Trekking to the Oldies

Star Trek: Gold Key Archives Volume 1 (1967-69/ This edition 2014): written by Dick Wood; illustrated by Nevio Zeccara and Alberto Giolitti: Oh, those loopy Gold Key Star Trek comics of the 1960's and 1970's! The first six issues collected here were originally written and drawn by people who had never seen an episode of Star Trek and had been handed what seems to be the briefest of Show Bibles. 

The artists had photo references, but no idea how big the Enterprise was (a cutaway illustration makes it seem about as big as a B-52 bomber) or what James Doohan looked like (Scotty is unrecognizable). The stories themselves are generic space opera, albeit with a few clever moments. The first story is pretty much full-blown scifi horror, an area the real Trek delved into very infrequently. And as a piece of horror, and body horror, it's actually pretty effective, though unrecognizable as Trek. 

Subsequent stories gradually move closer to Trek, with a clever story about rogue machines endlessly building cities being the strongest, Trekkiest of the stories. Why Dark Horse devoted a fairly pricey Archive series to these books is a bit of a mystery: these things are best enjoyed on cheap paper, preferably in a massive, inexpensive collection. Recommended.


Godhead: New Gods/ Green Lantern (2015): written by Robert Vendetti, Charles Soule, Van Jensen, Cullen Bunn, Justin Jordan, and others; illustrated by Ethan Van Sciver, Billy Tan, Dale Eaglesham, and others: DC tried to reinvent Jack Kirby's iconic Fourth World characters for its post-Flashpoint, rebooted superhero universe of the 'New 52' in this crossover event with the Green Lantern books. It's pretty much a failure on every level, burdened with a plot that's mostly massive battle scenes and a lot of fussy, often confusingly laid-out art. And oh so many Lanterns! 

The leader of the 'good' forces of the 'New Gods,' Izaya the Inheritor, has gone from reflective philosopher-king to violent imperialist. So, too, such previously peaceful New Gods characters such as Lightray, who's now just another soldier in a Cosmic Cold War. Design-wise, nothing of Kirby's has been improved upon. Metron and his Mobius Chair are now a fussy, over-rendered mess. Orion now wears an outfit that makes him look like a bellhop when his helmet is removed. Izaya is just another guy in over-rendered armour.

The 'event' involves the New Gods, self-appointed defenders of the entire multiverse,  discovering the existence of Green Lantern rings, oh, about 5000 years into the existence of those Green Lantern rings. That's some nice universal monitoring, boys. Of course, this is the expanded universe of Green Lantern rings. Which is to say, there are also thousands upon thousands of humans and aliens flying around not only with Green Lantern rings, but with Red and Yellow and Orange and Blue and Indigo and Violet Lantern rings. And there are collector's item, one-of-a-kind White and Black Lantern rings as well. Plaid rings are surely on the horizon.

Izaya decides some combination of these rings will allow him to defeat cosmic menace Darkseid once and for all. Or maybe he just needs the White Lantern ring to do that. Whatever. Much fighting and blowing things up ensues. There's about enough plot here for maybe 50 pages of a comic book, extended to fill 300 increasingly interminable pages. Now that DC has executed a soft line-wide reboot again with the Rebirth event. one can only hope that this dismal bunch of Fourth-World wannabes has been consigned to the ash-heap of continuity resets. Not recommended.

Altered States

 

Earth 2: The Gathering: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott with Eduardo Pansica (2012): James Robinson and artist Paul Smith's 1990's alternate-history take on the Justice Society of America, The Golden Age, is one of the great 'What if?' superhero comic books. His 1990's run on Starman is also beloved of many. Here, he's working in peak form, having been given a chance to reimagine DC's old Earth-2 continuity (originally the home to DC's World War Two versions of superheroes) in the present day. Admittedly, all the press got excited about was the recasting of the (formerly) Golden-Age Green Lantern Alan Scott as gay.

Freed from 'normal' continuity, Robinson really goes all out here -- this is DC's best superhero book right now. Nicola and Trevor Scott supply clean, vaguely retro artwork (in the sense that it's not overcrowded and doesn't rely on the computerized colour palette for most of its best effects). The 'new' versions of old heroes are a pretty interesting lot, as Robinson seems to have been given carte blanche to rework the origins of the heroes. The Flash is now a magical hero, his super-speed granted by a dying Mercury (yes, that Mercury); the Green Lantern now fills Swamp Thing's role as a guardian of the world's biosphere. Oh, and Sandman is Canadian.

In the world of Earth-2, the Big Three -- Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman -- died in a last-ditch (and successful) effort to save Earth from a global invasion by the malign, super-powered forces of the planet Apokolips. Years later, with the Earth rebuilding, the next wave of heroes finally starts to emerge: the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, the Atom, the Sandman, and soon all the other Golden-Age heroes, I'm assuming.

But a second invasion from Apokolips may be looming. And on the homefront, Mr. 8 (Mister Terrific in the Golden-Age continuity) advances his plans to save the Earth by any means necessary, which in the past resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of humans during the Apokolips War.

It's all a lot of occasionally grim but mostly surprising super-hero fun. Robinson seems to have been rejuvenated himself by getting to work on an alternate continuity; here's hoping he gets to write this for a few years, and that editorial interference stays at a minimum. Recommended.

Aaron Burr in Space

DC Showcase Presents Green Lantern Volume 5: written by Denny O'Neil and Eliot S Maggin; illustrated by Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Mike Grell, Dick Dillin and others (1970-75; collected 2012): The classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories herein, mostly by writer Denny O'Neil and penciller Neal Adams, are available from DC in a variety of formats. I like this one because B&W is a nice way to appreciate Adams' art. Also, Adams doesn't redraw the work in this volume for contemporary publication, making this the real deal as it was when it was published.

By 1970, DC's Green Lantern title was foundering in sales. Along came editor Julius Schwartz, O'Neil, Adams, and a mandate that could really only come in comic books: team Green Lantern up with another character whom he shared a dominant colour with. Thus was born the somewhat oddball pairing of cosmic policeman and non-super-powered bowman.

O'Neil and Schwartz decided to make the series "relevant" by having the characters confront social problems that include racism, over-population, and pollution. These social problems were often rendered melodramatically or even parodically, but they were nonetheless a departure for DC Comics and for Green Lantern, both of which had always been more comfortable in a more complete fantasy world.

The pairing didn't save the title from cancellation (though Green Lantern would be back on his own soon enough, first as a back-up in The Flash and then in his own book again). It certainly made for a historically interesting ride, though. How well do these things stand up now? Well, Adams' hyperrealism still looks terrific 40 years later. O'Neil's scripts creak and groan a lot under the weight of their own hyperrealism (which is not the same as realism) and melodrama, but there remain a number of strong moments of writing.

The social consciousness rapidly vanishes once Green Arrow is gone, while the straight-forward superheroics return. An O'Neil-penned tale about how aliens abducted Aaron Burr after his murder of Alexander Hamilton and made him their leader stands out in the later stories, though perhaps not for the right reasons. It's completely bonkers. All in all, recommended.

Bored of the Rings

Green Lantern: written by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, and Michael Goldenberg. Based on characters created by John Broome, Julius Schwartz, Gil Kane, Steve Engelhart, Joe Staton, and others; directed by Martin Campbell; starring Ryan Reynolds (Hal Jordan), Peter Sarsgaard (Hector Hammond), Blake Lively (Carol Ferris), Mark Strong (Sinestro), and Tim Robbins (Senator Hammond) (2011): Had DC's Silver Age comic-book superhero Green Lantern been cursed with a first appearance this convoluted and yet strangely bland, we wouldn't have been cursed with this movie at all. The filmmakers decided to shovel bits and pieces of 55 years of Green Lantern continuity into a 110-minute film while liberally borrowing the aesthetic of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy in an inappropriate way (the home of cosmic good guys The Guardians of the Universe looks strikingly like Mordor, for example, which constitutes something of a mixed signal).

The Green Lanterns are space-faring policemen gifted with green rings that can make anything the bearer thinks of, so long as his, her or its will power is strong enough. An angry yellow cloud -- perhaps the cloud Grampa Simpson was yelling at -- threatens the universe. New GL recruit Hal Jordan of Earth turns out to be the only Green Lantern plucky enough to defeat the cloud, actually a fear-eating being named Parallax.

There`s a lot of flying around and space vistas and scenes that look like video-game cut scenes, and surprisingly little superheroing. The overstuffed, undercooked plot doesn`t give Hal any room to fly around saving people from things more mundane than a talking, planet-sized cloud. Instead, we get endless exposition about things that are, frankly, often very silly once removed from their comic-book context.

One of the problems is that this isn`t Lord of the Rings -- which is to say, the Green Lantern mythology isn`t a coherent one shaped by one mind, but rather an accretion of ideas from six decades and counting.

Comic-book writers often hold onto inherently stupid ideas because those stupid ideas are part of a character`s continuity, and thus sacrosanct (and, possibly, copyrighted). Here, one such long-standing bit of nonsense -- the idea that 3600 Green Lanterns patrol a universe divided into 3600 sectors by the Guardians, one GL per sector -- gets trotted out again. I don`t even want to begin calculating how many solar systems that would encompass for each GL. Trillions. They must accumulate a lot of frequent flyer miles.

Another bit of nonsense -- the cloud`s name is Parallax -- also gets trotted out. Why is a giant cloud named Parallax? Well, there`s a convoluted explanation that unfolded over decades in the comic book; here it`s just tossed out, another clunker. That fascist GL Sinestro is named, um, Sinestro was fine for a comic book aimed at children in which names can be glaringly descriptive of character. In something ostensibly aimed at adults, it's stupid.

And don`t get me started on the age gaps among the actors playing supposed childhood playmates Hal, Carol Ferris, and Hector Hammond. There's a 17-year spread, a detail that wouldn't be as much of a problem if the actors (Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, and Peter Sarsgard, respectively) didn't pretty much look as mismatched as their actual ages. So it goes. Not recommended.

Complicated without Complexity

Darkseid, fussy.

Justice League: Origin: written by Geoff Johns; illustrated by Jim Lee and Scott Williams and others (2011-2012): Fan favourites Johns and Lee seem to have turned the rebooted Justice League into DC's most popular monthly title, one that is still outselling every other title, DC or other, seven months after its launch.

The League has seemed to move through a set cycle, reboot or not, since the late 1970's: a line-up fronted by one or more of the 'Big Three' (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman) makes the book popular; some or all of them leave; the book becomes less popular as lesser-known heroes take over; the book gets cancelled and then relaunched with one or more of the Big Three; and so on, and so forth.

Johns and Lee certainly make this an event book again, as the League forms for the first time to combat a massive alien invasion. Along with the usual suspects (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, and Green Lantern) and without original founding member Martian Manhunter, the league's seventh founding member turns out to be Cyborg in this iteration.

Historically, Cyborg did appear on the 1980's version of Super Friends, and he is a founding member of the League on Smallville. And he's African-American, which make the League look a little less white.

A lot of things blow up. Much Marvel-style bickering and posturing occurs among the superheroes before they figure out how to work together. Humanity, afraid of these relatively new super-heroes, comes to embrace them after they see them battling aliens in defence of humanity.

Lee's often hilariously fussy costume redesigns are distracting and often far goofier than previous iterations. His Darkseid is especially ugly, fussy, and over-complicated. Not much of interest happens here, but it happens loudly and repeatedly for emphasis. Lightly recommended.

Make the Warrior Princess Take Notes...

All-Star Comics Archives Volume 1, introduction by Don Thompson, written by Gardner F. Fox, illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff, Bernard Baily, Everett Hibbard, Howard Sherman, Howard Purcell and others (1940-41; collected 1992): A combination of exhilaration and exasperation accompanies my reading of most Golden-Age (that is, 1937-1949) American superhero comic books. One can see both a genre and a medium being defined and refined, sometimes boldly, sometimes wrongly, sometimes ineptly. And as per Sturgeon's Law, at least 90% of it is crap. Maybe 99%.

Before the Avengers, the Justice League of America, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the X-Men -- before all other superhero teams and superhero groups -- was the Justice Society of America, debuting in 1940 in issue 3 of All-Star Comics, just less than 3 years after the appearance of the first American superheroes. The group comprised the company now known as DC's Golden Age superhero stable, with a few notable exceptions: Superman and Batman were honorary members who almost never appeared, as the Society was used to help promote 'DC's' less popular heroes, while Wonder Woman would generally only act as recording secretary and not an actual fighting member of the group.

The most active original members of the JSA would range from the fairly famous (the original Green Lantern and original Flash) to the more obscure (comic relief Johnny Thunder and Red Tornado, the original Atom, Hourman, Dr. Fate, and the Spectre). Heroes with earth-shaking cosmic powers (the Lantern and his magic ring, Flash, Fate, Spectre and, surprisingly perhaps, Johnny Thunder and his magical intelligent pink thunderbolt) sat beside heroes with limited powers (Hourman, whose Miraclo pills gave him an hour of enhanced strength), powerful gadgets (Starman, Dr. Midnite, Hawkman, Sandman) or no powers or gadgets at all (the dreary Atom, whose power was that he was really strong for a height-challenged person. And he wasn't a really strong dwarf or midget -- he was maybe 5'2". Really, every JSA adventure should have ended with the dead body of the Atom being taken to Paradise Island to be revived with the super-healing Purple Ray, his revival being accompanied by the other heroes standing around laughing about how he got killed in every adventure by someone with a handgun or just a pointy stick. It wasn't until the Silver Age that a character named Atom got appropriate, and appropriately awesome, super-shrinking powers).

The first two issues of All-Star Comics published individual adventures of what would soon be Justice Society members; the third issue featured the origin of the Justice Society. And what an origin! A bunch of superheroes decide to get together in a hotel banquet room and talk during dinner!

OK, dramatic it's not. In the 1970's, writer Paul Levitz and artists Joe Staton and Bob Layton would give the JSA a truly awesome origin story, complete with Batman and Superman, but for now they are a jovial, joking sausage party (Wonder Woman was still a year away). They don't even fight crime together in that first issue, instead telling tales of individual heroism. But by issue 4, they were fighting crime in what would be the first model of a JSA story, individually tackling criminals in stories drawn by different artists (but all written by Gardner F. Fox) before coming together at the end of the story. Eventually, they'd do more teaming up, at least in pairs or trios, prior to the final gathering.

The art ranges from awful through competent to interesting. Sheldon Moldoff, later a Batman artist with a much different style, here does his best Alex Raymond impersonation on Hawkman; Bernard Baily does some really peculiar work on the Spectre; Howard Sherman does his typically weird, offbeat stuff (including the oddest lettering of the Golden Age) on Dr. Fate. The only real greatness here is the core concept of heroes getting together. As one can see from the hype surrounding next year's Avengers movie, that's still a concept with a lot of pop-cultural heft. Recommended.

Red Menaces

Comics:


Devil Dinosaur Omnibus Edition by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer: Comics legend writer/artist Jack Kirby co-created Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the comic-book Thor, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer, the original X-Men and thousands of other comic-book characters for a variety of publishers in a career that lasted from the late 1930's until his death in 1995. Devil Dinosaur, a Marvel comic that lasted nine issues back in 1978, is not generally considered to be Kirby's best work or his best creation. However, mediocre work from Kirby is still far more interesting than the best work of hundreds of comic-book creators.

I expected to really hate this book, so I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it is. The concept is faintly ridiculous, even for comic books: in a somewhat confusing past in which fur-covered protohumans and dinosaurs co-existed, a smart little primate with the unfortunate name of 'Moon-boy' and the giant red T. Rex he saved from a fire and named 'Devil' protect the valley they live in (and its assorted dinosaur and mammalian inhabitants) from a variety of menaces. Their opponents include colonizing aliens, giant ants, a giant spider, a witch, a tribe of dinosaur riders, and an angry giant human. Moon-boy and Devil are sort of like Spider-man, in that they're often hated or feared by the very beings they work to protect. But it's all in a day's work.

Devil Dinosaur was apparently created in part because Marvel hoped that the child-friendly characters and storylines (a heroic dinosaur and a child protagonist fighting various giant things) might allow them to sell the rights to an animation studio. This didn't happen, though Kirby himself would go on to do a lot of conceptual and design work for animation studios in the late 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's (Thundarr the Barbarian is one of Kirby's design projects. for instance). A six-year-old child who likes dinosaurs, or someone like me, would probably enjoy this book. Recommended.


Tintin in the Land of the Soviets by Herge: Before the 22 graphic-album adventures of Belgian kid-adventurer Tintin and his dog Snowy that are still popular today, there was this bizarre early 1950's volume, a comic inferno trip through the Soviet Union by reporter Tintin and his faithful pooch. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this thing is fucking bananas. Originally serialized in about 50 parts, this plays like a full-length anti-Soviet Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. Accidentally buying this album for a child who enjoys the other Tintin adventures would probably be a big mistake, unless that child is Charles Krauthammer. Recommended, but deeply weird.


The Superman Chronicles Volume 6 (1941) by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and others: The sixth volume of DC's chronological reprint series of Superman's early adventures is a lot of fun. Superman is still a vaguely socialist firebrand rather than the paternal Establishment Man he would soon become with the advent of WWII for the US. So he fights various plots against the little guy both as Superman and Clark Kent (including a fake talent agency. Seriously.). He also fights Luthor, who is, as always, a dick, and a variety of other superpowered villains, including The Ghost, a radioactive killer suffering from terminal radium poisoning. I like early Superman a lot. When he threatens to throw a criminal into the propellers of an airplane unless the criminal talks, he's not necessarily bluffing -- he's like a super-powered Jack Bauer who works only for himself. Highly recommended.


Movies:

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, starring the voices of Tim Daly, Kevin Conroy, Clancy Brown and Alison Mack (2009, animated): Based on the first five-issue arc of the Superman/Batman comic series, this DC animated movie keeps much of Jeph Loeb's story intact while the character design emulates Ed McGuinness's art style rather than the more familiar Paul Dini/Bruce Timm designs that started with Batman: the Animated Series back in the early 1990's and continued through Superman and Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. Daly, Conroy and Brown reprise their voice roles from the 1990's Batman and Superman series as Superman, Batman and Lex Luthor respectively.

A war-and-economic-depression-plagued USA elects Lex Luthor president. Things seem to go well for awhile, though Luthor tries to make all superheroes work directly for the US government. Guess what two heroes refuse? Then a giant Kryptonite meteor is discovered on a collision course with Earth, and Luthor turns out to be even worse at disaster prevention and response than George W. Bush. This animated movie is pretty much one long fight scene. It's enjoyable, but characterization pretty much has to fall by the wayside. Still, it would make a great template for a live-action movie. Recommended.


Green Lantern: First Flight, starring the voices of Christopher Meloni, Tricia Helfer, Victor Garber and Michael Madsen (2009, animated): The Green Lantern Corps is the intergalactic police force of the DC universe, keeping peace and order under the supervision of the immortal blue aliens known as the Guardians. This animated movie puts Earth Green Lantern Hal Jordan (voiced by Law and Order SVU's Meloni) through his initial paces as a Green Lantern, while throwing in story elements from about 30 years of Lantern mythology.

The "greatest Green Lantern of them all", Sinestro (voiced nicely by Victor Garber and doomed by that name to a life of evil), takes Hal under his wing as they investigates the murder of Hal's immediate predecessor, Abin Sur. Someone is trying to create a competing power battery -- yellow to the Corps' green -- so as to destroy the Green Lantern Corps and take over the universe. Test pilot Hal Jordan appears to be in over his head, but like Earth people in any number of scifi plots, he makes up for his lack of training with grit, imagination, and a tendency to hit bad guys with giant boxing gloves made out of the ring's mysterious green energy that can do pretty much anything the wielder can imagine.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. The plot's awfully busy for an origin story, though (in GL's origin back in the 1950's comics, he simply gets his ring from an Abin Sur terminally wounded in an accident. Boy, those were the days of brevity when an origin story was something to get over with!). Highly recommended.

None Blacker

Comics:

Blackest Night by Geoff Johns, Peter Tomasi, Ivan Reis, Doug Mahnke and others: This megacrossover DC Comics event sees the Green Lantern Corps -- a sort of universal police force -- faced with an enemy that can seemingly resurrect the dead and make them evil, and which wants only one thing -- universal destruction. In other words, just another day at the superhero office. Power rings for every colour of the spectrum make the universe a very crowded place, especially as the Undead Black Lantern Corps also has nifty power rings and an unquenchable desire to eat people's hearts. Whee!

As megacrossovers go, this is certainly mega. Would someone who doesn't have an intimate understanding of DC Comics history as it relates to the Green Lantern Corps enjoy this? I dunno. I think probably not, because there's a lot of back-history to digest along with all those pilfered hearts. I enjoyed it, but even I got sort of weary after awhile. My fault, really, as I tried to buy every associated miniseries with titles like Blackest Night: JSA, and while many of those miniseries were interesting on their own, there were a bloody awful lot of them.

The writing on the 'mainline' portion of the saga -- Geoff Johns on Blackest Night and Green Lantern and Peter Tomasi on Green Lantern Corps -- is solid. There are spills and chills and thrills, space battles, epic speeches and what-have-you. Ivan Reis, who draws the main miniseries, really has become a top-flight Green Lantern artist. The on-going revelation, though, is artist Doug Mahnke, who first on Final Crisis and now on Green Lantern shows a flair for the cosmic that's actually somewhat rare in superhero comics. He's becoming a star in his own right, and here's hoping DC keeps him on books that play to his strengths. Recommended.


Flash: Rebirth by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver: Barry Allen, DC's Silver Age Flash, took a dirtnap from 1985 to 2008. But now he's back, and prior to the new ongoing Flash series, Johns and Van Sciver reveal why this particular Flash is back, and what the hell the new Reverse-Flash is up to. It makes for a solid miniseries, though very very very very busy at times -- all of DC's superfast heroes make an appearance, while Barry also gets a new portion of backstory retconned into his personal history. Do all superheroes need tragic motivation? If our universe were a contemporary superhero comic, then all policemen would have become policemen because someone in their family was murdered, though probably not by a time-travelling lunatic. So it goes. Recommended.


Strange by Mark Waid and Emma Rios: Dr. Strange has been Marvel Comics' premiere super-magician since the early 1960's, when he was co-created by the Spider-man team of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. But apparently he did some silly thing or another recently, and had his Sorcerer Supreme sobriquet -- along with most of his power -- stripped from him and handed to D-list magicman Doctor Voodoo (nee Brother Voodoo). Here, Strange tries to mentor a young woman with nascent magical powers while also trying to pay off enough of a karmic debt to get his own powers working again. The whole thing goes down smoothly, leaving room for a new ongoing Strange series should sales merit. Recommended.


Justice League: Cry for Justice by James Robinson, Mauro Cascioli, Scott Clark, Len Wein and others: Justice League of America writer Robinson's miniseries serves to set up his now ongoing run on the JLA while also putting a number of lesser-used DC heroes through their paces prior to placing them on the main team. Green Arrow and Green Lantern, fed up with supervillains never remaining in jail for more than ten minutes, create a newer, meaner Justice League spin-off that soon finds itself involved in a supervillain's scheme, to ultimately tragic results for a number of those involved. Despite the grimness, there are a number of fun moments here -- who doesn't love Congo Bill/Congorilla, the super-powered gorilla with a human mind? Recommended.


Astro City: Family Album by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross: Busiek's Astro City series manages to combine metafiction with a variety of other approaches to superheroes in a consistently pleasing manner. Astro City itself basically stands in as a history of the superhero comic book from its inception in the 1930's to the present day, with heroes and villains and 'tone' changing in relation to the ways in which a particular time (say, the 1970's) portrayed superheroes. The result is one of the most delightful superhero comics ever created, and one which gives Busiek wide latitude to tell virtually any superhero story in any style he wishes.

And while the characters have clear Major Company analogs (Busiek's First Family clearly resembles The Fantastic Four, while Samaritan is a Superman stand-in), Busiek and artists Anderson and Ross do a fine job of investing these homages with unique characteristics and problems of their own. This collection of seven issues from the original run of Astro City focuses on smaller problems of superheroes and supervillains alike while also giving us glimpses of other stories (the fate of The Silver Agent, for instance) that won't be written by Busiek for years to come. Highly recommended.