Comics I Bought: November 13, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Jack Staff - 19

Savage Dragon - 140

The Walking Dead - 54

Mister X - The Archives

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

"Astro City: The Dark Age 1: Brothers and Other Strangers" by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson

"Astro City" as a series is one of the best written super hero comics around. The series is generally about a city, Astro City, in which a lot of super heroes make their homes. The stories are not as much about the heroes as they are about the relationship of the heroes to the regular people of the city and vice versa. It does a good job of capturing, the awe, ambivalence, mistrust, envy, and lots of other emotions that the citizens feel for the super citizens.

This volume specifically takes place in the 1970's. That was a bad era for the people of Astro City as a lot of heavy stuff went down and the world transitioned from its happy go lucky "Silver Age" to its grim and gritty "Dark Age". This is not as cheerful as the other "Astro City" volumes.

The story is about two brothers. One who becomes a cop as the other becomes a small time criminal. Yes that's a cliché that gets annoying at times but it is also used to good effect.

The book really takes off in the second half. That's when the criminal brother becomes a full fledged henchman in a criminal organization. He's has no aspirations to be anything but a small time thief but he just gets dragged along with the tide.

Brent Anderson's artwork is top shelf as usual. He's another one of those artists who when I'm just flipping through a book of his I don't find his art very interesting but when I actually read it the art comes alive. I really need a name for that phenomenon. His story telling is nearly flawless and he does a great job with the variety of super hero and super heroic events he has to portray.

You have to be in the mood for a dark story to read this. Not your normal nihilistic annoying dark super hero story but a story about trying to hang on to something during a time of change. Trying to make a life for yourself as the sands shift beneath your feet. It is really well written it's just not a "pick me up". So if you're not too depressed already give it a read.