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Astro City: Confession 1997 (SC TPB) 208 pages
Written
by Kurt Busiek. Pencils by Brent Eric Anderson, Inks by Will Blyberg.
Colours: Alex Sinclair. Letters: Comicraft's John Roshell. Editor:
Jonathon Peterson.
Reprinting: Astro City (vol. 2) #4-9, Wizard Presents Astro City #1/2
Additional notes: intro by Neil Gaiman; behind-the-scenes sketches; cover gallery.
Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 2
Published by Homage/DC Comics
Astro City is Kurt Busiek's critically acclaimed series
set within its own super hero universe. Busiek, with collaborators Brent
Anderson (pencils) and Alex Ross (painted covers and character designs)
have fashioned a city with its own vast pantheon of super heroes, but the
comic itself takes on the nature of an anthology, where the hero featured
in one issue becomes little more than a streak across the skyline in other
issues, or where the focus might be on a non-superpowered civilian, reacting
to the fantastic events around him (ala Busiek's Marvels).
Confession,
though, was the series' first story arc, where the same character is followed
from issue to issue in one unfolding saga.
In that sense, Confession tries to be that elusive
animal -- a true super hero graphic novel. By telling a super hero saga
where the main characters didn't necessarily appear before, and aren't
necessarily meant to recur, Busiek can tell a story with a beginning, middle,
and end, threaded with a character arc and interwoven themes. There are
no lingering sub-plots, or sense that this is just a pre-amble to further
stories.
The protagonist, teenager Brian Kinney, arrives in Astro
City, hoping to become a super hero. With Busiek positing the cute (if
frivolous) idea that super heroes are like movie stars, and the best way
to get into the business is simply to hang out with super heroes and hope
to get noticed, Brian quickly gets invited to be Altar Boy, sidekick to
the enigmatic Confessor, who keeps secrets even from Brian. But this is
the wrong time to be a super hero, what with a string of unsolved murders,
mysterious incidents, and an escalating wave of anti-superhero paranoia
leading to a crackdown on costumed do-gooders.
Astro City has been much praised, with Wizard magazine
(a comic fanzine) proclaiming it "The best comic... Period." And Neil Gaiman
waxes euphorically about it in his introduction. There's a lot to appreciate
in Confession -- not the least its ambition to be a stand alone "graphic
novel". Plus, Busiek clearly wants this to be a thinking man's adventure,
complete with plenty of rumination on the events that transpire, and an
undercurrent of religious iconography as a theme. With all that being said,
it should also be noted that Confession has plenty of pulpy, fantasy and
adventure aspects, too. When I first read it, I was thrown a bit some elements,
because I didn't realize it was going to be that kind of story.
But in the end, Confession is hobbled a little by its
very ambitions.
There's a strong streak of homage at work here, where
many background heroes are meant to evoke existing Marvel or DC properties,
with even the Confessor and Altar Boy reminiscent of Batman
and Robin. But, unfortunately, that bleeds over into the actual plot,
with the anti-superhero hysteria something that has been done before, and
more convincingly, in other, supposedly less ambitious, comics -- it's
almost been done to death. In fact, the plot, complete with some later
revelations, borrows rather liberally from a certain Avengers
epic. There's even what may be a slight nod to the H.P. Lovecraft story,
"The Haunter of the Dark".
That would be fine if Busiek really did tell a smarter
version of those stories...but he doesn't really. Like too many modern
writers, Busiek is so busy trying to write a great, profound story, he
forgets that he needs to first lay a solid foundation. Busiek has to make
us believe in the reality, so that we can buy into the anti-superhero hysteria,
or so that the revelation of the Confessor's secret will have its desired
effect. But, ironically, Busiek's Astro City seems less convincing than
Spider-Man's
New York, or Batman's Gotham City. The first time through, it's a bit hard
to get a grip on certain things, such as a mysterious ethnic ghetto, or
even the significance of the Confessor's secret in this reality. A second
read through, you know how the pieces go together, but it's still not always
convincing on a visceral level. And an inherent spookiness that Busiek
seems to be going for at times doesn't really crystallize either. The plotting
is also a tad uneven, even simplistic, in spots, with talk of patterns
that doesn't really hold up, and a plot lapse between the fifth and sixth
chapters, and other things.
There's a sense Busiek is just regurgitating things he's
read in other comics but hasn't digested properly himself, trying to pass
them off as his own profundity, but lacking the rawer, more visceral edge
that stories like The Avengers: The Kree-Skrull
War, or various X-Men comics, have. What contributes
to that is Busiek's way of telling us, rather than showing us. There's
a heavy reliance on the hero's narration to tell the story, which means
the reader is kept a little at arms length from the actual events. Gaiman,
in his introduction, praises the notion that a story can mean more than
it seems...but all Busiek's doing (at times) is just whacking a way at
his themes like a farmer with a two by four, stating with blunt explicitness
what was implicit in other, earlier stories. Brian expounds on the amazing
nature of heroism, how the heroes continue to struggle to protect people
who now hate and despise them. Busiek brow beats us with ideas that, frankly,
are at the core of many mainstream super hero comics -- the X-Men, or Spider-Man
during his various outlaw periods -- as if he's the first one to think
of them.
Part and parcel of all this is that, because the story
is filtered through Brian, Brian emerges, in many respects, as the only
character (although the Confessor is given some fleshing out later). Even
Brian's school chums are just there to fill out a panel, or be mouthpieces
to debate the issues, giving him no one to really play off of. Busiek wants
to establish a character arc, as Brian arrives in Astro City, bitter and
ashamed of his dead dad, only to realize by the end that his dad was a
hero in his own right. Although a character arc is admirable, it's hard
to believe Brian, let alone the reader, wouldn't recognize his dad's inherent
nobility. And like with Phil Sheldon in Busiek's similar Marvels,
Brian himself isn't an especially well-realized personality. When at one
point Brian contemplates quitting being a super hero, it's hard to credit...we've
seen no indication Brian has any other interests, or aptitudes.
Wrapping the comics in Alex Ross' painted, photo-realist
covers can be problematic, setting standards the interior, pencil and ink
art can't match. But I'd forgotten how good Anderson can be from time to
time, and he's nicely served by Blyberg's inks. There's enough of a realism
to his faces, married with moody, shadow drenched panels, that the interior
art doesn't jar with the covers. Though the emphasis on a lot of black
garbed figures means there're a few panels where bodies just blend into
each other.
This collection closes with "The Nearness of You", an
unrelated, self-contained story (published by Wizard) that is reasonably
effective. In fact, it, along with Busiek's Avengers: The Morgan Conquest
(in which a one-shot story was better than the three issue main epic),
makes me think Busiek might be better sticking with smaller, intimate stories.
Though even here, Busiek's love of homage intrudes cloyingly, with the
story seeming to play off of a certain 1980s DC maxi-series. And the fact
that "The Nearness of You" is described as a "short story" when it's sixteen
pages says something about a certain thinness to it.
Ultimately, I sort of liked Confession, as much for what
it was trying to be as for what it was -- a super hero graphic novel. But
although it thinks it's smart and sophisticated, and Neil Gaiman clearly
agrees, it doesn't really succeed as well as it thinks it does. There are
"simpler" comics that have tackled similar themes with more passion, and
created characters with more dimension.
Cover price: $31.00 CDN. / $19.95 USA.
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