Kurt Busiek's Astro City: Life in the Big City

by Kurt Busiek

Book Overview

Welcome to Astro City, a shining city on a hill where super heroes patrol the skies. Each chapter in this collection is a standalone story, highlighting different aspects or characters in the Astro... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156389551X
• ISBN13: 9781563895517
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Wildstorm
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.7" x 10.0"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Look up in the sky! It's a bird ... no, it's a plane ...

I cannot seem to shake these stories. In each of the handful of Kurt Busiek's stories about a superhero infested city, I felt connected to the people surrounded by these modern marvels. I love stories that have a point of view away from the typical angle. One of my favorite films that I watched this year was one called The Baxter. It is a love story as told by the other man, the one dumped by the end of the film. It was compelling and original to see a familiar story told from a different perspective. It was bold to see the emotions and tribulations of a man that we, as typical audience members, seem to regard as unimportant or irrelevant. That is exactly the emotion that Busiek was able to obtain, bottle, and distribute in this epic graphic novel about a metropolis known as "Astro City". Am I too bold in stating that this is the first time that a writer has taken our beloved superheroes and chosen to focus the attention away from them and into the gazing faces of the population? While this seemed original while I was reading this book, I probably don't think it was a new concept, but what I loved about Astro City is that Busiek made it feel like a brand new concept. Superheroes are important. They are a staple of our community, but one must remember that without the community, there would be no need for a superhero. So (and rather genuinely), instead of giving us the point of reference from the almighty being in the sky or the haphazard destruction of the world from some guy with metal claws, we are privy to seeing what "normal" life would be like for citizens. Those who see the heroes in action daily, as well as those caught within the carnage as well. This book or introduction to the "city" was ... for lack of a better word ... phenomenal. With Busiek's skills we are given a glimpse of a sister city to Metropolis or Gotham, and the citizens that dwell within. What makes Busiek's stories so entertaining is that there are more superheroes within the city than one person can count, giving us the opportunity to feel like nearly every other comic we ever read. There are those that remind us of Superman, Batman, Iron Man, and even the Fantastic Four. He blends these characters into entirely new heroes. Ones that we are not familiar with so that our focus, the reader's focus, isn't on the heroes (cause that isn't what his stories are about), but instead on the people. It has been nearly four days since I finished the first chapter of "Astro City" and I cannot wait to begin the next. As I glance back through this innovative novel, the stories that stick out the most are "The Scoop", "Safeguards" as well as "A Little Knowledge". The remaining three stories are good, but the do focus a bit too heavily on the heroes themselves, which is not my passion for these stories. I loved "The Scoop" due to the realism. I loved reading the paper the next day and allowing my imagination to wander. After reading this story one couldn't help

The best of the superhero genre

Due to his work on Marvels, Kurt Busiek became a widely respected, award-winning and critically renowned writer. For those who don't know, Marvels is a masterpiece of the graphic narrative, using the genre of the superhero to explore so much more about the history and social climate of our country. It deserves to be an A+ Graphic Novel in its own right, and it will be someday down the line. But not today, for today I want to recognize Marvels for another reason than its own genius. You see, without Marvels, Kurt Busiek would never have had the freedom to create the world of Astro City. And without Astro City, the milieu of the superhero would be much less vibrant and exciting. The Astro City stories, originally published through Image and then moving to DC when they absorbed Wildstorm, each explore a world that feels comfortable, like a place we've visited before, despite still being shiny and new. Busiek and collaborator Brent Anderson take the concepts of super-heroism that we are already familiar with and break them down until nothing is left but the most vital components of the genre. Once the concept of the superhero has been refined to its core elements, Busiek uses these distilled ideas as his foundation and builds the world of Astro City up into something wonderful, a fresh new take on a long-established tradition. In Astro City, heroes exist not just to get into brilliant battles with each other, but also to offer up insight to us on a variety of themes, including the old superhero standby about power and responsibility. In the very first Astro City story "In Dreams," a superhero known as Samaritan (an obvious Superman analogue) leads a life of emptiness. The only enjoyment in his life is the freedom he gets from flying, and even that he only gets a few seconds of flying each day between the disasters and various other crises he must combat. That story and five others are collected in the first Astro City trade paperback, Astro City: Life in the Big City, a series of vignettes that each look at life in Astro City in a different way. Each story then also takes a different perspective on the superheroes that populate this metropolis, one the average reader might not be used to. From a newspaper reporter who witnesses a crossover-style event to a thug who discovers a hero's secret identity, this book takes the point-of-view of the average men and women in a world full of the extraordinary. We can connect with these narrating characters, identifying with their unique viewpoints on these virtual gods they share the world with. We share their feeling of awe and wonder at these "Marvels," yet they also feel commonplace. And that's the great thing about this series; it reads on many levels. Longtime comic fans will enjoy hunting for the many Easter eggs and in-jokes Busiek and Anderson dropped into the background of each issue. They can also look at certain characters in the context of analogous archetypes and analyze what aspect of the superher

Busiek and Co. breathe new life into superheroes

There are many smart people in comics who argue that the superhero genre is totally spent, stuck recycling old stories and old archetypes and doomed to tell superficial power fantasies, no matter how much the hot new creators of the moment try to dress them up.Kurt Busiek's Astro City proves these critics wrong. In Astro City, Busiek, Anderson and Ross have created a wonderfully rich setting, a city with a history and character of its own that feels as real and as diverse as any American city. The only difference is that Astro City is full of superpowered individuals, and has been for at least 75 years. Some of these characters are allegories for established heroes published by DC and Marvel - analogues for Superman, Wonder Woman and the Fantastic Four (among others) appear in this volume. Others are wholly original creations, allowing Busiek to take various archetypes in new directions.Each chapter in Life in the Big City is a standalone short story, highlighting different corners of this fictional universe. The city's leading superhero tries to be everywhere at once, and berates himself for every wasted second as he longs for just a moment of his own. A small time hood learns a hero's secret identity, and tries to figure out how to profit from the knowledge. A beat reporter gets some advice from his editor on his first day on the job. A young woman tries to balance the demands of her family with her own hopes and desires. Despite the fantastic settings, the characters in these slice-of-life stories feel like real people, and that gives the stories real power.Anderson and Ross do a fine job with the visual design and storytelling here; Anderson's style is steady, dramatic without being flashy. The character designs are well-thought; simple and elegant where necessary, flamboyant and even campy where that is a better fit. There are no wildly confusing panel layouts, but action flows nicely from page to page and the characters' faces and body language convey their thoughts and feelings well, so Busiek doesn't need to overscript.Don't let the spandex fool you. These are stories about the human heart, and they're GOOD stories, well worth reading.

Required reading for fans of the superhero genre

The comic book adventures of costumed superheroes represent a specialized genre of literature that has been around for decades. Every so often a new work comes around that truly represents a new high point in the field. Such a work is "Kurt Busiek's Astro City: Life in the Big City," an intelligently written and spectacularly illustrated volume that tells the story of a remarkable group of superheroes."Life" is actually a collection of six interrelated stories, each of which stands on its own as a fine piece of comic book art. Together the six tales present a stunning portrait of the fictional Astro City, a postmodern metropolis teeming with costumed superheroes, sinister supervillains and other memorable characters. Among the many heroes we meet are Samaritan, the almost godlike caped hero with a tragic past; Winged Victory, a flying superwoman with a feminist twist; the Hanged Man, a mysterious figure who maintains a silent protective vigil; and Jack-in-the-Box, a demonic-looking clown with a number of high-tech tricks up his sleeve.But just as compelling are the "ordinary" citizens of Astro City: veteran reporter Elliot Mills, legal clerk Marta, and the other working folks whose lives are lived in the shadow of the supermen."Life in the Big City" smoothly blends elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and social commentary. Well-written dialogue is complemented by a wealth of memorable images... The stories explore such thought-provoking issues as ethnic identity and the anxiety of assimilation, gender politics, and the psychology of paranoia. One of the compilation's best tales, "The Scoop," is a witty and surprising parable about journalistic ethics.The book length comic, or graphic novel, is a rich genre whose practitioners have produced some outstanding classics in recent years. The intelligence, visual power, and moral integrity of "Life in the Big City" elevate it to that distinguished company.

Brillent Work

As the year 2000 dawns upon us. comics have really declined in story quality. DC has pretty much destroyed it's universe, and Image is all artwork and no story. But with Astro City, Kurt Buiesk has restored the fun and sense of wonder from the Golden and Silver ages of comics. The Astro City heroes are written as human beings learnig to use their powers in a constructive manner. They want to do the right thing and the choics are not always easy.It's the humanity of the chareters which makes Astro City so good.