Blasphemy Reviews

Astro City: Confession

The history of superheroes, conventionally told, goes like this: Siegel and Schuster invented them in the 1930s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby humanized them in the 1960s, and Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and Frank Miller deconstructed them in the 1980s.

And so, when the 1990s rolled around, superheroes appeared to have reached the end of their history, having been put together, and then taken apart, so capably. But even though superheroes had been deconstructed, people did not stop reading about them. In the years that followed, comics actually saw pretty good sales. The sales were gimmick-driven, but the gimmicks were still sold through superheroes. And eventually, the new ideas that informed Watchmen became part of the way superhero stories were told.

Or one of them did, at least. This was the idea that the superheroes could be compelling even if morally compromised...they could engage in villainous actions and still be heroes, in other words. In the glutted market of the early 1990s, with quality writing spread thin, this often meant nothing more than superheroes forgetting to shave and killing people. And, as time wore on, many superheroes let their beards get very long indeed.

Out of all that came Kurt Busiek and Astro City. Busiek told comics to get a haircut and stand up straight. First, with the painter Alex Ross, he created Marvels, a work that sought to redeem the sense of wonder embodied by the original Marvel stories of the 1960s.

The work hit a nerve with readers and critics alike, perhaps because its protagonist, an everyman photographer named Phil Sheldon, has the same crisis of faith in 1960s innocence that the industry itself seemed to be experiencing at the time.

Busiek, who had worked steadily in comics for years, mostly in obscurity, suddenly became the kind of writer who could sell a title by putting his name in front of it on the cover. And so Homage comics, a division of Jim Lee's Wildstorm Studios, which was itself a division of Image, published Kurt Busiek's Astro City, about a city of superheroes, mostly narrated by the normal people who live in it.

The best story to come out of this effort was "Confession," which ran from issues four through six of the regular series. (The regular series was preceded by a six-issue miniseries.) Though Astro City would peter out toward the end of its run, beset by publishing delays caused by Busiek's poor health, this storyline popped and crackled on the page like few "old school" superhero stories before or since.

"Confession," which I am reviewing in trade paperback form, concerned a morally compromised superhero of the kind Alan Moore might have come up with...sort of. The main superhero of the story is the Confessor, who is a vampire.

Busiek's innovation is to have the Confessor be the moral heart and principle actor of the story, and yet distance him from the reader. Brian Kinney, an idealist and would-be sidekick, is the narrator and the character we get to know best. The Confessor has fallen farther than any mainstream superhero ever has; on the last panel of the third page of issue seven, the Confessor's face takes on a twisted, pained visage beyond anything Reed Richards flashes even in his worst moments. And yet, because of the reader's relationship to Brian Kinney, the story never feels as dark as The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen, even though it is, in many ways.

And it isn't, in other ways. Busiek never explores if the Confessor has drunk blood. He hints at the sexual aspects of the Confessor's fall from grace, but does not dwell on them. In all likelihood, he is just not that interested in the darkness of men's souls. The Confessor has sinned, and become a vampire. He wears a cross on his chest, even though it burns him, to "focus," in the grand tradition of the kung fu master. But the Confessor does not show us his heart, only his twisted, pained face. For Busiek, the story is the thing.

And such wealth of story we have! In six issues, Busiek introduces a whole city of characters, many of them popping up just long enough to snag our interest. Aliens invade, the government cracks down on vigilantes, a serial killer faces off against a cyborg bounty hunter; none of this is new, but somehow the vast mishmash of it becomes totally exhilarating. When you read it, you feel like Busiek is throwing in every idea he's ever had, just to amuse you, and you can't help feeling grateful.

And we are always outside the action, because we are with Brian Kinney, who seems bland at first, but then reveals depths, not because of who he is but because of what happens to him. To be a superhero's sidekick, and then to find out that your boss is a vampire...this is a unique moral quandary. But it has to be set aside, because of the larger story involved.

Brent Anderson's artwork contributes our distance from the larger. He always stands a few steps back; even the closeups of characters' faces feel photographed from a distance. At the end of issue 5, when the Confessor literally nails the alien invader to the wall, his face is being seared away to the bone by sunlight. But there is no closeup, and we barely see what is happening to him; we only see what he does. This is the essence of Kurt Busiek's Astro City.

posted by Mr. Blasphemy @ 1:36 PM