Astro City
Written by Kurt Busiek, illustrated by Brent Anderson and
Alex Ross
First published in 1995
Astro City
·
The story notably centers on a city and its
environment as opposed to a central hero: like Eisner’s Spirit for some of its
publications.
·
The focus of the first publication “Life in the
Big City,” focuses on heroes as well as criminals and civilians. The first was
on Samaritan, a Superman analogy who can only dream of enjoying his powers as
he constantly has to save people. The second was on a reporter who kept a
classified hero conflict up to a point. The third is on a criminal who finds
out a hero’s identity and is haunted by the prospect of the hero getting him.
The fourth is a lady who is admirer of a feminist superheroine. The fifth one is
on an alien invader who watches the heroes to decide if he should invade. The
last is on a date between heroes while they are in costume: Samaritan and
Winged Victory.
·
Astro City has the feel of a Silver Age comic
series in background where great things happen all the time but people treat it
as happenstance and don’t make big political moves to deal with superheroes or
villains.
·
The third story was a good psychological tale of
a criminal who finds a hero’s identity: with his fears of the hero and the mob
who may betray him a good point to why normal civilians who even figure out
hero identities rarely take advantage of it.
·
The good nature of the heroes in Astro City
indicates that the heroes are not a violent, Image Comics bunch. Instead, it
seems to focus on Silver Age like storylines where things are goofy and crime
happens but there are no repercussions to heroes or daily people.
·
With the civilians save for the common criminal,
despite them getting into danger and almost dying the prospect of heroes in a
city draws common people to Astro City: thus indicating that those who would
bother to stay in a city of heroes have more of an adventurous, bold part of
their personality.
·
In the trade copy, there is a map of the layout
of Astro City, thus indicating that the creators had a specific idea of how
Astro City should be unlike Metropolis or Gotham City where it is left to the
interpretation of every succeeding artist to decide the geography of what the
city looks like.
·
The hero date seemed conspicuous on the last
story as it would have made more sense for them to go not in costume. However,
given how old Samaritan looks out of hero form it may have been done to the
benefit of Winged Victory.
·
Overall, I liked the story though with Alex Ross
as part of the team I thought it would have been even better if he did the
actual artwork for the comic and not just character designs and covers. The
take on superhero life in a functioning city and how the culture of that
mirrors musings like Plato’s Republic and Thomas Moore’s Utopia in picturing a
society to an ideal form: in this case it is of an ideal society catered to
heroism.
Bibliography
Busiek, Kurt, Brent Eric. Anderson,
Richard Starkings, John Gaushell, Steve Buccellato, and Alex Ross. Kurt Busiek's Astro City: Life in
the Big City. La Jolla, CA: Homage Comics, 1996. Print.
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