DC Comics; $3.99 each

We’ve raved about each issue of Wednesday Comics we’ve reviewed , but the sheer number of stories in each issue has made it prohibitive to go into great detail about just what it is we love about this 12-issue weekly series. That said, it seems unfair to just keep saying “It’s good! Buy it!” without going into detail, and now that it’s concluded we thought we’d take another look at it.

With that in mind, we’ve singled out three of the many tales on which to concentrate:

Based on the characters created by Jack Kirby, Kamandi the turbulent world that exists after “the Great Disaster” that has decimated mankind and left mutant members of various animal kingdoms in charge. Into this world, the title character, a lonely human boy, is thrust. The strip is written by Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons and illustrated by Ryan Sook (Buffy The Vampire Slayer). The creative team’s approach to this made Kamandi into a dystopic Prince Valiant, a joy to behold in terms of its visual appeal and its storytelling technique. It may well be the best executed tale in Wednesday Comics.

The Metal Men, written by Dan DiDio with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, is another standard-setter. Never have the Metal Men been so accessible to new readers, and we can’t recall any time they’ve ever looked this good either. DiDio and Garcia-Lopez have, in the space of the first 10 issues, created a “how to” guide for introducing these characters to new readers. They’ve also reminded us that in an age of full bleed, splash pages, that there’s a reason that panel boarders have always aided in storytelling. This is another contender for the top spot in the series.

Supergirl, written by Jimmy Palmiotti (Jonah Hex) and illustrated by Amanda Conner (Power Girl), is another one of the stories that seems to have really embraced the weekly, newspaper format to tell its tale. Steeped in an early Silver Age sensibility but infused with a modern sense of adventure and whimsy, Palmiotti and Conner (two thirds of the creative team on the new Power Girl series) succinctly established that Power Girl and Supergirl have very different personalities. This one also has been a pleasure to read each week, and the conclusion was nicely done.

And it’s not just these three strips either. We could have just as easily focused on Kyle Baker’s Hawkman, Kurt Busiek and Joe Quiñones’s Green Lantern, Paul Pope’s Adam Strange, or a number of the others, almost all of which someone would have claimed as their favorites.

We hope there will be another Wednesday Comics series next year.