As you may or may not know, Wednesday is New Comic Day.

It’s the day when we receive all the new issues, trades, hardcovers and anything else that we’ve ordered from the distributors. It’s a great day, I have to say because not only is there new product out there, but there’s usually a good turnout of folks coming by to check out new books, pick up their pull lists and generally talk comics.

Every now and again though, New Comic Day brings us a fantastic treat of a book that I just have to gush about. This week, it’s the long awaited Wednesday Comics hardcover collection from DC.

Last summer, DC embarked on an ambitious project called Wednesday Comics. It was a 12-installment newspaper that had comic strips in it featuring some of DC’s top characters done by some of their newest, greatest and most legendary creators. It was an artistic triumph, but the medium (newsprint, in a folded newspaper style) fell flat with a lot of fans.

Well, the collected Wednesday Comics makes up for that shortcoming and more. It’s a gorgeous book, that’s WAY oversized at 18” x 11.5” to give each of these strips it’s proper due, in full colour. Stories involving The Flash, Batman, Superman, Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Kamandi, Deadman, Supergirl, Green Lantern and more, simply fly off the page in this over-sized format. The book presents every strip from the Wednesday Comics series in sequential order, along with a host of really cool extras.

The price tag is a little steep ($49.95 US), but for a book that features work by the likes of Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso, Dave Gibbons, Kurt Busiek, Neil Gaiman, Michael Allred, Paul Pope, Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Connor, Dan DiDio, Adam & Joe Kubert, Karl Kerschl, Walt Simonson and many more, it’s practically a steal.

For longtime fans, the Wednesday Comics hardcover is an absolute treasure, and for newcomers it’s a perfect way to get into some of the biggest and most legendary characters DC has to offer, done by creators who live up to that ilk.

Wednesday Comics in their original form.

The Wednesday Comics hardcover collection