Posted By M Morse on June 8, 2013

It’s been far too long since writer Kurt Busiek and artists Brent Anderson and Alex Ross have visited Astro City, but with the release this week of Astro City #1* under DC’s VERTIGO imprint they’ve reopened the place to readers at long last. The wait has been intolerable, but the pay-off is worth every minute of that wait.

For those of you who’ve never been inside the titular city’s limits, Astro City tells intelligent, imaginative, just-plain-wonderful stories set in and around a bustling metropolis that’s filled to bursting with heroes and villains. It’s a place where Busiek can wax philosophical wondering what happens to an ordinary man in a world where reality can suddenly be “reset” (the haunting “The Nearness of You”); where a young woman struggles between her immigrant past and the desire to plunge forward into a newer world (the emotionally complicated and touching “Safeguards”). It’s also a place where a Batman-inspired superhero with a secret can help to stave off an alien invasion but fall prey to human mistrust (“Confession”), and where a Spider-Man-esque heroic jester named Jack-In-The-Box can wrestle with the legacy he’s leaving his child by literally wrestling with deadly, alternate-future versions of that child – and who also represent the “Grim n’ Gritty” style that comics had embraced at the time it was written (“Serpent’s Teeth” and “Father’s Day”).

Busiek, Anderson and Ross have spent nearly twenty years (!) telling stories set in AstroCity and with each new story they tell the universe of the book grows wider and wilder and more densely populated than before. In Astro City #1 Busiek not only reintroduces readers to longtime inhabitants like Samaritan, the N-Forcer and Winged Victory, but also debuts a fistful of new ones, like the ridiculous (in the good way) American Chibi, the surprisingly amusing Ambassador and the issue’s narrator, The Broken Man.

Busiek utilizes The Broken Man in order to set up the story he’s telling and to guide readers through the crowded streets and skies of his singular metropolis. He gives newcomers a solid overview of the location and the title itself while rewarding longtime fans with clever asides, interesting tidbits and the welcome return of one “ordinary” person, introduced in an issue over a decade ago and not seen again since. This character-as-literal-narrator approach could have been off-putting had Busiek not found such a distinctive approach and voice for the character who comes across, probably not coincidentally, as an archetypical VERTIGO character, melding together visual elements from classic VERTIGO books like Sandman and Shade the Changing Man. That’s entirely appropriate for Astro City – a book that consciously takes existing comic book archetypes and uses them toward its own imaginative, introspective, intelligently life-affirming ends.

Crucially, artist Brent Anderson and cover artist Alex Ross bring the good here. Ross’ two covers both admirably convey the sense of possibility and wonder that Astro City has always evoked so handily. As always, Anderson’s interior art perfectly compliments Busiek’s scripts. He’s a talented artist generally but something about his work on this title in particular is always elevated and always impressive.

Busiek sets up a number of intriguing story threads here. Some of them will be pursued immediately (who or what is “the Oubor”? What’s the deal with The Broken Man?) while others, in true AstroCity fashion, might be explored much later down the line or left ambiguous in order to tantalize readers. If that sounds potentially frustrating don’t worry – Busiek has an uncanny gift for giving readers exactly as much information as they need to enjoy the story he’s telling. Better still, AstroCity remains a book that pretty much anyone can enjoy. It’s smart, funny, cool, and entirely lacking in graphic violence, gratuitous cursing and bad behavior. That’s downright refreshing in an industry figuratively and sometimes literally filled with dead women in refrigerators.

Astro City #1 probably isn’t an “ideal” jumping-on point for new readers – that would be the first issue of the first volume, available to read in the trade paperback “Life in the Big City.” But for those of you who’d like to skip the homework and just jump aboard, this issue is certainly designed to welcome you in. For longtime readers it’s more like being welcomed home.

*In actuality, something like 60 Astro City comics already exist. Go and buy them. 

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Categories: Comics, Main Sections, Reviews
Tags: Alex Ross, Astro City, Brent Anderson, DC, Kurt Busiek, Vertigo