This week I wrapped up Astro City: Metrobook 2, a bulky 18-issue omnibus-style collection of the series that started in the mid-90s but which I somehow missed out on until last year. If you’re not familiar, it’s an anthology series telling all sorts of stories set in a city jam-packed with superheroes (sometimes referred to as “angels” in the world of the book). Sometimes it’s about the inner turmoil of a very powerful hero. Sometimes the gender politics bothering a female angel. Other times, it’s about the hotel doorman in downtown Astro City, or a local lawyer going to trial in a world where reality is surprisingly bendable, and evidence is newly questionable. Often, it’s about the sad reality of aging and becoming irrelevant after touching fame, greatness and glory. It’s such a gorgeously drawn, deeply felt, and reflective comic, I swear it didn’t actually exist my whole life, but was somehow dropped here from another universe just recently, or I surely would have picked it up decades ago. It’s so, so fun to read, and right up my alley in terms of crossing pop cultural referents (not references like gags, but more like tropes in fiction) with earnest human drama. A total treat.

Anyhow, the reason it works so well is that it’s interested in the truth of what a world where heroes exist might really be like for humans – super and otherwise.

So…
What are the pros and cons of living in a city, in a world, where superheroes really exist?

Would you want to live there or escape there, ultimately?

Would you HOPE to be one, or FEAR becoming one?