About Anthologies...and Whither Weeklies?

Well, DC has apparently decided that a year-long weekly series is going to be a permanent fixture in their publishing plans. Trinity will follow in the footsteps of 52 and Countdown, featuring one long story about Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

In a big break from tradition that might avoid some of the pitfalls of those other two series, there will be one creative team--Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, doing the front 12 pages of EVERY issue. The the plans for the remaining ten pages sound a bit more nebulous, but will be by Busiek and Fabian Nicieza with art by various artists, and will sometimes be one-shot stuff and sometimes a continuing story.

Now, to me, it sounds like maybe, just maybe, they might be getting the formula right, by combining a weekly with an anthology. It sounds like it could avoid the pitfalls of the too many cooks approaches of 52 and Countdown, where both the quality and content veered wildly from week to week, depending on which team was up.

I've always thought there was room for more anthology titles on the market...but DC and Marvel usually mucked it up by making them monthly. Showcase '9x and the current Marvel Comics Presents show the perils of doing so...it's hard to keep momentum going for 6 pages at a time when you don't pick up the story again for 4-5 weeks. It's tough for the reader to remember, and it's tough on the creator to pace it so you have a natural story break/cliffhanger every six pages.

But by being weekly and having longer stories, I hope Trinity will be able to avoid that. The original run of Marvel Comic Presents was bi-weekly, and eventually settled on Wolverine as the permanent lead feature.

But I'm most reminded of 2 decades ago, when, for about a one year period, Action Comics became Action Comics Weekly--a weekly giant-size anthology title. Each week, 48 pages for $1.50, continuing stories and one-shots. And lots of stories and characters that weren't getting any attention elsewhere in the DC Universe: Mike Baron's wonderful Deadman stories, the Secret Six, the Phantom Stranger...

It wasn't perfect...the decision to relegate Superman to a 2 page "newspaper" style appearance every week was incredibly dumb. And of course, a fair amount of lame stories made it through.

But it did the anthology idea right: it allowed stories and characters that weren't going to be seen elsewhere, and it kept the fans coming to the feeder pellet button every week, when the last week's stories were still fresh in their minds.

So I hope Trinity works better as a weekly series than its predecessors (although I despair now of ever seeing Astro City again...). And I hope DC and Marvel move back to more frequent anthologies, using them as a guide to their wondrous universes. It's always seemed to me to be a great way to develop new talent and showcase your less well-known characters.

Oh, and Marvel? Get BETTER stories than the crap now appearing in Marvel Comics Presents. Yuck.