So I've finished reading Astro City: The Dark Age, which I think is the collected first two books of the dark age comics. Have they actually published any of books 3 and 4 in comic form yet? I appreciate that I should pop to my local comic shop and just ask them, but this would involve me TALKING TO A STRANGER.I've confused myself there. We've got book as in book, book as in comic book, ferrkrisakes.
==================== My rhythm and rhymes, I'm bending 'em.
I think the answer is yes and no. The collected edition that you've got is the only collected edition so far of The Dark Age storyline. There have been 2 "specials" which fit between the books, each focussing on a different hero. The first one was The Samaritan Special set between books 1 and 2 - I don't know if this was collected in the book you got - the second one is (which is the most recently published Astro City comicbook) is Astro City: The Dark Age Special #2: Beautie. I think it came out in February this year. If neither of these was collected in the book then I expect they'll put all of the specials together into a separate collected edition.
Glad to hear you're reading Astro City. It's one of the best super-hero series of the last 20 years in my opinion. Kurt Busiek is a pretty reliable writer on regular mainstream comics but Astro City is definitely his best stuff. (I don't rate his "Marvels" series quite so highly because I don't think it works so well if you haven't grown up reading the Marvel comics it references: good but not fantastic - although others would disagree with me) Astro City is Busiek's own creation so his own super-hero universe - some characters are completely unique to it whereas others are analagous to various Marvel and DC heroes such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America and the Fantastic Four.
Unfortunately Astro City takes him longer to write than his regular comics work - but the extra effort does produce a better comic. This does normally mean that there are large gaps between each series and often large gaps between each issue. There'll probably be an even longer gap before the next as Busiek is currently writing/co-writing a weekly 52-issue comic for DC - Trinity, featuring Batman Wonder Woman and Superman. This is bound to take up a lot of his time and energy so you'll be waiting a long time before the next collected edition.
Artist Brent Anderson talks a bit about Astro City here:
click me
Have you got all the other Astro City (collected) books? There are about 5 I think:
then click me
The Shadow:Unfortunately Astro City takes him longer to write than his regular comics work - but the extra effort does produce a better comic. This does normally mean that there are large gaps between each series and often large gaps between each issue. There'll probably be an even longer gap before the next as Busiek is currently writing/co-writing a weekly 52-issue comic for DC - Trinity, featuring Batman Wonder Woman and Superman. This is bound to take up a lot of his time and energy so you'll be waiting a long time before the next collected edition.
How annoying. Do you have his email address? I may email him and tell him to pull his finger out. I'm not waiting another year to read the rest of it. That reminds me....I emailed Bob Burden about 6 months ago to see if they were ever going to produce the "Reid Fleming - World's toughest milkman" t-shirt, which has been "coming soon" on the Flaming Carrot site for about 6 years now. And the f**ker has yet to reply.
No wonder these people don't write proper books, they'd never get them finished. *Lights blue touchpaper, and retires*
To be fair, that equates to appoximately 40 comics which is kind of the average amount for comics writers - admittedly some will write more but plenty will write less. Be grateful that Astro City isn't written by Dan Slott. He's currently one of a team or writers who write Amazing Spider-Man and he has a limit of being able to write about one comic a month (although he does also co-write one other). In contrast Brian Bendis writes about 5 or 6.
Sorry - I'm slipping into Geek overdrive.
In the absence of further Astro City (and assuming you've got all the other books already), I can recommend you some other stuff...
The Top 10 books previously mentioned elsewhere (as noted before, the collected issues - not so much the '49ers graphic novel, although I think you've already got that), as well as Promethea - both written by Alan Moore.
Also you might want to try Powers - written by Brian Bendis and drawn by Michael Avon Oeming. It's kind of super-hero noir. Regular cops investigating crimes involving people with super-powers. It's quite a slow start but builds with each arc. The blurb from lazyresearchipedia is quite accurate:
"Powers is set in a world where superpowers are relatively common but not mundane. It follows the lives of two detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, police officers in a Homicide department devoted to cases that involve "powers" (people with superpowers). Walker himself used to be a costumed superhero named Diamond, but became a police officer after he lost his abilities. Though stripped however, he still retains his contacts within the superhero community"
Before Bendis wrote this he was mostly writing crime comics and he tried to bring that to this series - now he's Marvel's golden boy and writes little but super-hero comics.
Also Sleeper by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. A brilliant noir comic set around a world of super-heroes where the lead character is a deep-cover agent - basically working with a bunch of criminals with super-powers. It's very twisty-turny and back-stabby if those words make sense. Lots of double-crossing and not knowing who's on whose side. Perhaps I should have gone to wikipedia for a better description rather than try to do it myself.
Cheers Bub. I'll look out for those. Have you read Tekkonkinkreet: Black & White? Is it any good?
Papa Fraud:Have you read Tekkonkinkreet: Black & White?
Short answer is no I haven't read it. I don't think I'd even heard of it until you mentioned it - I had to google it then to see if you were just deliberately misspelling Concrete. I only read a little bit of manga - there's so much out there that it's impossible to keep up with. As with most stuff out there 90% is rubbish, then you have to factor in individual taste etc. Another problem with manga is that it can go on forever. You start to read a series thinking 'this is cool' but then you discover that there are 36 volumes at a tenner a throw.
I've only read a few big series - Akira and Lone Wolf and Cub. Lone Wolf took me 3 volumes or so to get into but once it got going it was brilliant. But I think there are about 30 books.
You may have seen some of the Lone Wolf movies - Shogun Assassin, or they also went by titles like Babycart at the River Styx. Basically Lone Wolf is a wandering Samurai who's trying to seek vengeance for the murder of his wife. He travels around Japan with his son who is in a pram - but it's no ordinary pram: it's loaded with swords and blades etc. Shogun Assassin is quite awesome in it's gore quotient and over the top violence - not quite as sombre and thoughtful as the manga. Lots of lopped off limbs - great fun if you like that sort of thing.
Cheers Bub. I read about Tekkonkinkreet on boingboing.net (which is a great site btw, full of stuff like this and this.)Boingboing is one of several interesting sites linked to on Graham Linehan's blog, here.