Todd & Joe Have Issues 12/29/16 Astro City 1/2
Starting something new for 2017 and it’s not even 2017 yet! Our new Thursday feature is going to be reading as a group and talking about a single issue of a comic. I have a tentative list and will do my best to make sure the books chosen are either:
a) free
b) cheap
c) something everyone should already have
d) some combination of two of the above
Our first issue is from a series that originally started as several one shot stories, the Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross book, Astro City.
Spinning out of Busiek and Ross’s success on Marvels, they decided to start their own book and created an entire world of super heroes, taking a lot of clues from some of the best characters DC (Samaritan has a lot of similarities to Superman), Marvel (the First Family and the Fantastic Four are near mirror images of each other) and many, many other original characters. The main crux of their stories are less about the super hero fights and more about the interpersonal relationships and what the characters are doing when not superheroing.
Our first selection will be an issue available digitally for free right here is an issue that was originally a mail in book from Wizard many moons ago about an epic crisis level battle where the fate of the entire universe lies in the hands of one man and the Hanged Man (the Astro City analogue of the Watcher).
Any discussion, thoughts, feelings, criticisms of this week’s selection can be placed below in the comments section. As well as suggestions about future choices for one shot issues to add to our list.
Good idea fer 2017. I’ll try to read it today. Astro City is one of my reading voids. Always meant to check it out, but I haven’t got to it yet.
I always thought The Hanged Man was a Spectre analogue.
The comic part was interesting. A good peak into how the everyday Joe is impacted by timeline fluxes like Flashpoint.
I dug the prose part too. It’s neat seeing the behind the scenes mechanisms of the super hero world. A twist on those old Batman stories about the tailors and gadget makers that supply Gotham’s villians.