ASTRO CITY SILVER AGENT #1 (OF 2)

Review by: akamuu

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Written by KURT BUSIEK
Art by BRENT ANDERSON
Cover by ALEX ROSS

Size: 32 pages
Price: 3.99

This issue makes me wish Busiek would stop writing Astro City comics.  I suffered through about half of The Dark Age era, hoping it would improve.  When it finally ended, I had high hopes that the series would return to its halcyon days.

It has not.

Busiek has painted himself as an out of touch old man poking jokes at modern society.  A superhero who has to go into the pods to fight iGod, a villain who tweets?  Ewww.  Put the pen down, Kurt.  Walk away.

Brent Anderson attempts to provide three distinct styles of art in this book.  After two pages of nearly decent Cowboy and Indian style art, he appears to take on the currentish Green Lantern/Sinestro War/Blackest Night/Brightest Day look.  And while the color palette is about right, the faces look rushed.  If that’s supposed to be a statement on how the creators feel about Ivan Reis and Ethan Van Sciver, it’s inaccurate.  If it’s the artist’s best efforts at pencils, it’s a poor job.

The rest of the book alternates between pop art flashbacks and an Irredeemablesque present storyline.  The present tense stuff is ok to good, and the pop art style is, by far, the best work in the book.  But it’s not enough to save this clunker of a book for me.  I’m going to pretend Astro City ended after Return Of The Jedi.  I mean Local Heroes.  I’m going to pretend the series ended after Local Heroes.

Story: 1 - Poor
Art: 2 - Average

Comments

  1. The Star Was series also ended at ROTJ.  Everything that came out after that was a prequel.  Two of which were fairly decent if you watched them high on shrooms.

     Astro City heading towards the buryhole is kind of a let down.  With The Boys and Irredeemable also sucking pretty bad as of late, something tells me I should just give up on trying different things and just stay with my usual DC Comics reading.

  2. it wasn’t that bad… though since its the silver agent i expected something more from his time-traveling exploits. 

  3. I didn’t think it was quite that bad either, but I have no problem seeing it from Akamuu’s point of view.  I must say I was really disappointed that the first issue after Dark Ages is about Silver Agent.  That’s just more Dark Ages, isn’t it?

    Why not return to basics and put out a new Samaritan, Cleopatra, Jack-in-the-Box, or Confessor story? 

  4. @Urthona: That’s a really good question.  I suppose, since this is only a two-part  arc, that the focus may shift to other characters soon, but I think it’s too late for me now.

    @gustava: I found myself rolling my eyes so many times at some of the dialog and concepts that I was dizzy by the end.

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