By: Kurt Busiek (story), Brent Eric Anderson (art), Alex Sinclair (colors)
The Story: Special delivery, for one Telseth of the star-spanning Kvurri! Sign here, please.
The Review: For all the efforts made to produce diversity in comic books, it’s amazing how little we actually get. That’s probably because publishers’ conceptions of diversity tend to miss the point. Stories don’t prosper just by ticking off a checklist of superficial qualities: a black man here, an Asian woman there, a few gay folks thrown in for good measure. Without strong characters to fall back on, you can discredit the very demographics you wanted to promote.
On this point especially, Astro City stands out. Busiek has brought back diversity—real diversity—to comics, not by picking and choosing from underrepresented classes of people, but by delving into the things that truly make people different and interesting: their backgrounds, families, attitudes, and experiences. This is how Busiek can get away with writing stories featuring seemingly ordinary characters; he knows the powerful effect of details.
Case in point: Thatcher Jerome. His blackness alone would never have made him an engaging protagonist. It’s the richness of his past and the strength of his personality that gives us that necessary intimacy, and both of those qualities stand on Busiek’s gift for specifics. When was the last time you read a story about a mobster who holds himself out as vice-president of a longshoreman’s union and meanwhile has a picture-perfect home life with his (once stripper) wife? When was the last time you encountered a character so unapologetically ambitious yet so completely prudent about it?
Even more impressive is Busiek’s refusal to justify Thatcher’s criminality with glimpses of a traumatic childhood or challenging youth. Once upon a time, this tactic was an easy, effective way to garner some sympathy for a less-than-virtuous character, but now, it’s as cheap a plot device as any other. I believe practically all of Batman’s villains are operating on this cliché by now. Busiek doesn’t bother making Thatcher all that sympathetic; on a deep, moral level, you’re a little annoyed that he manages to skirt trouble and profit handsomely from his wrongs in this issue. At the same time, he’s also a figure worthy of respect, from his deep love for his wife, his solid paternalism,* and most of all, his self-restraint.
Here you have a common criminal smart enough not to play with unidentified alien artifacts when a trained metallurgist can’t do the same. He has a lot of good reasons to put these objects to use, yet ultimately, he refrains. Throughout the issue, he considers the possibilities of this latest open door—untold riches, independence from his longtime employers, a power base of his very own—then sets all that aside when he realizes that he’s at a stage of his life where comfort means more than gain. Not bad a bit of wisdom for a crook.
Running through Thatcher’s personal storyline are threads for Astro City’s ongoing plot. We haven’t seen Telseth, the alien ambassador from #1, for some time, and his presence here is welcome, even if it leaves us no more enlightened on his aims or motivations than before. Thatcher voices a lot of our puzzlement and suspicion with Telseth when he remarks on the giant’s unbelievable naivety: “The ambassador seemed to…take everything at face value. Seemed to, anyway. Sometimes Thatcher wasn’t sure.” Indeed, it’s entirely too coincidental that Telseth comes so close to identifying a connection between some missing collectibles from his abode and Thatcher, yet fails to actually make it. Busiek is telling us, essentially, we can’t rule out Telseth as a possible obstacle for the city at some later point.
Anderson has a skill similar to Gary Frank in creating faces that you instantly recognize and feel familiar with. Thatcher and his wife naturally look like their late middle ages yet retain echoes of the street thug and stripper they once were. That’s an impressive feat for an artist, to portray characters as they are with imprints of their pasts. For all that, Anderson’s linework isn’t always as tight as it can be, and sometimes his sense of posture is a little too loose and awkward, which explains why action sequences are so vanilla. Sinclair does boost the proceedings somewhat with colors that look positively burnished on the page.
Conclusion: Busiek’s stories are low-key affairs, as this one is, and Anderson’s art isn’t quite as sharp as you’d hope, but the craft is always rock-solid and the plot worth reflecting upon.
Grade: B+
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: * It just goes to show something I learned after working for a while in dependency court: you can be a bad person, but a good parent.