey as a visit to his boyhood home, each frame moving us deeper and deeper into the home, and having it all build to a meeting with a God that just happens to look a lot like David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane character is a brilliant, weird culmination of the issue and Allred’s long-standing merge of--to quote Sammy-- “existential insanity” and goofy fun pop-culture and comic book stuff.

And so, it’s almost an afterthought when he races back to Dr. Flem’s to witness the apparent de-merging of Joe and Luna Girl because none of that stuff needed to happen or really seems all that important to the issue or the series.