Wednesday Comics In Papers

Wednesday Comics In Papers

For a while now I have been wondering what the point of the L.A. Times and other news papers was. With the internet they no longer are the quickest way to get a news piece across and with the mass amounts of lay offs, the number of errors sneaking past the editors has been on an increase. I was just about to completely drop any need to purchase a news paper, much like the vast majority of the public has, but then came the Superheroes to the rescue.



DC comics is going to bring back those memories of my childhood with the Sunday Comics on Wednesday.

The Wednesday Comics series is going to be "a new 12-part weekly series launching this summer that will be presented in a 14” x 20” broadsheet format and will have to be unfolded and opened to be read. The "Wednesday" part of the title refers to the fact new comic books go on sale at comic book stores nationwide every Wednesday."

This has me extremely excited. Being that I am a huge comic nerd and all but this goes down deeper to my early days. When I was younger I was a huge fan of the papers. I would rip open the Sunday paper and grab the funnies. What would welcome me was Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side. Those pieces always made me smile. I really loved the far side. Something strange and extremely funny about it. Hey, it's where I get my humor.

While I also enjoyed the weekday paper because of the newspaper format for Spider-man. It was only a couple of panels per day so the amount of time it took to tell the same story that one comic took was roughly about a month or two. Even with the wait it gave me something fun to read daily.

Many years ago the love for the funnies died. Mainly because the paper really started going off on the funnies spanning into different directions that made no point. Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side were both ended by their creators and the funny part of the funnies was no longer around. I got into RED MEAT for a while when it was in the New Times, but even that paper died.

I still read the paper for what it was worth but I didn't open up the funny pages anymore. Now I have an excuse again. Especially when Joe Quinones is handling art on a Kurt Busiek Green Lantern.


Jetpack Commies fighting Green Lantern with laserbeams? Hell yeah!

It's no secret that right up there in terms of rankings, Hal Jordan as Green Lantern ranks high when it comes to super heroes I love reading about. He's a fighter/test pilot who happens upon a ring that can let him create whatever he wants. Oddly enough he usually makes large green fist to punch people with. It's all good, if you ask me.

Look at that! It's just like if Darwyne Cooke grabbed his Hal Jordan from the pages of New Frontier and kept it going. I have to say that the 1960's style for the logo is fabulos. I always thought Hal worked best in that era anyway. A no fear pilot giving it all he got in an era that flight, especially space flight, was completely new and filled with wonder.



I'm really looking forward to seeing Green Lantern like this. Like I mentioned, I only really read Spider-man in this fashion. The idea of seeing these other super heroes in this fashion is just making me get my change out to buy a news paper. With the price of the daily paper now at 75 cents, this clearly has to show you that I'm thrilled about this project. I don't spend 75 cents on a terribly written paper every day now.

Even the simple difference in how the logo is even drawn makes this so worth it. That's one thing I always loved about Green Lantern. The logo in which his name is printed on. It's not a problem that green is a color that I look half way decent in. But even the lantern itself. It's something awe inspiring.



But enough about the guy who can't fight against yellow. What about the other pieces in this project?

Besides Hal you have Hawkman finally getting the proper treatment he deserves. For years they have kept on changing his origin story and just forgetting about him because he's what many would consider a has been hero. The guy carries around a mace. Not sure what sort of damage or at least what sort of problems you can really solve with that.

Taking control of that is Kyle Baker. Who you'll know in the future as the creator of The Bakers, a future fox animation show that you will enjoy greatly. He has also worked on Plastic Man and various other stories at DC that have really been a throw back to the happier times in the DC universe.



How exactly is he going to do Hawkman right? Here's his quote on the matter:

There’s also action on Dinosaur Island, because dinosaurs are always cool. Hawkman carries a mace, so it’s important for a writer to create dilemmas which can be resolved with a mace. A guy with a mace fighting a T-Rex is a good fight to watch.

Truer words have never been spoken. Here's some of the rest of the interview with Kyle Baker's on Hawkman

With this new approach that DC is going... well, I guess it's more of a one time thing. But they proved to be willing to take the comic medium and run with it. Two years ago they released a weekly comic book series that made up 52 issues called 52. It was an amazing piece of work that was great to read and drew in a lot of readers.

Here's hoping to new and interesting projects and most of all, for making the paper worth reading again