Re Astro City

I think that the "hating and fearing of heroes" isn't too unnatural. I mean, I don't have a problem with it from a suspension of disbelief angle, anymore than I have a problem with the numerous laws of physics tossed out the window in every issue. To paraphrase your comments about Evil Conspiracies in RPGs, I don't mind the occasional story about public opinion going against heroes, so long as, in the end, the heroes return to their heroic status.

There are people who hate and fear governments, large corporations, and any other group of folks with a lot of power, even if said groups do a lot of good.

I mean, I'd be scared if anyone, even the Justice League, had a giant space laser pointed straight down, even though I trust Superman and company.

What makes people trust governments or large corporations (to the extent that the general public trusts them) is that there are checks and balances to the power. There's something inherent in super-hero comics that keeps them from having those checks. Even government sponsored heroes regularly have the "throw down their badges" scenes so they can tell The Clueless Boss to get bent while they go Do Some Good. It's good drama to have the heroes be mavericks who answer only to an internal moral compass. But it would be scary as heck in the real world.

In JLU, isnt it the government that fears the superheroes? That seems a lot more plausible to me--I can see the US government (or any government) being very uncomfortable about having ultrapowerful individuals of questionable allegiances making national security decisions.

They make a point of showing the common folk fearing and suspecting the Justice League in the last couple episodes. OTOH, I still have some confidence that the point of this arc will be the redemption of the League in the eyes of both the government and the public.

I agree completely with Greg about Astro City: Dark Age. Additionally, it seems like Kurt is trying to condense all of the angst of the 60's and early 70's into one concentrated dose, packaged as the single issue of public anxiety aimed at the superheroes. The thing is, not only does it feel forced to me in that first issue (and not any fun at all), but it feels like he's got the timing off in terms of setting. It's set a little too far into the 70's for all this angst, and I know that he's picked the timing to coincide with the death of Gwen Stacy. Anyway.

The focus characters also don't do anything for me, and this whole issue just feels like yet-another "common folk looking up at the superheroes as they battle grandiose bad guys" riff. Been there, done that.

--Chris M.

Yes, but the normal folks who were "fearing and suspecting" the JLU were the ones whose houses had just gotten wrecked by the shockwave of the Big Honking Space Laser. They get a right to be hacked off.

It seems to me that there wasn't any anti-JLU sentiment until after Cadmus stirred it up.

I think McDuffie is going in interesting and, yes, plausible directions with the story arc in "JLU." I was very pleased at the plot twist where the head of Cadmus (I forget her name, even though she's become one of my favorite characters) decides to fully trust and even help the Justice League once she learns for herself what Luthor has been up to, rather than stay an enemy of the League just because she's the Big Scary Gov'ment Lady.

Amanda Waller (a previously established in the DCU character btw; while Dwayne's writing her well, he's doing so consistently with how John Ostrander created and wrote her). Basically, Waller's enough of a pragmatist to not casually ignore Batman pointing out where she may have gone wrong, nor to ignore the results of her own investigation as to what Luthor's been up to. On the other hand, nothing Luthor's done negates the basic worries she has about the JLU, so I'm thinking things shouldn't necessarily be sweetness and light between the Wall and them after the current crisis is over.

I read somewhere that Gemstone does intend to reprint the additional "Life & Times" stuff in a separate volume somewhere down the line.

Albion - I thought about buying it, but the "plotted by Moore" thing has produced very uneven results in the past.
Wild Girl - No real interest in Leah Moore unless she has proven herself as a writer. She's just another new writer to me, regardless of pedigree. Just because James Caan is neat doesn't mean Scott Caan is.
Dark Detective - Waiting for the collection.
Legends of the Dark Knight - I've never looked at this book ever.
Dark Age - It seems like a very convoluted publishing plan with the four four-issue miniseries punctuated by unrelated one-shots. The first issue was setup, and that's fine. I want this to be a great Astro City story to re-energize the book, the creators, and the fans. As far as the normal people hating superheroes thing, I always kind of section off Astro City because it always has the meta-commentary button turned on and it almost always does it very well.
Dead Boy Detectives - No interest.
Girls - Didn't care about Ultra, so also not buying this.
Dream Police - Fun little one-shot. I wouldn't mind more. The "Icon" imprint is for Marvel to allow creators to do creator-owned properties in house instead of having to farm them out to Image. Powers and Kabuki are also under this imprint. So far is seems to be there to keep their big names happy instead of trying out new talent with new ideas.
Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck - Almost preordered this, but cut it to bring the monthly comics bill down.

On hating and fearing superheroes: if the general public lumps them all together as superhumans, then they've got about five to ten times as many trying to exploit or subjugate humanity as they do trying to save them. The difference between "superhero" and "supervillain" is pretty clear to us readers but might not be so visible to citizens of these worlds.

The reason not to do the "feared and hated" story lightly isn't because it's irrational, it's because it's been done many times before (even in Astro City) and often done badly. But Busiek is a capable writer and he's picked the perfect time period and I've been eager to see this sort of metacommentary advance up to the Bronze Age, so I'm on board for the duration.

Albion was disappointing, wasn't it? Although I did like the little mock-IPC two-pager. Having read Jack Staff (and Moore's Captain Britain) I feel like I have a glimmer of an idea who some of these characters are, but Moore and Reppion didn't do much to clue me in or to make me care about the utterly generic protagonists.

OTOH Moore as an idea man revitalizing a set of forgotten comics characters for another writer to script worked pretty well on Terra Obscura - especially on the first series - so I'll be giving this one another couple of issues.

I've gotten pretty ruthless about dropping series, even mini-series, in mid-story if they aren't doing it for me: Dark Detective wasn't, nor was the abysmal OMAC Project.

No question about OMAC; it was vomitous. Not because it was incompetent, nor even uninteresting, for I cared about the Checkmate protagonist, but because what it was doing to the DC Universe was so distasteful.

Marc, you raise a good point, although my admittedly knee-jerk reaction is that in the normal Marvel or DC universes, it should be pretty clear to the normal citizen as well. If it's not, I feel like you immediately lean in the direction of a level of realism in which the whole thing falls apart and you start getting into this meta crap like whether telepaths can testify in court and so on. You can certainly do compelling superhero stories in that vein, but my bias is that I don't want the JLA or Avengers to read like that.

Which has nothing to do with Astro City, which has successfully leaned in that direction from day one. Also, I do want to make it clear that I have enjoyed the current JLU episodes a great deal. It's right at the edge of my comfort zone, but as the telling has been of high quality I'm cool with that.

--Chris M.

No, I completely agree about the need to avoid those sorts of "But what would this be like in the real world?" questions if you're trying to maintain decades-old properties forever. (Astro City isn't saddled with that problem; Busiek has the luxury of change. I mean, if AC were an actual comics company's universe the Silver Agent would still be alive, right? Or at the very least the name and the costume would be active; there would presumably be too much money in it for them not to be.)

The thing is, that's the same reason - the maintenance of suspension of disbelief - why I think it's a mistake to say "But the public would really love superheroes for all the good they do" or "But the public would really love the X-Men by now." If you're seeking that level of realism in your comics you can just as easily cook up a realistic reason why the heroes aren't accepted. I agree that a group like the JLA or the Avengers shouldn't be objects of fear or mistrust over the long term (individual story arcs are fine), but it's absolutely essential to the X-Men, the Hulk, or Spider-Man.

As for the OMAC Project, I just got irritated that:

a) Spy comics writer Greg Rucka writes master spy Sasha Whatsername as a complete idiot (she couldn't try any tradecraft to avoid being noticed when she tipped off Wayne?)

b) The third issue of the limited series, which is itself part of a network of four crossovers leading into a big mega-crossover, tells me I will need to read three or four more comics beyond the four-crossover network just to understand what's going on in the next issue. Oh, and the surprising revelation is that Superman is working for the bad guys.

I didn't buy that issue, and immediately felt dirtier for having bought the first two.

I can't get worked up over comics that deviate from my idealized concept of shared superhero universes anymore, but I have absolutely run out of patience for poor quality or craft.

Chris:

I should also aver my amazement at recent JLU episodes. I may not like certain elements of the story, but everything else is as good a JLA comic as one could ask. This past episode's battle on the satellite had me audibly gasping "Cool!"

I am, however, a bit disturbed to have a clone A) named Galatea; B) in Power Girl's costume, more or less; C) who's a bad guy; and D) who calls her creator "Daddy". A) and D) are creepy and B) and C) are dissonant. Plus, she's got kinda of an ootsy-foo voice, even with the same voice actress as Supergirl.

And Dwayne's been reading the Last Superman Story again.... Excellent reveal!

Not too impressed with Abion, I think you have to be over 45 and a Brit to get all the refferences,but then I am and I still did'nt get it

Yeah, I thought there was a strong element of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" in that reveal as well.

Gwen Stacy's death was June 1973, while this issue of Astro City is set in September 1972.

David:

So it seems likely that the climax of the action will occur at the same time as Gwen Stacy's death, yes?

I think the comics reading public is sophisticated enough now for several things.

1) We understand why superheroes would be mistrusted in the real world.

2) We know that traditionally superheroes were trusted.

The response of writers has been to protray a world where superheroes are becoming less trusted in order to reconcile these two.

This seems to bother people for the reasons described. Therefore, what writers need to do is show why in fact superheroes are trusted. Show what those checks and balances are. Establish linchpin characters who maintain that trust and what institutional oversights exist to insure those checks survive. It's not easy to create such a plausible (for comic books) system AND introduce it in an entertaining way so writers don't bother. But the superhero comics are poorer for it.

It's one reason why Captain America is such an essential character in the Marvel Universe, and why he is so respected by the public and other superheroes. He has credentials and reputation the public would never accept from anyone else.

Wild Girl was very disappointing. Basically, the first two issues had promise and it went downhill quickly after that. The art was good, true, especially the J.H. Williams III inserts in each issue, but the story just spun its wheels until it ran out of gas. The ending was pointless and boring. I say quit while you are ahead.

Greg: Maybe. Then again, maybe not.