Tomorrow, the second issue of DC’s 12-part, weekly Wednesday Comics, hits spinner racks. If you are a comics reader, you should buy it. If you are not a comics reader, but have at least a passing interest in the medium, I recommend that you try it or, at worst, bug me to read my copy. The stories are generally accessible and entertaining, the format (broadsheet-sized newsprint, with each installment in the anthology given its own massive page, and some very compelling talent responsible for the words and pictures. While each strip isn’t for everyone, there is something for everyone, and the variety is actually a positive for me, rather than a negative.
My favorite bit of the first issue may have been Karl Kerschl’s Flash/Iris West story. The one that didn’t do much for me was the Wonder Woman story, which I think was a bit too confusing to really work as the first part of a serial, despite the whole page being a shout-out to Little Nemo.
I think the book is a coup and that it’s well-suited to the coveted and mythical new reader/non-hardcore fan, but is it really? There’s some talk about the price point being too high for a weekly and the format itself (being sold only to specialty shops) being nothing but the kind of nostalgia mining that’s poisoning the hobby.
The anecdotes bear out the complaints, sadly. I talked to the owners of Comics On The Green and The Unknown, the Scranton area’s two best comic shops, and got the tale of the tape from them. CotG ordered “comparable to how the last two weekly comics sold,” and has sold more than 3/4 of their order in the first week. The sellthrough at the Unknown is roughly the same, but that shop ordered significantly lower than orders on Trinity (which were significantly lower than Countdown). The leading across-the-counter reasons for not trying the book are the price point and the lack of canonicity in the stories (which was also a frequent complaint about Trinity).
One of the things that came up in my talk with Eric from The Unknown is that the physical artifact is something that needs to be experienced to really impress people. I know that I wasn’t fully on board with Wednesday Comics myself until I saw Bob Wayne pull it out from under his arm and unfold it, and I think that same barrier is going to exist in shops, unfortunately. While the art inside is delicious, the front cover of the book has got a safe, clean design with lots of white space, and that just doesn’t compete well with the books it shares shelfspace with. My advice? Keep a copy for the store, lay it out in its unfolded glory on the counter, with a stack of copies next to it as a compelling point-of-purchase item. As for the price, it’s already been covered down to the price per square foot. I’ll just say that I don’t mind paying a premium for quality and that Wednesday Comics, unlike Marvel’s recent stabs at anthology content, features top-tier talent.
Did you get Wednesday Comics? I want to know what you thought of it, and if you’re buying issue #2.
