The Top 5 Stories from Wednesday Comics

Wednesday Comics was a 12 issue comic book published by DC Comics, each issue featured fifteen large pages that were four times the size of a normal comic page. Each page made up a chapter to one of the fifteen stories in the anthology. Though it sounds like a big rip off, most of the pages pulled off telling a story and continuing the ongoing tale. It was a unique and great take on the weekly comic book format, and here are the top five stories from Wednesday Comics.

5) Hawkman by Kyle Baker. Hawkman stops an alien invasion, and fights a dinosaur with his mace. Oh that didn't do it for you? How about this, this is the first time I ever cared about Hawkman. Baker made him look amazing with his massive wings, and showed him as a true powerhouse. Plus he fought a dinosaur! It was a story that made me anticipate each chapter, and was always high on my to read list when I got the newest installment.

4) The Flash by Karl Kerschl and Brendan Fletcher. The story took some unique turns and started off with it's own twist on the one page format. It spent the first several weeks split into two separate comic strips. The top and bottom would focus on various members of the cast, from the Flash, Barry Allen to his girlfriend Iris West, to even the villain Gorilla Grodd. The story involved time travel, multiple Barry Allen's and revolved around Barry trying to save not only Iris from Grodd but his relationship with Iris. It featured one of the most inventive pages ever, mixing homages to classic comic strips like Peanuts with telling a story. It also had the most emotional cliffhanger in the whole book, Barry struggling to keep his grip on Iris so he can save her. Sadly the final page ruined most of the build up, it ignored the rest of the comic. I felt very cheated by the lackluster ending.

3) Supergirl by John Palmiotti and Amanda Conners. Going into the book I was expecting to hate this story. Supergirl has been turned into a preteen sex object for sad fanboys to drool over. This story gave us a very adorable and funny tale about how Supergirl deals with the crisis of super powered animals going crazy. Krypto the Super Dog and Streaky the Super Cat suddenly start acting just like normal cats and dogs... who happen to have super powers. Krypto harasses mail men with super speed, and Streaky chases after a mouse, that happens to be the logo on a plane, sending the jet down. We even get some interesting guest stars in Doctor Midnite and Aquaman as the story progresses. This was definitely the most fun story in Wednesday Comics and deserves to be read by anyone who likes Supergirl, and fun in their comic books.

2) Metamorpho by Neil Gaiman and Mike Alred. This was another fun story. If you don't know who Metamorpho is, he was granted the ability to turn into any element by the Eye of Ra, with his girlfriend Sapphire, her money grubbing father Mr. Stagg and body guard Java they go after the Eye of Ra in the arctic. What makes this story so much fun is how Gaiman and Alred experiment with the single page format. They have fan mail, a two page spread that makes up the periodic table, and a page that is a big game of shoots and ladders. It was a very straightforward tale, but it's fun and experimentations made it a great read.

1) Strange Adventures by Paul Pope. The story was mostly about Adam Strange, an Earth man who spends half of his time living on the planet Rann as a space hero, where he is married to the gorgeous Alanna, thanks to the mysterious Zeta Beam which transports him between the two planets. The story is about an invading people demanding Adam give them the power of the Zeta Beam and how he and Alanna fight against their foes It was a great pulpy sci fi romp, that recreated the Adam Strange mythos and showed how bad ass Alanna really could be too. Each page held big new ideas and gorgeous art, the pace was near perfect, Pope seemed to know from the beginning how to do a twelve page story where each page stood on its own and fed into what came next. While it may have lacked some of the experimentation, it used the format perfectly.

Now there was a lot more great stories in Wednesday Comics, Azzerello and Risso presented a solid noir Batman story in the style of the old Dick Tracy comics, Gibbons and Sook brought out a fantastic Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth and both Joe and Adam Kubert working on Sergeant Rock, and there was still another seven stories in each issue, but I have went on long enough, I highly recommend picking up Wednesday Comics, it was the best super hero book of the last year in my humble opinion.