7 June, 2004
Astro City: Local Heroes, Kurt Busiek, with Brent Anderson, Alex Sinclair, and Alex Ross
Technically, this isn't a book, more like some kind of pre-book. That is, a collection of these comics doesn't exist yet, although one will be published sometime in the forseeable future. I borrowed all these individual issues from my friend, which is how I can read a book which doesn't exist!
Um, anyway. This most-recent batch of Astro City comics is a series of short stories, like Life in the Big City and Family Album. And, like those previous collections, it's something of a mixed bag. There are a couple of really good stories, "Shining Armor" and "Knock Wood"/"Justice Systems" (a two-issue story). In the former, a woman tells her adult daughter about her relationship with a super-hero, back in the day, and how she ruined it when she became obsessed with uncovering her super-beau's secret identity. It's also about the generation gap, and how the mother can't recognise that her daughter is happy with her life, because the daughter's dreams and values are not the ones her mother had when she was her age. The latter takes a look at something I've wondered about: criminal law and standards of evidence in a comic-book world. What constitutes "reasonable doubt" when you have to contend with the possibilities of clones, mind-control rays, evil alternate selves from evil alternate universes, and so on?
Two of the stories are decent, if not particularly remarkable. "Pastoral" is about a kid from Astro City who has to spend her summer vacation with her cousins out in the sticks. She learns Valuable Life Lessons about small-town life. "Great Expectations" is about a guy who is not a superhero, but plays one on TV. The other two stories are "enh." "Where the Action Is" is about a lady who writes comic books about the "real" superheros (as opposed to those imaginary ones like Superman). A die-hard comics fan might appreciate this one more; it's too "inside baseball" for me. Finally, there's the eminently forgettable (literally, I almost forgot to comment on it) "Newcomers," which is an overly-sentimental piece wherein a doorman at an Astro City hotel tells the reader about how great it is to live in Astro City. Thematically, it's a rehash of "Welcome to Astro City" from Family Album, and it was done better in the previous story.
(Previous volumes of Astro City)