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Title: Astro City: Life in the Big City by Kurt Busiek ISBN: 1-56389-551-X Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 23 June, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.78 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Puts the hero back in superhero
Comment: Astro City is nearly unique among superhero comic books because Kurt Busiek treats the superpowers and costumes as little more than a backdrop to tell stories about people. If you want to see a lot of action and fight scenes, Astro City is definitely not the series for you to read. This compilation presents compelling tales about people who seem very real and happen to live in a violent, colorfully costumed world.
Astro City itself is a rich setting with a lot of references to other heroes and events that would be worthy of a long established universe such as Marvel or DC. You'll meet Samaritan and discover how precious time is to a hero with the power of Superman. And a story featuring Crackerjack shows that not all "heroes" are truly worthy of the name. In addition, there are stories told from the perspective of ordinary people whose lives are affected by these larger than life figures.
Life in the Big City gets my highest recommendation. Even if you aren't a comic book fan, these are stories well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: Busiek and Co. breathe new life into superheroes
Comment: There are many smart people in comics who argue that the superhero genre is totally spent, stuck recycling old stories and old archetypes and doomed to tell superficial power fantasies, no matter how much the hot new creators of the moment try to dress them up.
Kurt Busiek's Astro City proves these critics wrong. In Astro City, Busiek, Anderson and Ross have created a wonderfully rich setting, a city with a history and character of its own that feels as real and as diverse as any American city. The only difference is that Astro City is full of superpowered individuals, and has been for at least 75 years. Some of these characters are allegories for established heroes published by DC and Marvel - analogues for Superman, Wonder Woman and the Fantastic Four (among others) appear in this volume. Others are wholly original creations, allowing Busiek to take various archetypes in new directions.
Each chapter in Life in the Big City is a standalone short story, highlighting different corners of this fictional universe. The city's leading superhero tries to be everywhere at once, and berates himself for every wasted second as he longs for just a moment of his own. A small time hood learns a hero's secret identity, and tries to figure out how to profit from the knowledge. A beat reporter gets some advice from his editor on his first day on the job. A young woman tries to balance the demands of her family with her own hopes and desires. Despite the fantastic settings, the characters in these slice-of-life stories feel like real people, and that gives the stories real power.
Anderson and Ross do a fine job with the visual design and storytelling here; Anderson's style is steady, dramatic without being flashy. The character designs are well-thought; simple and elegant where necessary, flamboyant and even campy where that is a better fit. There are no wildly confusing panel layouts, but action flows nicely from page to page and the characters' faces and body language convey their thoughts and feelings well, so Busiek doesn't need to overscript.
Don't let the spandex fool you. These are stories about the human heart, and they're GOOD stories, well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: The best of the superhero genre
Comment: Due to his work on Marvels, Kurt Busiek became a widely respected, award-winning and critically renowned writer. For those who don't know, Marvels is a masterpiece of the graphic narrative, using the genre of the superhero to explore so much more about the history and social climate of our country. It deserves to be an A+ Graphic Novel in its own right, and it will be someday down the line.
But not today, for today I want to recognize Marvels for another reason than its own genius. You see, without Marvels, Kurt Busiek would never have had the freedom to create the world of Astro City. And without Astro City, the milieu of the superhero would be much less vibrant and exciting.
The Astro City stories, originally published through Image and then moving to DC when they absorbed Wildstorm, each explore a world that feels comfortable, like a place we've visited before, despite still being shiny and new. Busiek and collaborator Brent Anderson take the concepts of super-heroism that we are already familiar with and break them down until nothing is left but the most vital components of the genre. Once the concept of the superhero has been refined to its core elements, Busiek uses these distilled ideas as his foundation and builds the world of Astro City up into something wonderful, a fresh new take on a long-established tradition.
In Astro City, heroes exist not just to get into brilliant battles with each other, but also to offer up insight to us on a variety of themes, including the old superhero standby about power and responsibility. In the very first Astro City story "In Dreams," a superhero known as Samaritan (an obvious Superman analogue) leads a life of emptiness. The only enjoyment in his life is the freedom he gets from flying, and even that he only gets a few seconds of flying each day between the disasters and various other crises he must combat.
That story and five others are collected in the first Astro City trade paperback, Astro City: Life in the Big City, a series of vignettes that each look at life in Astro City in a different way. Each story then also takes a different perspective on the superheroes that populate this metropolis, one the average reader might not be used to. From a newspaper reporter who witnesses a crossover-style event to a thug who discovers a hero's secret identity, this book takes the point-of-view of the average men and women in a world full of the extraordinary. We can connect with these narrating characters, identifying with their unique viewpoints on these virtual gods they share the world with. We share their feeling of awe and wonder at these "Marvels," yet they also feel commonplace.
And that's the great thing about this series; it reads on many levels. Longtime comic fans will enjoy hunting for the many Easter eggs and in-jokes Busiek and Anderson dropped into the background of each issue. They can also look at certain characters in the context of analogous archetypes and analyze what aspect of the superhero is being commented upon. Yet it is also the type of superhero book you can give to the totally uninitiated to prove the merit of the genre, that it can offer more than fistfights and spandex, that it can be meaningful and even beautiful.
Try it and see. Pick up Astro City: Life in the Big City. I dare you to read it and not fall in love with superheroes all over again. And when you then go out to pick up a copy of the next collection, be sure to loan this book to a friend, especially one that thinks heroes are for kids. That way, you'll not only have found a great series for yourself, you'll finally be able to prove your friend wrong.
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Title: Astro City: Confession by Kurt Busiek ISBN: 1563895501 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 23 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Astro City: Family Album by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, Alex Ross ISBN: 1563895528 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 23 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Astro City: Tarnished Angel by Kurt Busiek ISBN: 156389663X Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Marvels by Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross ISBN: 0785100490 Publisher: Marvel Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Top Ten (Book 1) by Alan Moore ISBN: 1563896680 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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