Kurt Busiek’s Astro City
Astro City is the creator owned project of writer Kurt Busiek. In essence with Astro City he created an entire superhero universe of his own to play with. Yet the focus in Astro City isn’t really on the superheroes, but rathe the othe inhabitants of that world. Busiek explains the concept behind Astro City as follows:
“I’d been thinking about superheroes for years, as I both read and wrote them, and with the kind of mind I have, I kept wondering about what else goes on in a superhero world — what kind of stories aren’t we seeing? I tried to tell that kind of story every now and then, in annual backups and such, but it wasn’t until MARVELS that I did one that really made a splash. But MARVELS allowed me the chance to do more of that sort of thing, so I sat down and distilled twenty years of ideas into a proposal and showed it around. That’s where ASTRO CITY came from.”
The Artists of Astro City
There are two artists connected with Astro City. Brent Anderson does the interior art and Alex Ross does the covers.
The World of Astro City
Unlike other superhero comics the emphasis of Astro City stories is not on the big superhero adventures but on the personal lives of superheros and the ordinary people that they affect. This is a theme which Busiek has carried on from a previous project of his, Marvels
Astro City is in a world full of superheros. The city itself is a center of superhero activity. The first publicly acknowledged superhero was “Air Ace” in 1946, but there were in fact superhumans before him.
In the present time key superhero groups include “The First Family”, “The Astro City Irregulars” and the premier superteam “The Honor Guard” Of the individual heroes in present day Astro City, perhaps the most pre-eminent are Samaritan and Winged Victory. The former is a superman archetype while the latter is a Wonder Woman archetype.
Most of the superheroes in Astro City are archetypes of one sort or another. Kurt Busiek is at pains to point out that they are not direct copies of any one hero merely expressions of common superhero themes.
Where To Start in Astro City
Astro City is currently in the middle of a storline called Dark Ages. This particular storyline started in 2004 and the remaining issues should be published over the rest of 2005. One of the most frustrating thins about Astro City is its slow publication schedule.
Fortunately most of the previous issues of Astro city have been collected in graphic novels. There are five graphic novels to enjoy. They are, Life In The Big City, Confessions, Family Album, Tarnished and Local Heroes.
“Life in the Big City” is a collection of single issue stories that introduce the reader to Astro City and some of its superheroes for the first time. It was clearly designed to introduce people to this new world and thus makes an excellent jumping on point.
The second book “Confessions” is a 6 part storyline which picks up on a plot strand introduced in the first volume. Although its does pick up from a story in the first graphic novel it actually stands alone rather well and for those who prefer longer storylines is a good example of what Astro City can produce.
The third collection so far is Family Album, this is a collection of one or two part stories similar to the first volume. Because it references a lot of different superheroes its probably not the best place to start reading although the quality of all the stories is excellent.
The fourth volume is Tarnished Angel, another multi-part storyline, but with a rather different feel to the previous one, having something of a pulp detective feel too it. Again this graphic novel stands well on its own although you may pick up some subtle references if you have read the previous collections.
The final graphic novel (so far) is Local Heroes. This is the volume doesn’t actually come out till October 1st 2005 so I can’t say much about it. The issues of Astro City collected in this volume were the first to be released after a 2 year hiatus.
Astro City The Movie
Recently there have been rumblings about an Astro City based movie. Details are minimal at this point, but Jonathan Lawrence Alpers has been attached to the project as screenwriter and Ben Barenholtz as producer and it’s reported to be in pre-production right now.
Link: Wizard - Astro Trailer
Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..
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