Astro City: Local Heroes

Comic Info

Astro City: Local Heroes #3

Reprints Astro City (1) #21-22, Astro City:  Local Heroes #1-5, Astro City Super Sonic Special #1, and 9-11—The World’s Finest Book Writers & Artists Tell Stories to Remember—Volume 2 (March 2000-October 2004).  Astro City is a great place to live, but even heroes need a break sometime.  As the city is patrolled by heroes and citizens alike, sometimes getting out of Astro City reveals a different breed of heroes.

Written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by Brent Anderson, Astro City:  Local Heroes is the fifth collection of Busiek’s award winning series.  Following Astro City:  The Tarnished Angel, the book collects the last two issues of Busiek’s first regular Astro City series, a special, and a five issue mini-series.  The book also contains the short story “Since the Fire” which was part of the 9-11 tribute book.

Astro City is a book for comic book lovers who have grown up with comics.  The series taps into ideas and concepts that are generic comic book tripe and gives them dimension.  Secret identities, bystanders, and big battles all serve as basics for Busiek’s epic series.

Astro City: Local Heroes #5

With no central theme, the book is largely a collection of short stories.  This allows for even more heroes to be added to the Astro City lexicon.  A number of the issues do have some of the recurring characters show up again, but largely the focus is on new characters.  Astro City is such a rich world that it is always good to add heroes, but I also like fleshing out some of the main characters…if you wanted more defining of some of the major characters, this volume isn’t really for you.

Astro City:  Local Heroes does spend some time outside of Astro City which is a nice change.  It is assumed that Astro City is the Metropolis, Gotham, or New York of the world of Astro City.  Like Marvel and DC Comics, most of the stories do occur within these major cities.  It can also be assumed that like the Marvel and DC Universe that there are thousands of heroes and villains throughout the world and therefor things have to happen outside of the city as well.  Here we get to see how Astro City is seen by outsiders a bit and how other heroes operate.

I love Astro City, and Astro City can do no wrong.  I do have to say, however, this is where I fell off Astro City.  The regular series ended with Astro City (1) #22 (August 2000) and after the five issue mini-series Astro City:  Local Heroes, Astro City’s schedule became rather erratic.  Astro City eventually went into Astro City:  The Dark Age mini-series.

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Related Links:

Astro City:  Life in the Big City

Astro City:  Family Album

Astro City:  Confession

Astro City:  The Tarnished Angel