Astro City, also known as Kurt Busiek's Astro City, is an American superhero anthology comic book series centered on a fictional American city of that name. Created and written by Kurt Busiek, the series is mostly illustrated by Brent Anderson, with character designs and painted covers by Alex Ross. Its stories focus primarily on everyday life in a superhero comic universe, rather than on superheroic adventures and battles.

The first volume was published from 1995 to 1996 by Image Comics. In 1996, a second volume was launched under the Homage Comics imprint of Image partner studio WildStorm, which was then acquired by DC Comics, where the series later transitioned to the WildStorm Signature Series imprint and continued until 2010. During this period it switched from a regular ongoing series to a sequence of periodic mini-series and special issues. A third ongoing volume was launched under DC's Vertigo imprint in 2013 and concluded in 2018. Counting all series, mini-series and special issues, over 100 issues have been published.

Themes

The series portrays different perspectives on what everyday life might be like in a superhero-comic universe, with stories focusing on a variety of different superhero characters and ordinary people. It has been described as representing Busiek's effort to move away from the Dark Age of Comic Books toward more optimistic stories, functioning as a "thesis statement" of how superhero comics work. The series examines the archetypes of older superhero comics, functioning as "a vehicle to comment on [topics] buried in the subtext of old comics".

Many of the superheroes in Astro City bear similarities to famous characters from Marvel Comics or DC Comics. For instance, the feminist superhero Winged Victory is reminiscent of Wonder Woman, and the superhero team First Family resemble the Fantastic Four. whereupon Barenholtz subsequently took the project to Working Title Films. Busiek was to write a script treatment, and also to executive-produce, along with Barenholtz and Alpers.

Television

In March 2018, FremantleMedia North America was interested to produce a live-action Astro City TV series with a pilot episode written by Busiek and Rick Alexander. Later, in the afterword of the That Was Then... one-shot, Busiek noted that it was still in development with a different company.

References

  • Astro City at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. From the original on April 6, 2012.
  • Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards index