Review: Wednesday Comics

Last Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer had an advance obituary of sorts. It was a story about how a comic like the lushly illustrated serial strip, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, just can’t survive in today’s newspaper climate. From the story:

“The strip demands enough space to accommodate its sweep and detail, but to cut costs, many newspapers have reduced the size available from the full page of its prime to a half, quarter, or even smaller part of a page.”

Which makes the success of DC Comics’ Wednesday Comics so perplexing. In case you’re not familiar, Wednesday Comics is printed in the form of a Sunday funnies section. It’s printed on full broadsheet newsprint — about 14-by-20 inches. (Click on the image to the right for sample) And it’s nothing but page-after-page of full-page, standalone comics. One page is a Superman story, the next is a Metamorpho saga. All are continued next week.

And it’s one of the hottest things in comics right now. Heck, there’s even one title, Kamandi that is a devoted homage to Foster’s style of storytelling.

Perplexing, I tell ya. I can’t figure it out. Maybe DC is using special ink. I mean, they get my #3.99 every week for the thing. And that’s twice what I pay for an entire Sunday paper.