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gently caress it, let's see how long I manage this for: Astro City Life In The Big City This is the first trade of Astro City, composed of the first mini-series for the eponymous title. Astro City, for those that don't know, is a series/setting created by Kurt Buseik, Alex Ross and Brent Anderson, with Busiek scripting, Anderson on pencils and Ross doing covers for much of it. This volume is actually one I've owned for a while and have read in the past, though not for a long time, but I recently splurged and bought most of the series during a Comixology sale, and have begun going through it, so everything past #6 of the first mini is new to me. Astro City is a fictional city, set in a self-contained superhero universe. Every issue reads like the 300th issue of an ongoing title that you've never seen before, with casual references to other heroes, teams, villains, events that give the impression of decades of history and continuity, but none of it is presented in an alienating manner. This first run is 6 stand-alone stories. They go as follows: #1- In Dreams We're introduced to one of the most obvious stand-ins in Astro City's pantheon of heroes: The Samaritan. He's a pretty blatant Superman figure, with the addition of some Electric Superman powers. This story is an interesting day-in-the-life tale with the framing device of Samaritan timing how long he spends in flight during a typical day. See, despite how much he loves the sheer joy of flight, in order to be the kind of hero the world needs him to be, he has to be as fast as possible, so he spends seconds crossing continents, instead of actually flying for the feeling. It's a wonderfully melancholy and elegiac story, and the slight wispiness of Anderson's art, and the colours add to the issue a lot. #2- The Scoop This one is told by a Perry White-esque newsman to a new reporter, filling him in on the tale behind a seemingly out-of-place article on the editor's wall. It's mostly notable for introducing a poo poo-ton of new heroes, and creating a silver age vibe to the flashbacks. Otherwise it's a fun, but kind of boilerplate story of a civilian being caught up in a big superhero battle, with the twist that no-one believes the civilian when it's over, because this is before superheroes were treated like celebrities or NGOs. Props to the designs of the Silver Agent and Old Soldier, though, the two most prominent heroes in the flashback. #3- A Little Knowledge This one is just fun, and has a dash of Batman: TAS to it, or even a Spider-Man story. A low level thug finds out the secret identity of Jack-In-The-Box, one of Astro City's main street level heroes. And spends the rest of the night pissing himself because he assumes every coincidence he comes across is due to him being targetted for this knowledge. The main character is appropriately scummy so that we don't sympathise too much, and I like that Jack and his wife are basically immediately shown as African-American and there's not even a mention of the POV thug being surprised by it. It's a simple little insertion of diversity without immediately 'tempering' it by making racism a part of the story when it otherwise wasn't about that. #4- Safeguards A girl from Shadow Hills, the more traditional and immigrant community heavy part of Astro City, and the part at the base of the mountain the city rests on, has to choose between following tradition or breaking out on her own path. Being a superhero universe, the traditions include blessings and rituals to protect you from vampires and demons, and those creatures are a very real part of daily life. Not sure how I feel about the ending of this story. It's a little bittersweet, but I'm not sure if Busiek and co intend it to read like that. #5- Reconnaissance This is a blast! I love how the opening splash page introduces the Astro City Irregulars, a Teen Titans or New Warriors-like group, and they have nearly nothing to do with the story, but set the tone and premise perfectly. An alien is disguised as an elderly retiree, and he is gathering info on Earth's super-powered defenders in order to assess us for invasion. His final assessment ends up being torn between his hatred for the gossip of the old ladies in his apartment block, and a Booster Gold-esque hero called Crackerjack. The ending is pretty priceless #6- Dinner For Two Back to Samaritan for a date night issue when the rest of the Honor Guard, the JLA/Avengers type team, plot to set him up with Winged Victory, a Wonder Woman by way of Hawkgirl figure. This one has aged... not so great. The discussion of feminist issues during the main date portion of the issue feels a little heavy-handed and straw-woman-y. It's presented like we're probably supposed to be unsure whose side to be on, but the book seems to pretty clearly lean on Samaritan being in the right. He's the POV character, he's the established one, he has the Supes factor, and he is never the aggressor in the arguments. Some of WV's talking points come off like a conservative checklist of how to deal with inequality. *** All in all, mostly just as good as I recalled. Next up, the first volume of the main run: Featuring the FF (but not the ones you're thinking of!), hopscotch, time travel, the 90s, and a cartoon lion!
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Apr 13, 2018 01:09
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How would people feel if I occasionally did a running dramatis personae for Astro City? Or the superheroes/powered folks anyway?
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Apr 14, 2018 00:04
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Astro City Family Album First thing's first, some sources have the next volume in my list as the second volume, and this as the third. There's no good answer to this because this one has volume 2, issues 1-3 and 10-13, and the other one has 4-9 because that is one single arc, and this is a handful of one-and-dones and a couple of 2 parters. #1- Welcome To Astro City A tale from the POV of a recently divorced dad who has moved himself and his two kids to Astro City, and trying to cope with living in a city where occasionally a weather demon will threaten to kill all of humanity in five minutes if his demands are not met. This one shows off both the strength and weakness of the format Busiek et al have been using in this book. The vignette style lets us have unique stories with characters we may never see again like this, and the nature of the property means he's not compelled to have, say, Winged Victory be a prominent part of the story because her name's on the cover, the way they might if this was a JLA or a Wonder Woman or a Spider-Man story. On the other hand, we get so little detail on the reasons for the character's divorce and move that he risks coming off as a cipher. It mostly worked for me, but I think the creators wanted me to care more about the dude than I did. The resolution to the weather god plot was nice and traditional, although a little hokey, and the continued hinting of something dark to explain the Silver Agent's absence in the modern day is intriguing. #2-3 Everday Life/Adventures In Other Worlds AKA "Valeria Richards Goes To Public School". We get a nice closer look at the First Family: Patriarch Augustus, Jack Kirby-alike Julius, adult children Nick and Natalie, Natalie's hubby Rex and Rex and Natalie's daughter Astra. This arc obviously focuses on the last of these. Astra sort of fills the Val role in the FF-esque team, although her abilities are energy manipulation, kind of more like a Monica Rambeau, and she just happens to be super-smart because her family is surrounded by super-science stuff. There's a delicate balancing act in telling a story from a kid's perspective that isn't necessarily aimed at a juvenile audience. For the most part I think this worked. Astra does come off a little too naive in some ways and too mature in others, especially in how she deals with a bully, but Anderson does draw the kids better than many artists, mostly avoiding 'tiny adults', and the whirlwind tour of the First Family's rogues gallery and the typical FF locales was fun to contrast with Astra's adventures in the 4th grade. #10- Show 'Em All Honestly? I feel like a quick spit and polish of an inventory script was done here. A little editing and a find-and-replace of some names in the script and this could easily be an issue of the Flash, JLI, Avengers, Spider-Man or even Detective Comics. On one level, that's neat, but on the other... it's nothing you haven't seen before. Crook could get away with it except for his ego, he needs acknowledgement more than the money. There's a smidge more about the backstory reasoning for this than you might see in, say, a Riddler story like this, but only because the character is new. #11-12 Serpent's Teeth/Father's Day On the other hand, this feels like a straightforward story from an ongoing title in a much better way. This feels like a full-on Jack-In-The-Box story, and actually a pretty important one. It also brings the notions of time travel more clearly into Astro City, establishes legacy heroes as a thing more plainly, AND shows how Busiek and Anderson feel about how comics were headed in the late 90s/early 2000s. We get some fun 'edgy' designs for the future legacy Jacks, an immediate establishment of the legacy of the name and costume, a small but well-formed supporting cast and eventually the introduction of a brand new character under the clown mask. This was just a blast! #13- In The Spotlight OK... let's get it out of the way: This story has a beat where a cartoon lion is responsible for the death of an underage prostitute, a 14 year old girl, whose services he regularly employed. It pulls the "but she lied about her age" card (and does, to be fair, admit that it's not like her being 18 would make it much better), but that's an element of this story, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. It's certainly not out of place in the Hollywood fall-from-grace narrative that's established for Leo. But it's mixed in with poo poo like him hanging out with a tuxedoed superhero like a Technicolor Talky Tawny, and a period where he was revamped into a mythology themed supervillain, and it's basically one of those moments where Grant Morrison or someone tries to reconcile 80 years of comics instead of just cherry-picking the stuf that works... except this is all invented continuity. It's well crafted, but the tonal whiplash has massive G-forces behind it. *** Next Time: Confession, alien invasion and dancing.
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Apr 15, 2018 02:58
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Astro City Confessions HOLY poo poo #1/2- The Nearness Of You I... I don't even know how to talk about the two stories in this volume. This one is the only other Astro City tale I'd ever read before starting this, and it's been one of my favourite sappy comics forever. It's a perfect synthesis of four-colour spandex stories and human heart and feeling. It's hopeful without being naive, and emotional without feeling overly manipulative or sentimental. GO READ THIS. "NO ONE FORGETS" Gah! #4-9- Confessions This one is drat near as good, although it's much longer form. I'd gleaned the twist from cultural osmosis, but here's the thing: If your story doesn't work or satisfy when you know the twist going in? It's not much of a story. It's basically the broader artistic distinction between an actual scary movie/game and one that relies on jump-scares. Busiek and Anderson do not rely on jump-scares. In a different world, this is a DC mainline book and it's a Batman tie-in to a big event, and then Tim Drake is Batman forever after. That may seem reductive, but here's how good this is: It takes a character with a goofier name and look than old-school Robin, in Altar Boy, and after like 2 gags about it? You have no more trouble taking him seriously than Robin in any given issue of 'Tec. The way it pays off threads from multiple earlier stories while having that all be background to the simple tale of a sidekick who thinks that being a hero is about being lauded and getting praise and girls and respect, and learning that a real hero is defined by what you do in the shadows. What you do just because it's right, even if you don't even get a thank you. Even if you get abuse. Just... gently caress, man, read this volume. Just pick it up. *** Next time: Forget it, goons: It's Kiefer Square.
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Apr 16, 2018 23:41
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More Astro City soon. I made a bad decision and bought a poo poo-ton of IDW TNMT comics and have been powering through them. (Unpopular opinion? Eastman's art kinda sucks except for covers. The first annual was near incomprehensible due to that)
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Apr 28, 2018 01:46
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:07 |
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Jordan7hm posted:I reached Conan in the Marvel reading project. Savage Sword or the regular colour Conan book? Also, I should probably nab that Conan/Wonder Woman crossover while I still can, huh? I doubt it'll stay available once Marvel formally take the Conan licence back next year.
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May 15, 2018 03:53
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