Wednesday Comics 6! Only three weeks late!

[kingrockwell]

Yeah, I kind of dropped the ball on the weekly posts, but the scans have so much time between them that my heart went out of it. Dunno whether I'll keep up, but I'm giving up on the showcase-style posts. Instead, here's my two favorite strips from week six.

How fun is this strip? Too much fun! Between Wednesday Comics and their Power Girl title, Palmiotti and Conner have almost a monopoly over Kara's of all world, but the way they do them, I don't think anyone minds. Dig the shell-phone!
And that's the fourth and final strip we can post here, so if you want to continue following Supergirl's adventures, you'll have to read Wednesday Comics!

This strip gets a lot of flak for being cluttered, but it's finally starting to stretch out a bit. It still has more panels than the others, but I'm too busy enjoying it for it to bug me, honestly. Again, guest stars stealing the spotlight, but Etta does so by being delightful and eager where Arthur was more irate and shouty (on his shell phone!).
Anyway, Ben Caldwell's annotations (which have updated even slower than the weekly Wednesday Comics scans!) have mentioned how the strip has handled Diana's first encounters with mortals, and this is really the first positive one. Do you think she could've had a better one, or that Etta's hero-worship is a good counter to Dr. Poison's brutality and Cheetah's scheming?

Comments

[xlineartx.insanejournal.com]

Best ever!

Busy politician Aquaman is actually one of my favorite things, and teenage Etta is fabulous.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

The Conner Supergirl strip is about the only thing that keeps me reading this uneven thing. That and Baker's art in Hawkman. And Aquaman here is great.

[darklorelei.insanejournal.com]

I really liked the vertical format on WW.

In week six, I looooved the Gorilla Grodd strips. Kerschl drawing animals=instant win.

[kingrockwell]

As much as I love the Flash strip, I still haven't posted it! I was gonna do a showcase of Green Lantern and Flash for, well, some week, but when the .cbrs are so few and far between, it's rough keeping up any kind of plan!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

I can't get into that one. It's like, "What if the Flash were Mary Worth"?

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

Seems like the Aquaman from "Brave and the bold".:)

[oath5.insanejournal.com]

The WW strip is pretty enough to set the grounds for an animated version of it...I think. That's what it looks like, animation layout. Kinda like Disney Hercules/Atlantis style going on...would make a great WW TV show for CN!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Perhaps it's just that I've never cared much about WW(sorry), but the WW strip--and this is coming from a Chris Ware reader--is just plain unreadable to me.

[jaybee3.insanejournal.com]

I love how Conner's Kara Zor-El (Supergirl) looks just like a younger shorter less busty version of her Kara Zor-L (PG), that's how it should be. They are supposed to be alternate world doppelgangers.

I still can't get into the WW one. The art is interesting but it seems so busy and cramped together.

Aquaman here rules. See now, when I see how utterly cool Aquaman is here, in the Hawkman Wed. Comic, in Blackest Night and in the cartoon B&B (all of which are slightly different but still recognizably Arthur Curry) I have a tough time buying Didio's mantra of Aquaman as a difficult character and that the public can't "get" him.

No, he's actually a fun character. Or he should be. The incredibly powerful, incredibly busy ruler of 3/4 of the Earth who can command anything living in the sea (i.e. most of life on Earth0, has a hot powerful wife, a kingdom with both fishes and mermaids and he wears an orange shirt. And unlike Namor, he's not a dick. Fighting crime with the JLA should more of a hobby for him. He's a king, after all. Is that so difficult?

[kingrockwell]

I think Arthur's problem is he still carries a lot of baggage from the Superfriends, the way Batman carried baggage from Adam West for the longest time. In his comics he's always been cool, but you ask someone who's not familiar and they'll just be all "haha he can talk to fish, so what"
One great thing about the Marvel vs. DC fight between him and Namor way back when was that talking to fish ended up being the deciding factor when Arthur dropped a whale on him!
Didio's also the guy that thought killing off Dick Grayson would be a good idea back during Infinite Crisis, so how he sees the characters can be pretty skewed.

And I haven't seen Arthur in Hawkman yet! My LCS was stupid and had trouble with their shipment, so I'll see it later tonight if I'm lucky.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

"Is that so difficult?"

Judging by his sales history, yes.

[jaybee3.insanejournal.com]

His last series was still holding its head above water (if you pardon the pun) until OYL came and they made Orin a squid and made some new guy (now gone) Aquaman. The title never recovered from that.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

No, it wasn't. The title had been slated for cancellation until the OYL revamp was thought up. The revamp was done as an alternative to cancellation (only for the title to be canceled anyway later).

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

G. Willow Wilson wants to write this kind of Aquaman.

Like, holy cow do want 0_0.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

That's not Aquaman.

That's Snapper Carr.

[janegray.insanejournal.com]

What exactly are these Wednesday Comics? I'm so out of the loop :(

[kingrockwell]

oh wow, really? well okay
Wednesday Comics is a weekly DC's been putting out since July. It features fifteen over-sized one-page strips about some of DC's top characters (and some more minor ones) by various writers and artists in the field, serialized over twelve weeks. #9 is released today, and it'll be over before the month is out.
It's folded twice, so it looks about the size of a regular comic, but once you crack it open its full majesty becomes evident.

[janegray.insanejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[lieut_kettch.insanejournal.com]

When Arthur says he has a clamshell phone, he means it!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

He needs his own strip. With him like this.

[retro_nouveau.insanejournal.com]

This is the most perfect Kara in the last 20 years. I was a little uncomfortable that Arthur almost made her start crying the next week, I think she's a little tougher than that, but ok, let's say this is still her first month off the ship from Argo. Heh, I didn't notice the Daily Planet is part of the Metropolis skyline in the first panel. Speaking of the Planet, I wonder why she's not asking Clark about the puppy and kitty.

Even a couple weeks later, I still think 'whoa, Arthur is hot'. His hair repels water or something, because it's perfect seconds after he's out of the brine. Aquanet?

Never got into Wonder Adolescent. I look at the pretty pictures every week, but that's about it. I'm trying!

[04nbod.insanejournal.com]

now,now lets not be hasty. Mark Waid wrote a stunning Kara as well and Landry Walker's Kara trumps this one. I'm starting to get the feeling the Supergirl strip is being used as a gateway for showcasing a few other characters.

[retro_nouveau.insanejournal.com]

Well, I was almost going to mention Mark Waid and George Perez on Brave and the Bold #2, which gave me the warm nostalgic fuzzies. I will look for these runs and verify that this can be trumped. Thanks! :)

[kingrockwell]

I wonder why she didn't go to Diana, you know, the one who can talk to animals! Still, nice to see Arthur. He does have nice hair, but everyone looks a little better under Amanda Conner's pen!

[uadlika.insanejournal.com]

Diana can talk to animals? Since when?

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Since always. (Well, since post-Crisis, anyway, I'm not sure I've ever seen her do it pre-Crisis, but there's a lot of pre-Crisis I haven't read). The precision of the power varies - Perez-era she just sort of super-empathized with them all Horse Whisperer style, by Rucka-era she could actually intelligently parse concepts like "this bird is fleeing a forest fire" and get mice to search through rubble for disaster survivors - but nevertheless it's there.

[retro_nouveau.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, ugh. Never liked Arthur's talking to fish, and I'm not crazy about this power for Diana, she of the cosmic level abilities and no weaknesses. It is cool by if it's tweaked to a simple super-empathy kind of thing that works on all living creatures. Kind of like Faith, but less in your face, and higher intelligences have better resistance. As long as there's no chit chats (or radiating circles from Diana's forehead, ugh).

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

I wonder why she didn't go to Diana

Best guess, a combination of "wait, we have a character named Wonder Woman?" and brand management - any version of Diana who showed up in Supergirl's story would obviously be markedly different than the one who's showing up in the Wonder Woman story. (Also, if the primary story arc is "these pets be crazy," having a character pop up who can both tell you exactly what's wrong *and* go on to calm them both down and fix it in the space of three panels sort of cuts your story short).

[retro_nouveau.insanejournal.com]

Agreed, Conner's pen is magic. Please excuse the icon that has the wrong tone, but it's such a great expression and by one of my top 10 artists...

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

I'm guessing she's going to Aquaman because he seems to be functioning as a sort of combination superhero, diplomat, and super-veterinarian here. My take on him is that he's basically the Dr. Dolittle for the sea kingdom - and if you've ever read the Dr. Dolittle books, that means he's very, very, VERY busy keeping up with solving the problems of all the random whales and clams and octopi and fishy things. I'd imagine that, in this strip, anyway, he can speak to more ordinary animals as well as sea creatures, so if you've got a superpet-related problem, he's your man.

[kingrockwell]

Actually, he reminds her that he only talks to fish and she almost cries! :(

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Well, OK, she THINKS he can speak to more ordinary animals as well. Does he recommend anyone else she could try?

[kingrockwell]

When she almost starts crying he apologizes and puts her on the trail of Doctor Mid-Nite, the metahuman community's go to guy for all things medical. After a short bout of Krypto and Streaky going crazy again in Mid-Nite's office, he figures out some alien radiation is messing with them and sends Kara off to the sun to get to the bottom of it.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Ah, OK. I was thinking they might have been in heat or contracted spring fever or something.

[uadlika.insanejournal.com]

Arthur looks a lot like Conner's Power Girl, in my opinion.

[lightbrigade.insanejournal.com]

OOH, Aquaman looks like Denis Leary. Yum.

[silverzeo.insanejournal.com]

Aquamon is the.... water whisper?

And Eta beating down demons with a giant sucker? AWESOME!

[jedd_the_jedi.insanejournal.com]

Krypto is more than adorable in those Supergirl scans! Krypto flying on a leash, Krypto splashed in the face, Krypto's tongue clawed by a crab...so many wonderful Krypto moments in one strip! Aaah!

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

OK, Aquaman is awesome here. He's using a CLAM as a cellphone! If that's not just compellingly weird, I don't know what is.
And while the layout on the Wondy strip continues to confuse me somewhat - it took me about five tries on this strip before I figured out just HOW I was supposed to read it - the artwork and so forth continues to impress. Etta is great here - a nice distillation of her Golden Age self - and the freaky pill-popping undead Roman guys make for interesting villains. I mean, the lead guy is gushing blood from his mouth, which floats behind him in midair like a cloak. That is... icch. It's an awesome visual, and disgusting to think about.