Volume 3 #37 “This Town” (September 2016)

Theme: Music comes alive

Focus Hero: Well, he/she doesn’t have just one name. This issue is about the personification of American pop music being a super-hero, an “Avatar of Music” who changes identities as musical styles evolve. The first five pages feature The Broken Man practicing with his rock band and talking directly to the reader.

The next three pages describe Silverstring, a frontier troubadour whose music lightened hearts and repelled demons.
Fast forward to 1905, when the ragtime music at Hubie Freeman’s tavern had become a draw not only for Bakerville’s black residents but also for college kids from Romeyn Falls. Enraged by the racial mixing, the Knights of the Western Lily burn the place down. Ragtime music enters upscale white theaters. Mr. Cakewalk, the personification of ragtime “negro music,” comes onto the scene and plays Robin Hood, robbing the ragtime gala and distributing the money to Freeman and others who suffered racially motivated injuries. He has a complicated friend/foe relationship with Dame Progress (profiled in Vol 3 #5).

Time change, and ragtime music gives way to jazz. So too does Mr. Cakewalk transmute into a luminescent flapper whose name we will learn in the next issue: Jazzbaby

People and Places: The Broken Man’s home has lots of wall art: Rocky Horror Picture Show, Ariel the Mermaid, Paul Bunyan, and a nuclear explosion. His bassist is Stubby the stuffed toy monkey, his keyboardist Rachel the tarantula, and his drummer Clyde the mouse. And his mom is a Lego lady. “Coffin” Earl Baker was the unofficial mayor of Bakerville prior to its incorporation. Skittery Jim Corvus played ragtime piano at Freeman’s tavern. McCluskey and Ardmore are mining magnates who exploit their workers. The Broken Man is preparing for a cataclysmic battle against The Oubor.



My Two Cents: This is one of those issues that is itself a summary covering a long time period. The transition from the minstrel-talking Mr. Cakewalk to the stylish Caucasian Jazzbaby symbolizes a phenomenon which has been much discussed in recent years. Busiek is dipping his toe into the modern controversy of cultural appropriation. Pop culture is both omnivorous and voracious. As such, it constantly pillages the tropes of every minority community which it encounters. Clearly those tropes have monetary value, since capitalists bother to appropriate them. Our copyright laws function relatively well when it comes to protecting discrete publications like a book or a song. But you can’t copyright a musical genre or a cut of clothing or a style like “wear mismatched socks.” Mr. Cakewalk’s solution to this inequity is forcible redistribution of wealth to the underclass, but this tactic (like the legal version known as taxation) tends to generate ill-will from those who think that they deserve to keep the money which they have accumulated.

By showing us the progression from Silverstring to Mr. Cakewalk to Jazzbaby, Busiek hints that the Broken Man, living in his fake house with a fantasy band and a Lego mom, is as well: he is the modern Avatar of Music. If so, he needs updating from the early 1980s. He looks like a member of Duran Duran. If the Broken Man were the spirit of popular Western music in 2016, he would look like Kanye West, not Limahl from Kajagoogoo. Rock music is a dead genre, long ago surpassed in sales by R&B and hip-hop. Looks like the Spirit of Music is due for another reincarnation! Or maybe Busiek is up to something else; we’ll see.

Volume 3 #38 “Hot Time in the Old Town” (October 2016)

Theme: Don’t Like an Egyptian

Focus Hero: Jazzbaby the flapper heroine foils bank robbers and other petty crooks. In her civilian guise of Harmony Chord, she goes on a date with Cal Tarrant, whom we met back in Vol 3 #5 as a member of the Blasphemy Boys, a team of challengers of the unknown.

At the Alhambra Theatre, a magician named Destine plans on incorporating the stolen diamond, the Star of Lakhimpur, into his stage show, sacrificing the audience to summon the Oubor, a Lovecraftian Elder God. Jazzbaby recognizes Destine as the villain Doc Aegyptus whom she fought when she was Mr. Cakewalk, though she doesn’t remember her own previous incarnation. All the heroes of the city team up to prevent the Obour from crossing the dimensional portal. Cal and Jazzbaby discover each other’s heroic secret identities.

Other Heroes: The Palace Romeyn cinema’s A-reel film is “Air Ace vs The Sky Rustlers.” The Cloak of Night is a Shadow/Batman-style gun-toting bootlegger-buster. Yankee Sheikh is a swordsman. The Five Fists clean up the streets with kung fu. Dame Progress assisted Mr. Cakewalk in fighting Doc Aegyptus.

People and Places: Pup’s Diner has decent donuts. Kanewood is just a mansion, not a neighborhood yet. Hotath and Jeroab are snake-men in the service of Doctor Aegyptus.

My Two Cents: Remember how I talked about cultural appropriation in yesterday’s issue? Here’s another example. The Egyptian theme of this issue places it firmly in the Jazz Age. In 1922, the British archeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb and the wealth of untouched royal artifacts therein. This ignited a period of Egyptophilia in America. One church in Nashville, TN even built its sanctuary to resemble the pagan temple of Osiris! But even before that, H.P. Lovecraft had written his short story “Nyarlathotep” (1920) about an ancient Egyptian god-king who mesmerizes the whole world and brings modern society to ruin.

Other than that, this issue mainly exists to flesh out the nature of the Oubor threat against which the Broken Man is preparing. These Brent Anderson-drawn latter issues of Astro City pretty much ditch the “Civilians lives touched by super-stuff” themes in favor of an over-arching, cross-generational tale held together by the notion of music as the weapon against the Oubor.

“Harmony Chord” is just an ad hoc name that Jazzbaby adopts when she assumes human form; she grabbed the name “Harmony” off of a nearby sign. She appears to have no actual secret identity and may not even exist except when she’s doing her job.

Volume 3 #43 “My Dad” (March 2017)

Theme: Arrested Development

The Frame Story: The Broken Man chastises the reader for not realizing last issue that Zootsuit was another Spirit of Music. But we got it, so nyaaah to you, Broken Man! He introduces us to a young lady who can see both him and us...

Focus Civilian/Hero: In 1942, Matilda “Tillie” Jane Armstrong sees her father die during a Bund-o-teur attack. Then The Gentleman appears, rescuing her. And The Gentleman is her dad! This sets a pattern for her life: She keeps getting into trouble, and getting rescued by him. She also notices that she’s not getting any older as years pass, and neither is he. Professor Borzoi captures Tillie and opines that The Gentleman is a projection of her psychic power, creating an idealized super-version of her father, but she’ll hear none of it.

The scene changes, and The Bouncing Beatnik (another Avatar of Music) is defending an art museum against Benjamin “Lord Saampa” Naparski and his serpent cultists, last seen in Vol 3 #5. Lord Saampa is after a relic that could give him great power, but he secretly thinks to use it to defeat his evil god. When confronted by The Gentleman, Saampa lashes out; but when Tillie appeals to his better nature, he flings the relic away and accepts arrest; The Gentleman crushes the relic, retarding the growth of the Serpent God’s power but not ending his threat.

Other Heroes: Henry Eldritch and Penny Bright never get older. The Young Gentleman briefly enters the story, another product of Tillie’s imaginative powers.

Other Villains: Miss Sykes is training prep school girls to be pickpockets.

Civilians: Pop McGillcuddy and his daughter Sally own the café where Tillie works.

My Two Cents: I have to hand it to Busiek, The Gentleman is a brilliant spin on the story of Billy Batson. The trouble with Billy’s tale is that it only works symbolically when Billy is a kid. If Billy is allowed to grow into adulthood and even dotage, then the notion of Captain Marvel takes on a whole other set of signifiers. Tillie solves that problem: she never ages. And being stuck around age ten, she remains at the developmental stage at which parents tend to be idolized rather than scorned. Tillie ultimately decides that although she could keep The Gentleman under wraps forever, and age into adulthood herself, it’s better for her and the world to keep him around. And even if she did grow up herself, her memories of him would remain unchanged, unsullied by the cynicism of adolescence and the disappointment of adulthood.



Big respect to Busiek and Anderson for planning out the Gentleman’s origins from the beginning. If you look at his first appearance in Volume 2 #1, Tillie is right there in the crowd, watching her dad be a hero. His tuxedo comes from Tillie’s expressed desire that her dad would dress like the actors in a movie they were watching at the theater just before he died.



Most of his subsequent appearances occur far from crowds of Astro City civilians, so we can’t see Tillie, but she is here on the far left of this panel in which The Gentleman addresses the crowd after defeating Doctor Borzoi at the movie theater.

Volume 3 #46 “The Day the Music Died” (June 2017)

Aftermath: Glamorax, caught midway through transformation into the Putrid Punk, is ambushed by Oubor’s servants, and explodes in a burst of light. A bewildered Tom O’Bedlam finds that the death of music has altered human history. Honor Guard and the First Family don’t recall meeting Tom last issue, and Simon Magus’ house doesn’t even exist.

Focus Hero: The Broken Man somehow spins into existence, reads about the Oubor in Tom’s files, and descends through realities to find the sleeping Oubor in the Stone Age., when humans are just beginning to use fire to beat back the darkness. The Oubor expels the Broken Man from that time frame, and he ends up institutionalized in Meskin Hills Psychiatric Hospital in present day Astro City. But he’s able to travel astrally and assemble a team from previous issues to help him, including Starbright, Silver Adept, the Gentleman Bandit, and robotmaker Ellie Jimson. Most importantly, the Broken Man breaks the fourth wall and discovers that he can communicate directly with his readership. Can we help him defeat the Oubor?

Other Heroes: Jack in the Box I defeats Ravenlord and witnesses the end of the Glamorax disaster. Samaritan and Confessor (I?) are unable to understand the Broken Man’s pleas for help. Neither are Stray and El Robo of the Irregulars.

My Two Cents: Is it unfair of me to say that Busiek is going full-on Grant Morrison at this point? Maybe that says more about me than it does about Kurt Busiek, but I just can’t help but think of Animal Man and other works in which Morrison played with the interaction between the reader and the printed page. I know other writers have done it as well, but for me this is a Morrisonian homage, at least at this point in my comics reading career. If Busiek, has a different referent in mind, sorry!



I was wondering at one point whether the Broken Man would prove to be just one of numerous “Avatars of Music” in modern day, the one representing 80s New Wave or something. But Busiek (through the Broken Man) goes for a different point, giving the reader a five page closing soliloquy about how punk died a premature death, and there was no one left standing to carry the banner of “music as an act of counterculture.” He specifically mentions rap music but doesn’t explain why it doesn’t have an Avatar. His conclusion is that pop music just became too professionalized and market-driven to host a truly countercultural spirit.



But the truth is more insidious yet: Music as a genre has largely exhausted the hold it had on the American imagination for much of the last hundred years. Is Busiek aware that all the teen energy that went into sock hops in the 1950s and buying Beatles and Zeppelin records in the 60s and 70s now goes into playing first person shooters and watching cat videos on YouTube and uploading funny memes whose contents will be upvoted on Reddit today and forgotten a week from now? Music is just not where it’s at any more. Culture has moved on, and he’s perilously close to Grumpy Old Man territory with the “Why have my cultural values not been affirmed by future generations?” theme of this story. How will it turn out? Will the Broken Man finally accept that he really is the heir of the Avatars of Music? Will he be replaced by the spirit of Javascript Animation or something? The final volume of Astro City Volume 3 doesn’t come out in a trade collection until March 2019. Ooh the wait!

Volume 3 #48 “Dog Days” (December 2017)



Guest Artist: Mike Norton

Theme: (Sniff….)

Focus Character: Continuing the tale of G-Dog from last issue, Andy Merton seeks counsel from Stormhawk’s widow, from whom he stole the mystic amulet. She fills in the backstory on Stormhawk, who used the amulet to merge with a hawk but also discovered other powers stored in the amulet by previous users. This is why G-Dog can fly.

The widow is amazingly understanding of his previous burglary. So is his girlfriend (and soon wife) Esme, to whom he reveals his heroic secret; she already had figured it out. Eventually, Hank the Corgi is diagnosed with cancer at age seventeen. Andy tries adventuring without him, but it just isn’t the same, Andy hangs up his mystic amulet in the forest so some other person can become the new Animal Man. Hope it’s not a bad guy who turns into a giant spider or something!

Other Heroes: G-Dog joins a legion of super-pets (see cover) comprising Kittyhawk, Rocket Dog, Ghost Ferrett, and Dr. Monkey. They can’t settle on a group name. G-Dog joins their ranks and learns to use a previously unknown lightning power to defeat Dr. Saturday’s apelike Robo-rilla. Andy resigns from the team after Hank dies. The Confessor gives G-Dog a passing nod in one panel. The Irregulars give him an off-panel membership invitation, which he declines.



Other Villains: G-Dog defeats the Mecha-Nerds, “Science-Fair winners who got converted into robots,” at the McDonnell Building. Another time, he fights the Iron Legion.

My Two Cents: Mainly this issue is a tribute to those who have had the experience of loving and then burying one or more animal companions. Simple yet heartfelt. I didn’t previously put together that Rocket Dog was a satire on Sam “Cannonball” Guthrie.

Volume 3 #50 “Aftermaths” (January 2018)



Theme: Catching up with a classic

Focus Character: Miranda’s Friends is a “citizens affected by superhero tragedy” support group run by a middle aged man who is eventually revealed as Michael Tenicek, the protagonist of the famed Astro City #½ issue. At night he paints portraits of his retconned wife, and sometimes the Hanged Man drops by to, well, hang out.



Other Heroes: Samaritan and Winged Victory are mentioned during the support group.

Villains: The Archon summons allies from the distant past and future to fight Honor Guard. Pale Horseman, Maneater, Krells, and Assemblyman are mentioned during the Miranda meeting. Arachnos is defeated by Honor Guard off-panel the same day as this story. One of Arachnos’ victims cries out for her son Duncan. More on that next issue.

Civilians: Chris runs Astro Donuts. Spike, Drella, Amber, Bill, Lori, Mrs. Tanaka, Peg, and Albert are all “M.F.ers” who attend the group this issue. Pete was Albert’s friend, killed by the Iron Legion. Michael’s extended family includes Bob and Deana.

People and Places: Stores include L.A. Smith and Gary’s Outfitters. Lai Choi San is a Chinese Restaurant. Severin Street is mentioned. There haven’t been many references like that to other comics creators in recent issues. Albert lives in Goldwater Heights.

My Two Cents: Makes sense that for his final periodical-format Astro City story, Busiek would return to his most acclaimed scenario, in which a man is haunted by dreams of an unknown woman and eventually learns that she was his wife, until a super-event rewrote the continuity of his world. It’s kinda sad that in all these years he never found someone else. I guess that happens sometimes.



This issue mainly re-introduces the concept for new readers. Knowing Busiek’s penchant for wordplay, I was hoping the title “Aftermaths” would accompany a story about math. Not this time. “Aftermath” is also the title of the final (17th) trade volume of Astro City. It’s a quiet issue, with neither internal nor external conflict. Tenick seems well-adjusted to his circumstances; even his bills are paid somehow, allowing him to be a full-time self-help group moderator, and part-time painter.