Astro City returns with a one-shot special introducing a new mystery and some fresh heartbreak. The new Astro City: That Was Then… Special special helps re-launch the series after Kurt Busiek returned the long-running superhero anthology series to Image Comics after a lengthy stint at DC Comics, first at Wildstorm and more recently under DC’s now-defunct Vertigo Comics lines. While Astro City has built up an impressive continuity over its 100+ issue run, the That Was Then… Special wisely chooses to sidestep all of that history with a story focused on a new group of heroes, designed to bring newcomers into the world of Astro City with minimal interference.
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The special focuses on a group of five teenage superheroes taking a rather cross-country road trip to “find themselves,” fighting supervillains and coping with loss along the way. The road trip was spurred on by the death of the Jayhawks, a group of fellow teen superheroes who seemingly died while fighting a hate group in Alabama earlier that summer. While the trip seemed like a good idea at the onset, a heavy campfire scene reveals that each of the teens have strikingly different ideas about the future, with some set on becoming adult superheroes while others are leaning towards retirement. The actual results of that road trip are left ambiguous, as the final pages flashes forward to the Samaritan (one of the main characters of Astro City) who briefly ruminates about a changing of the guard and an impression of a coming threat, before ending on a brief tease that all of this may be connected to the tragedy of the Jayhawks somehow.
Astro City often feels like both a deconstruction and reconstruction of the superhero comics genre, built from a loving foundation of Golden and Silver Age comics. While the creative team of Kurt Busiek and Brent Eric Anderson delight in finding new ways of examining the many tropes and archetypes that make up superhero stories, they do so in a way that showcases the humanity of the characters rather than revealing the literary devices they are built around. At times, this makes Astro City feel almost idyllic in nature, as if building the superhero equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting.
However, when Astro City really shines is when it captures the melancholy that inundates life and uses that for reflection and to build towards poignant character moments that are universally relatable. While That Was Then… feels like the opening chapter of a longer storyline rather than a standalone comic, it’s filled with the melancholy that makes Astro City so darn good at times. Growing up in the face of tragedy is hard, and Astro City shows that it would be even harder when mixed with the backdrop of fighting supervillains. And while I’m sure that this cross-country trip will receive some sort of resolution in upcoming issues, I like that for now we don’t receive any clear answers. More often than not, trips to “find ourselves” don’t come with many answers and I appreciated that Astro City acknowledges the messiness and the lack of closure that comes with those sojourns.
Astro City: That Was Then… Special is a clear indicator that Busiek and Anderson haven’t lost a step since the last trip into their brightly colored world of superheroes. While the comic serves to introduce a new mystery into the world of Astro City, it also shows the creative team haven’t stopped finding new ways to use superheroes as a lens to examine the very human feelings we all have, which sometime don’t have a clear resolution.
Published by Image Comics
On March 30, 2022
Written by Kurt Busiek
Art by Brent Eric Anderson
Colors by Alex Sinclair
Letters by Tyler Smith and Jimmy Betancourt
Cover by Alex Ross
