Astro City - Kurt Busiek
This isn't "superheroes in the real world," but "the human side of
superheroes." In the real world, these creations would be locked up and
done experiments on. No, this is about humanity. These books explore
how it might feel to be a living cartoon, a villain's daughter, a
washed-up hero, a hero and a father-to-be. These volumes are sweet and
a sly homage to decades of comic book lore and it may be silly and it
may be trite but dammit, sometimes they even make me tear up. I'm just a
sap for bathos and romance.
- Life In the Big City - A man moves to Astro City and learns what it means to live with a city of constant superhero tropes. [5]
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- Lovers' Quarrel - an aging Crackerjack and Quarrel, on and off lovers and partners, argue about what to do with their lives and whether to quit as they get slower. Crackerjack is insistent on using the retired Black Rapier's anti-aging serum, with bad results. [4.5]
- Honor Guard - the second Hummingbird, daughter of the first, finds out her powers come with a curse; a living nightmare is wakened; Starfighter wonders whether it's time to settle down. All excellent stories; the chibi-anime-videogame one was the weakest. [4]
- Reflections - we see the First Family from the point of view of the Bee Empire, but one youngling finds out the official story may not be true; Steeljack works a case of missing tech; and Samaritan is troubled by nightmares. [4.5]
- Ordinary Heroes - a sea-based villain plots a return from the isolated island he's stranded on; two generations of Jack-in-the-Box work on uncovering the original's past; and we return to the story of Maria, who works on the Hill, where the magic is. [4]
- Broken Melody
- we learn some pre-war Astro City history. A super-musical force,
seen earlier as the Bouncing Beatnik, is born as Mister Cakewalk, of
ragtime days, and later Baby Jazz, of the flapper era. Also the
Astro-Naut, a pilot who becomes a space hero and inspires the town's
name (this story really lays on the weepy melodrama thick). And the
surprisingly original origin of the Gentleman. But the heart of this
one is the Broken Man, the fourth-wall breaking purple guy who keeps
trying to explain his role to us (it gets very Grant Morrison). I could
read Astro City lore forever, I think. [4]
MetroBook
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- Vol. 3 - This volume combines all four Dark Ages series plus the two-issue Silver Agent story. It's a grand sweeping epic covering (and just briefly touching on) a lot of Astro City lore, but throughout it's the story of two brothers. One, Royal, is a small-time criminal who works for various underworld bosses. Charles is a cop who refuses to join his corrupt fellow officers, and later becomes an EAGLE trooper. What binds them together is their shared trauma — in 1959, their parents were murdered by a Pyramid goon, and the Silver Agent never stopped to help them. Thus, they both burn with the desire for vengeance and an apathetic attitude toward the costumes. Working together undercover, they track the killer from place to place as he rises in the ranks of his criminal organization. Meanwhile, the city is rocked by a series of grim events in which the costumes trend toward excessive force, and the Silver Agent is found guilty in an open-and-shut case of murder, and sentenced to death. It's a great story, and an interesting look at what to me represents the Marvel stories of the 1970s and '80s. Astro City is often more DC and Marvel, and this story, set in the 1970s, shows what the human side of supers might be like if they were grim and gritty and the normal people were as fearful and reactionary as in an X-Men comic. Overall, it's an enjoyable story, although at times the breakneck race through superhuman events in a panel or page left me less engaged. [4]
