Astro City #13 – Review

By: Kurt Busiek (story), Brent Eric Anderson (art), Alex Sinclair (colors)

The Story: It’s just like the townspeople in Footloose thought—dancing does lead to sex.

The Review: I admit that I tend to get a little nervous around non-linear stories. I can handle the back-and-forth jumps between two time periods that you get on Arrow or Rocket Girl, but keeping track of what’s happening at a string of different timelines feels like more work than I really want to put in. I like my fiction like reality: once something is in the past, I like to keep it there, looking back only when necessary.

So I was prepared to dislike this issue, it being not only chronologically out of order, but also broken into half a dozen storylines all featuring characters I’d never met before, some of whom go nameless the whole time. But it just goes to show you: if you have a writer who knows what he’s doing on a really compelling idea, then anything can work. It also helps that this jumbled narrative, which, true to the issue’s title, waltzes from hour to hour with no apparent pattern, is contained to this issue alone. I don’t know whether I could’ve handled an ongoing series done like this.

Busiek keeps things organized by using one character as a focal point, around which all the other storylines revolve. Unlike any of the characters we’ve seen before in Astro City, the Dancing Master’s nature is purely abstract, a personification of a human concept, like Dream or Death or any of the other Endless. He’s described as an “instructor…commander…opener of hearts,” and it’s this last role which becomes crucial for the issue as a whole. By reawakening “the dance” within the people of Astro City, he serves primarily as a catalyst for the other featured characters to break out of their individual ruts.

As is often the case with Astro City, there isn’t much of a long-term purpose to any of the stories at work here. Each of our protagonists—the supervillain Gundog; the teller at the bank he robs; Zvi, an astrophysicist; a university research—represents a different, though familiar, facet of the boredom of modern life. With deft, clear prose, Busiek gets into each of their heads and finds a recognizable voice there, proving himself as one of the writers most in tune with the joys and sorrows of humanity:

“He’d gotten the stroganoff recipe from Mom. She was fine. Dad was fine. He was up to 18^th-level Paladin in Waycrafter. Five hours to go. Five hours, and then home. And still no real human contact. A cold bed, maybe a note on the fridge. Tenderness deferred. A caress by proxy.”

While it’s easy to sympathize with each of our characters and share in their happiness when they all find a new way forward, the message of the story seems at once a bit obvious, even trite: if your work fails to occupy, look to your loved ones, and if you have none, find one. But as the existence of the Dancing Master testifies, the simplest messages can also be the most profound. He senses that his influence brings joy, for “some of them. But they felt the stirrings of fear, as well, as they wondered what swept their truths, their hearts, into the open.” If happiness is so ready at hand to everyone, if only they reach for it, why did it take the coming of an ancient entity for them to do so? Maybe we’re all afraid of the happiness that comes from love, not only because we might lose it, but because it seems too lame and childish in a world that demands us to strive for bigger things.

My earlier reference to the Endless seems apt, since Anderson is clearly doing his best impression of the psychedelic art that usually characterizes Sandman. While most of the issue is typical Anderson—pleasant, open, friendly, a bit stiff where the action’s concerned—the pages of Dancing Master show an impressively wide range of style, a testament to Anderson’s artistic knowledge. The spirit of dance starts out hatched and drab, like a medieval etching, but as his sway grows and life comes into Astro City, he becomes more colorful and unconventional, like Warhol, Picasso, and Dali working all at once.

Conclusion: At once simple and deep, this issue is, if nothing else, a great sample of Busiek’s mastery of storytelling.

Grade: A-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – I have a bad feeling about the Rover left on Jupiter, longing for the music to come back. Sounds like the beginning of a HAL scenario to me.