New Comic Day: Astro City Vol. 3

Welcome to the first exciting installment of New Comic Day a new series here on the Nerd Is the New Cool blog.  For now, we are only going to be publishing this series irregularly – but always on Wednesday – until we can get it fully up and running. 

To start, I’d like to send out special thank my good friend comic book writer and novelist R.A. Jones – as well as everyone at my local comic shop Starbase 21 in Tulsa, OK – and my father.  Without their assistance this blog series may not have come about. 

This Weeks Star Comic: Astro City

I struggled with whether or not to do this in New Comic Day or in Reader’s Copy – mostly because I’m going to focus on last month’s issue rather than today’s issue. 

Issue one: 4/5 stars      Excellent jumping on point.                Rated T for Teen

While last month’s issue has a big number 1 on the cover and this month’s a number 2, Astro City is actually a fairly old title now (we’re not talking Batman or Captain America old – or even Spider-Man old – but it’s been around a little while).  The first issue of Volume 1 came out in 1995 and then to now there have been 60ish more issue over two ongoing titles, one mini- and one maxi-series, and sundry one-shots and stories in other publications.  It has had its high points (Volume 2 ½, and 4-9 collected together as Confession in TPB form) and its low points (I’m looking at you The Dark Age), but overall it has been a very good and loving look at the world of comics – some people refer to it as what it’s like to be a normal person in a super-world, other say it’s what about being a super-hero in the normal world – I try to stay away from that argument. 

All 60ish issues of the series have been written by the same writer (series creator Kurt Busiek), drawn by the same artist (Brent Anderson), and featured covers by the same painter (Alex Ross) and the lot remain in top form here.  Ross’s covers to both issue 1 and 2 are beautiful, though I preferred the variant cover featuring new character Telseth to the standard Honor Guard cover for issue 1 (Honor Guard btw is the Astro Cityverse’s premiere super-hero team – Busiek hates it when you compare Astro City characters to other company’s properties but – think of them as the Justice League/Avengers types.  Telseth, meanwhile, seems to have a bit of a Celestrial thing going on and long time comic readers will definitely notice he has some major Kirbyesque design elements). 

Other new characters to be introduced include The Broken Man and the very annoying American Chibi, but most of the regular Astro City cast at least cameos.  That another warning for new readers Astro City has a large cast of rotating characters and as the series takes place in real time it has nearly 20 years of in-title continuity piled on top of them.  It can be a lot to take in, but Busiek is very good at keeping new readers from being bogged down by too much continuity baggage.  Long time fans will enjoy the references – say to one unnamed character’s (he’s the Confessor) lack of “the protections his predecessor” had – but while new readers may not get them, they tend to take the form of local color and don’t distract from the story. 

I haven’t read today’s issue yet, but look forward to it and greatly enjoyed issue 1.  The back issues or TPBs are not required prerequisites, but would greatly add to new reader’s enjoyment of the rich mythology Busiek has created. 

            Other Noteworthy Titles This Week

DC Comics: Justice League 22 (Start of the Trinity War crossover)

IDW: Judge Dredd Classics 1 (Reprints)

Dynamite Entertainment: Dark Nights 1 (Green Hornet/Shadow crossover)