Astro City Vol. 01: Life in the Big City

Busiek himself sums up this book in his brilliant introduction:
.. a wander off the main thoroughfare of a superhero world and see what stories have been waiting in the shadows to be told, what we can discover if we stop heeding the siren song of what happens next and start wondering what else is there..

He fulfils his aims brilliantly in a series of tales set in the same world. Busiek has a great eye to tales hidden between the dramatic fights and dramas of the superhero world and he has the skills to bring a short story to life. And although he protests of too much reality in the superhero genre, making a reader connect with it, making it believable is something that makes this comic shine. The world is deep and rich, with some show more joyously weird superheroes and it is exciting to think there is a whole series here.

You don't need to be a superhero fan to enjoy this (I'm not) and the standard tropes are all you need to know to enjoy. So we meet a superhero who never has time just to fly for the love it, a petty crook who finds out someone’s secret identity or an amusing look at journalistic ethics.

Highly recommend for comics lovers and those who are want to see past those superhero flicks. show less

Kurt Busiek's Astro City is a wonderful, thought provoking look into what life would be like in a world with superheroes. As Busiek, himself, says in the forward to the book,

For the past decade, starting around the time of the brilliant "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns", the prevalent mode for "serious" superhero creators has been deconstruction... but it strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back show more together and wind it up, time to take it on the road and floor it, see what it will do.

And that is exactly what Busiek does right from the first page of "Life in The Big City". He shows us superheroes from a new angle that I've never experienced before, well with the exception of Busiek's first collaboration with Ross, "MARVELS", which is a look at key formative moments in the Marvel universe... through the eyes of a photojournalist. In Astro City, he continues and develops upon the style...

If mere mortals dream of the joy of flight, what might the dreams of a superman-like hero be?

What is it like being a rookie reporter in a city full of superheroes and villains?

Do you really want to learn a superheroes identity?

Is living a life where you are at ease with the surrounding vampires, demons, and various other things that go bump in the night... any scarier than a life that is surrounded by superheroes and villains?

How would an alien sent to covertly scout out the earth for invasion, react to a world filled with old ladies' petty bickering, flakey teens, and immature superheroes?

How would the most powerful man and woman... or rather superman and superwoman in the world step aside from saving the world to take a date... and how would it go?

These are the questions that are asked in the six stories (collected from KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY Vol 1 #1-6) that compose the first Astro City trade paperback. The stories are brought to life in vivid, dramatic fashion by artist Brent Anderson, and the beautifully painted covers by Alex Ross are collected in the back of the book, along with development sketches of the creation of the city and characters.

I originally read these stories a few years ago, and I enjoyed rereading "Life in the Big City" just as much as I did then... and I'm really looking forward to rereading and reviewing the rest of the series to date. show less

Kurt Busiek takes a more grown-up approach to the superhero while still maintaining the child-like awe that drew most of us into the Supermans, Spidermans and Batmans of old. The advantage? We end up with heroes that are real and without the crutches of virginal innocence that even they no longer believe or a cloud of unbearable pathos that says, "this is why I wear black latex."

We get real superheroes in real costumes with real feelings. Some are heroes for valiant reasons, some are heroes because they don't know what else to do, some want to do it for the fame and fortune and others have yet to reveal their real reasons. In each of the books, we're introduced to different heroes that inhabit Astro City either through themselves or show more through those that have observed them. While the stories start with Samaritan, it's clear that while we'll see him again, he's not going to be our main character throughout as Astro City has a good many stories to share.

The drawings of Brent Anderson (and Alex Ross's covers) are fantastic and lush with color. The level of detail in everything - from the backgrounds, to the costumes, to the anatomy really shows throughout the book and adds fantastic layers to the vignettes. show less

This reconstruction of the superhero comic genre is an interesting look at aspects of the genre typically ignored. As such, despite employing the standard tropes liberally, it still provides a fresh take on the world of the standard superheroic stories, showing us some typically ignored aspects of the everyday lives of both the superheroes themselves and the innocent bystanders around them. A truly well-meaning, self-sacrificing Superman would surely feel guilt for all the people he didn't save because of time spent asleep at night, and that's the basic premise of the opening story in this book, along with the consequences of that guilt for his personal life.

It's almost required reading for anyone who cares about the genre's logical show more consequences for its inhabitants and exemplars. show less

"Astro City" is an inventive take on the superhero comic book (which is tough to find and rarer to pull off successfully.) The book doesn't follow any one hero or team, but is rather an anthology that focuses on characters and plots that are usually delegated to the background. The work schedule of a superhero, a journalist trying to prove a team's adventure, a woman commuting from a haunted neighborhood, these are the kinds of small, personal stories that the artists have so brilliantly conceived and executed that give a whole new look at a world filled with super-powered people.

This was so much more then a super hero graphic novel. This tells the story of Astro City by following some very different residents through their everyday life. All of the stories are interesting and reveal something not only about the city but the characters who people the stories as well. The art style was also gorgeous, capturing a retro/future feel that can usually only be seen in pieces written in the past that believed we would all be driving flying cars by now. I can't wait to see where this series goes.

This was so much more then a super hero graphic novel. This tells the story of Astro City by following some very different residents through their everyday life. All of the stories are interesting and reveal something not only about the city but the characters who people the stories as well. The art style was also gorgeous, capturing a retro/future feel that can usually only be seen in pieces written in the past that believed we would all be driving flying cars by now. I can't wait to see where this series goes.