Review by Frank Plowright

Astro City is an unabashed love letter to superheroes, their possibilities, their purposes and their problems, courtesy of Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson with characters designed by Alex Ross. Not every superhero is a sustained paragon of virtue, as we see here.

As was the case with MetroBook 1, this combines the slimmer previously issued paperbacks, in this case The Tarnished Angel and Local Heroes, one longer story following the single character accompanying assorted shorts looking at different heroes. However, it’s the single holdover from the Family Album collection that provides the strangest Astro City resident to date.

Lennie the Lion had a long and prosperous film career from the mid-1940s onward, but as is the case for almost all Hollywood stars, the work eventually dried up. This affects Lennie more than most as he’s an actual cartoon lion, brought to life via accidental magic. Busiek runs through the dissolute circumstances afflicting so many once famous people, while Anderson excellently delivers the pathos despite working with a cheery cartoon character.

Also living an unfortunate life, although much of his own making, is Carl Donewicz, a one-time career criminal first met when being released from jail after twenty years served for crimes committed as Steeljack. His steel skin is permanent, but age is stiffening his joints, and can he keep his nose clean when he returns to his old neighbourhood? Visually based on an older version of 1950s film star Robert Mitchum, this is a noir crime story about Steeljack gradually uncovering the truth about assorted other small-time super crooks turning up dead. Setting himself up as a problem solver for the local neighbourhood, he’s constantly tempted over seven chapters, and is counterpointed by El Hombre, a now disgraced superhero. The mysteries are sustained until the final chapter of what’s cleverly produced to have us rooting for Steeljack while expecting the worst.

Strangely, the least of the content, although still good, sets up much of MetroBook 3. The weakness is stretching the story of a lawyer in 1974 over two chapters. He’s defending a gangster’s son accused of murder. He doesn’t expect to win the case, but the kid’s father makes his expectations clear and isn’t a man you refuse. The bigger purpose is to introduce the Blue Knight, a hero also serving as a policeman, although there’s also a clever piece of foreshadowing for the Silver Agent, also with a part to play next time.

The quality varies in future MetroBooks, but this is still a sparkling selection in which Busiek and Anderson revel in the world they’ve created. Who publishes superhero comics in Astro City, and who stars in the soap operas about them? What would a tourist make of the place? We learn about Irene Merriweather’s 1940s romance with the era’s most renowned hero, watch a hero emerge from retirement and learn of an unsung rural hero. All the while Busiek and Anderson keep to the forefront the idea of superheroes as something wonderful as seen by ordinary people. It’s touching and charming.