Astro City is Kurt Busiek’s baby. The culmination of his comics career and a damn good read. Busiek loves superheros. Really, really loves them. So he’s created his own superhero universe, stocked with all the typical superhero archetypes and has spent the last 15 years rewriting the superhero mythos. And it all started with a dream of flying in Astro City: Life in the Big City
The six issues are bookended with stories about Samaritan (Astro City’s Superman) and it’s fitting since Superman is the first of the modern superheros. The first one lets us peer into a day in the life of Superman Samaritan. We see him working at his mundane job, accepting awards from citizen groups, working with superhero teams and saving the world. And at the end of the day, the only thing he dreams about is being able to fly with no concerns and just for fun. The final issue covers a date between Samaritan and Winged Victory (Wonder Woman). They discuss (as superheros and as civilians) the issues that they face and the different motivations for their superhero activities. It’s a wonderful look at the problems with superhero relationships and the job pressures that superheros feel.
Along the way we see a villain who discovers a secret, but can’t figure out how to cash in on it. There is a woman who can handle one set of scary situations, but not another. We have a newspaper reporter who learns a valuable lesson, but not the one we think. And an alien’s view into a vain superhero which will lead into our first big storyline. All these stories are familiar and new at the same time. Busiek has peeled back the superhero genre and rewritten it as something fresh and new.
Brent Anderson does a wonderful job on the art. The superheros are shown as larger than life and normal at the same time and he does a great job on the normal people. Aiding character design and doing a great job on covers is Busiek’s Marvels compatriot Alex Ross. The covers are a thing of beauty and do a great job capturing the essence of the story that Busiek is telling.
Busiek has taken a genre that some have felt is childish or worn out and done an amazing job of showing why we fell in love with superheros in the first place. Highly Recommended.