Wednesday Comics #12 (OF 12)

Can't believe this is the final issue. Really, I don't want this to end.

Please oh please let there be another volume of this next year!

Sad to see this go. Can't wait to see where it all ends. It's not a week for strong books, maybe this will be the dark horse for POTW.

While I will be sad to see this go, I will be happy to see $24 a month back in my pocket. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll probably end up adding four more $4 books to my pull list.

It's been a fun ride, let's see if it finishes strong.

Rereading the best few strips tonight.

my looking forward to of the week

Damn, it's been a fun ride.  I think I'll wait until this coming weekend to read all the issues over again.  Not sure if I'll read individual strips one after the other, or just read the whole issues back to back.  Decisions, decisions.

I've been enjoying this alot, but I'm glad I can cut something out of my comics diet with the conclusion of this series.

It's amazing to me that both 'Super' strips are going to rush it's ending. Cause they way they finsihed last week I find it hard not to believe it won't be rushed in some capacity.

@everyone: Seriously? (just joking)

Overall a great run of strips, with the good outweighing the bad...On the downside too expensive!...and I might be in the vast minority here...but the pages are just too big...I think I'd prefer half the size but 24 strips...Does anyone know how big the original art was drawn at? Suggestions for how...or even if this should be collected?

I'm really sad this is going. Definitely has been the highlight of my comic book buying experience thus far (I only started buying issues with Flash: Rebirth, so I'm really new to this side of comic booking). 

I have no idea how they're going to collect it, but it deserves an Absolute-type collection. Probably not enough pages in there, but I want it anyway. Just double the page length with articles and extras. That'd be cool. I have no idea how they're going to get that newsprint feel though.

$50 for this series is a bit much, but I feel that this is the type of comic that I could go back to in a couple years.

I thought this was an excellent capper for the series.  Please see my review for further comments on individual strips.

Other then Superman and Teen Titans (and obviously Wonder Woman); these all had really good endings. Now I got something to pre-occupy myself with and never get tired of reading in this format. Great idea by DC and I cannot wait to see if we get more in the future.

This is it the last installment of Prax's Patented Ratings (for now)! You know the drill by now. I hope to have an overall review for the 12 issues this weekend.

The Great: Kamandi (Fabulous. Begs to be continued. Amazing.); Deadman (This ending was a little dull, but really I can't fault it.); Metamorpho (Fantastic. Everything it should have been.); Strange Adventures (Pope really did the most in reinventing a concept for the this project. I really would love to see this Adam Strange continue.); Supergirl (It was cute fun with some hysterical moments. If this is collected, I may gift it to my niece.); Flash (A bit of a cop out, but there's some really beautiful layouts here. Amazing stuff. Perhaps the art was the better of the story); Hawkman (A bit rushed, but a lot of fun. Hawkman comes off a lot cooler here than in many other depictions.)

The Good: Metal Men (Really enjoyable. However, it seems every story ends with the Metal Men dying...) 

The Mediocre: Batman (This was a great 100 Bullets story that had nothing to do with Batman.); Green Lantern (I don't feel like anything happened really. Shame. Should have been my favorite.); Demon and Cat Woman (A story I was enjoying took a turn toward the bland.); 

The Bad: Superman (Terrible. When I finished this, I wanted to rip the page out of the issue. Apparently Superman is whipped, Batman has to do his work for him and and there's no resolution to the actual plot.); Teen Titans (Fail! What character was narrating this? Because the box was a different color than Robin's?); Wonder Woman (I'm a fan of caldwell's art and language of the page - thought this one was a bit confusing and could have used better direction - but the story was blah.); Sgt. Rock (Another one that has some great art attached to a terrible and horribly cliche story);

I want to read that Supergirl and Hawkman.

Do we know how they are collecting this yet?

@Prax-I pretty much agree with everything you said :-D  I found the second to last panel of Supergirl waaay too funny.  Like, I actually dropped the paper and just laughed for a while.  It was great.

For me, the worst ending was the Batman one.  I can't for the life of me believe that Batman, no matter who's interpretation it is, would ever kiss a dying girl on the lips that he shacked up with once.  It was just so jarring.  And the look on his face when he looked up!  It was as if he knew it was gross and was ashamed of it!  

Still, I'm miss this book. 

@ScorpionMasada - I don't think we have heard how or if this will be collected.  I'm not even sure how well this sold.

@drakedangerz - I found the kiss to be a nice twist.  It was clear that something was going on with those two and this issue revealed what it was.  Perhaps Bruce had real feelings for her and was moved when she recognized him with a touch.  I didn't particularly like the Batman strip, but I found the finale worthwhile. 

I thought he was going to third base with the corpse. But that's just me...

Gimmick 5/5. art 5/5. story 1/5

total: 11/15

@stuclach-but the only time before that we thought something was going on was after Bruce banged her.  And since he does that to anything with a hole, I wasn't truly convinced that she was anything more than a casual encounter to him.  But that's just me.

Plus it bugged me that there was not a big nod to Bob Kane for creating him.  Both the Superman and Kamandi had bigger captions giving credit to their respective creators.

@drakedangerz - I get what you are saying, but I just let myself assume there was more to it than that.  Maybe I just wanted it to be good.

I wonder if the lack of a Bob Kane nod was due to the fact that there is some evidence that he gets way more credit than he deserves.  PraxJarvin can probably give you more info about that than I can. 

I call upon the power of PraxJarvin to explain this! :-)

Wasn't there a Created by Bob Kane thing on each of the strips? I thought there was? In any event, what Stu is talking about is that, it's more or less come to light that Bob Kane ripped of Bill Finger and... someone else, my mind is blanking... but mainly Bill Finger in creating Batman. It's been covered (more than once) on Comic Book Legends Revealed and in Cronin's book. Essentially, Bob Kane created a character called "Bat-Man" that as terrible and some garish red costume. Bill Finger came up with the origin, costume and basic story elements for the first issue with Kane at a party or something, Kane sat on it for a few months then made it into Detective Comics #27. So, sometimes some creators who feel strongly about it try and get the "Created by" taken off their rendition of the character.

@PraxJarvin - Thank you for jumping in and sharing some of your encyclopedic knowledge with us.

@drakedangerz - I believe Bill Finger is deserving of considerable credit for creating The Joker and many of the other major Batcharacters.  

This post is late to the game, but I felt I should put my final thoughts on this down somewhere as I just finished it. Loved it. Loved the art. Loved the innovation and paper. Just really cool. Just two final thoughts:

The fact that Gaiman and Allred screwed up the periodic table drives me crazy. At first I thought he did it on purpose, but it is never referred to in the comic, so now I am not sure. The most agregious is Neon being NO and Nitrogen being referenced again there. Also screwed up the Lathanides and Actinides (he reversed them I think). There was also a Typo where TH was accidentally UT (which is not an element). I was so ready to post this Table on my wall and now I can't (or can't do it without bitching about it every day).

People should give Wonder Woman a second look. Without a doubt the first 4-5 issues are a mess. The colors are screwed up and the composition is a busy nightmare. Because of the speed of publication, poor Caldwell didn't figure it out until then, I suspect. Sometimes it is tough to see the problem until it is actually printed up, especially with this new format. However, starting from about issue 6-11 this became some of my favorite art (behind Kerschel, Sook, Allred, and Pope). He fixed the colors and backed off on the crazy number of panels. I even liked the story, which was WW gathering the seven stars of the Amazon to battle the evil Ms. Poison, who was a creepy villain. And the Etta character was really funny. Of course the last page (12) got busy again as he tried to wrap it all up, but at least the colors were solid. I hope this get reprinted with some better colors for the first half, however I don't know how big you would have to make it to fix the busy problem, which really did make the earlier issues unreadable.