With over a hundred issues of “Astro City” content under his belt, does Kurt Busiek still have something to say with his creator-owned universe? Major spoilers follow.
Written by Kurt BusiekCover by Alex Ross
Illustrated by Brent Eric Anderson
Colored by Pete Pantazis
Lettered by Comicraft“WHAT BROKE THE BROKEN MAN?” part one of two! Astro City’s tangled history of superheroes, music, counterculture, serpents and darkness comes to a head. Heroes are destroyed, minds are shattered…and an unlikely savior rises.
Often when reading the material for these reviews, and especially when it’s something I haven’t read before like “Astro City,” my mind turns analytical, mentally creating talking points as I read. This first issue of a two-part story started that way, but after a few pages, I became so engrossed in the story that I had no attention left for anything else. And afterwards, upon deeper consideration of issue, I realized the genius of the work as a commentary on today’s fictional characters constantly being reworked into new versions of their former selves.
For a few pages at the beginning and end of the book, a strange purple humanoid being speaks in second-person directly to the reader, looking right at you and commanding your attention. Anderson draws the being’s first panel and a few later panels with no borders, giving us the sense that this being lives between the gutters of comic books only to observe and hand out warnings to readers. Likewise, Pantazis uses white gutters to place us in this purple being’s world, which contrasts with the full-bleed moments that permeate the later parts of the issue. Comicraft’s lettering also gives him that otherworldly vibe, placing all of his dialogue as white text in purple balloons with have jagged edges and odd white edges poking out from behind those. Every creative choice worked together to create a scene that both draws people in and subtly introduces the idea that we’re going to be looking at comic books from a certain distance.
Ironically, what we get after that is equally as engrossing, such that a critical distance can’t possibly come as naturally as surrendering to the story. In this section, Busiek switches to a first-person narration. The main character of this tale, an agender superpowered being named Glamorax, shows up to fight a standard superhero battle against standard nameless drug dealers, a fitting choice to set us in this new world. We get the feeling that this may or may not be fiction to the purple observer, but in any case, it’s a step removed from his world. Quickly, Glamorax’s story begins unraveling, and the first-person narration gives us an intimate insider view at their confusion.
While this installment of “Astro City,” ultimately about Glamorax realizing they have lived many different lives and is due for another rebirth, pulled me in enough to where I was strictly following the narrative, it soon after became apparent that this was a commentary on modern superheroes and popular fiction as a whole. Here we have a character who was at one point a zoot suiter, a hippie, a beatnik, and plenty of others. They’re all such vastly different characters that it almost doesn’t make sense that they’re all the same person. Glamorax may as well be a blank slate, constantly morphing into whatever is needed at the time, which is further shown by the character’s current lack of gender. And yet, in the face of the next rebirth, Glamorax burdens themself with finding the through-line in all the past lives. This sort of thinking goes into every superhero rebirth: an attempt to reconcile wildly different past incarnations while getting down to the core and figuring out why the character works. With DC’s entire main superhero line currently focusing on this concept of rebirth, there’s no better time than now to create a story like this.
As mentioned earlier, the “Astro City” art team approaches the main story slightly differently from the framing story. There are a lot more full-bleed panels, and everything falls much more in line with standard superhero comics. For the most part, the art uses straightforward storytelling techniques, a decision that ultimately works in the story’s favor. Anderson tends to use a lot of widescreen, page-width panels, which would fit right in with the many superhero comics from the 2000s that frequently featured character rebirths. Anderson’s biggest strength tends to be his figure drawing: every person looks completely different from one another. Special mention to Glamorax’s design, looking at once male, female, bright, dark, human, fantastical, simple, and stylish.
Continued belowFor the colors, Pantazis also goes for straightforward clarity on most of the pages: people look like people, nighttime looks like nighttime, and Glamorax glows just enough to appear superhuman. But Pantazis can occasionally let loose with his color work, like his extravagant effects showing off Glamorax’s light-based powers which glow and spurt out towards the enemy in wild arcs and spirals. In the later scenes, as Glamorax gets deeper into the mystery of their past and reality starts falling away, Pantazis plays with shades of darkness to conceal information and represent the character’s odd, terrifying experience.
Looking at this issue as a whole, we have a story about comic books themselves, about the characters who are constantly changing, constantly being reborn into different versions of themselves. Busiek and the art team want the reader to engage with the material, to get sucked in, and to think about it afterwards. And they succeeded: my first foray into the world of “Astro City” proved more successful than I could have imagined. Good thing there’s over a hundred issues to catch up on.
Final Verdict: 9.2 – A thorough exploration of the concept of character rebirths and reinterpretations that grabs you and doesn’t let go.
