Astro City: The Dark Age, Book Two (issues 1-4)
July 27th, 2008 by MartinAstro City holds a lot of responsibility for my getting “into” comics. That having been said, The Dark Age has not really been my favorite plot line. There are certainly aspects of it that I’ve enjoyed, but the two brothers, the main lenses through which we are viewing Astro City this time around, they are not really protagonists. They are not really characters that I can empathize with. They have less of the “every day people” quality than many of the other Astro City main characters have had.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still quite enjoying the story, and it doesn’t even feel like I’m slogging through this, it’s just that I sort of wish Busiek would focus his efforts a bit differently. He’s made it clear (in the letters columns) that there are two more Dark Age books still to come out. Probably with one-off issues to be released between them. He also plugs the Astro City website (which is probably not so new anymore), but which does seem to have all kinds of interesting stuff on it.
Astro City is still one of my favorite comics. But if you haven’t read it yet, I suggest you start at the beginning. There is a lot of Astro City to love.
Tags: Alex Ross, Alex Sinclair, Brent E. Anderson, Kurt Busiek
July 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The focus of the Dark Ages comics is a period in the 1970s when Astro City seems to have lost it’s optimism, the shining hope that many of its heroes embodied to the citizens in the earlier story arcs. I understand that there are rich stories to tell in the murk, but I will be relieved when they (hopefully) get back to the light. Possibly because it feels too close to home in our current era of disillusionment.