I can't recall if it was with the magazine or a mail-in offer.

Seems to me you could get it after the fact, via Previews, as a reprint.  I'm a little fuzzy on that.

Beat me to it.  I'm pretty sure the copy I had (before I traded up to the book collections) was the reprint, via the comic shop.  i wasn't about to send money Wizard's way.  I didn't even do that for Valiant, with their early Zero issues, and those were of interest to me.

Volume 2, Issue #14: The Big Lockdown (April 1998)

Theme: Once a con…

Focus Noir Antihero: Carl Donewicz grew up in urban poverty. Gang participation (in particular the use of a gun that fell into his hands) took him off the path of school as a child, into a life of crime. He allowed a mad scientist to experiment on him, turning him into the Steel Jacketed Man, or just Steeljack for short. He tangled with Silver Age heroes like the original Jack-in-the-Box, Cleopatra I, and Silver Agent, doing repeated stints behind bars. He’s just finishing a twenty year sentence. The warden, who looks like Commissioner Gordon, is confident he’ll do something soon to get back behind bars. Sure enough, Steeljack can’t find legitimate work due to his double whammy of “felon” and “freak.” He’d love to be a gumshoe, or even a bodyguard, but those careers seem as unattainable as “ballet dancer” from where he’s starting. He does foil a mugging and is given an unexpected $400 by the intended victim. Maybe there’s profit in heroism? A group of human lowlifes approach him with a plea that he investigate a string of murders, and he agrees, though just talking to them puts his parole in jeopardy.

Other villains: Donnelly Ferguson, the Scarlet Snake, was a Golden Age villain who now organizes petty crimes, connecting labor and work. So, a talent agent running a criminal temp agency. Block and Tackle are apparently a criminal duo. The Chain recently was broken into his constituent links.

Other Heroes: Blue Knight is namechecked, can’t tell whether he’s a hero or a villain. A previous issue mentioned him disparagingly, so maybe a little of both? Winged Victory appears overhead. Samaritan pops in briefly to admonish Steeljack to stay clean.

Places and Names: Carl is released from Biro Island Prison and wanders to a bar on Kiefer Square named Acey to drink an Astro City Pale Ale. Flaveno… is a name, maybe an ad for a company, at the bottom of a wall calendar. The titles of issues in this story sound like pulp detective books; I didn’t check to see whether they actually are from Dashiell Hammett or the like, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

My Two Cents: “Recidivism” is the word for the day: “the tendency of convicted criminals to re-offend.” What causes it? Political conservatives emphasize the obligations of individuals to make the right choices; those who won’t will have to be dealt with. Political liberals emphasize the broken societal systems that put people in situations where survival seems to demand doing the wrong thing. There’s an element of truth in both views. Lots of research says that the most effective and inexpensive interventions to increase a person’s educational and earning potential, and decrease criminality, are those interventions undertaken as early as possible in the life of the person. Even by kindergarten, a massive gap has already opened between children who are going to do well (and do good) in life, and children who are not. It shows up in markers as basic as, “How many words has this child heard spoken over the course of his life?”




It’s unclear where Steeljack first went off the rails. In his childhood, we see him and his loving mother watching a distant hero fly through the air, an "angel," a metaphor for their aspirations of upward social mobility. (again Buziek follows standard socioeconomic coding for comic books: superheroes = upper class; regular people = middle class; freaks = lower class.) But the next slice of his life that we see, he’s already in a street gang, shooting another teen in self-defense during a brawl. We missed the crucial moment, and the course of his life is now set on a track that’s going to be very hard to escape. And that’s where we find him in present day, living out the tragedy of a string of bad choices which led logically from one to the next. That, not prison, is the real “Big Lockdown” referenced in the issue title.


Is Steeljack really doomed to recidivism? Samaritan’s fly-by, representing the “keep your nose clean; I’m watching you” attitude of law enforcement and high society, was certainly not helpful. It focused solely on the threat that Steeljack might pose, without holding out any aspirational alternative for him. Why doesn’t he work in construction? He demonstrates his ability to demolish an abandoned building; isn’t that monetizable? The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl helps to redirect the super-villain “Hippo the Hippo” into precisely that career path (in Vol 1, Issue 6 of her 2015 series).



There’s one panel that appears to show Steeljack trying to get a strength-related labor job, but the boss just blows him off for no apparent reason. Whatever the factors involved in recidivism, this issue is at least true to life that it’s a real problem that no political philosophy really has licked, in Astro City or in our world.

Volume 2, Issue #15: The Long Treadmill (December 1998)

Theme: No so merry-go-round

Focus Hero: Steeljack has a patch of rust on his right iliac crest (hipbone) that he scours daily with steel wool, but he can’t get the tarnish out. Metaphor! Donnelly Ferguson gets Steeljack to interview the loved ones of deceased villains including Chain (first name Gordon), Goldenglove (Maxie Costello), and Handgun (Chester Morisi). Each family tells the same story: the criminal always plowed all his winnings back into his next job, so that now he’s failed on his last job, there’s nothing left for the survivors. Discouraged, Steeljack visits the graves of his mother Rose Viacek Donewicz (1927-1973), and of Jose Manzian (1952-1966), the teen whom Steeljack shot, cementing his walk down the road of crime. Those dates also tell us that Carl’s mother Rose lived to see him firmly established as a criminal, which surely broke her heart.

Other Heroes: Steeljack sees Quarrel II chasing bank robbers in Old Town. There are even more bank robberies in this town crawling with superheroes than there are in our towns full of regular cops! You’d think crime in a super-town would tend to gravitate toward less physically vulnerable activities like mail fraud. Anyway, seeing her gets him thinking about days of yore when he was in The Terrifying Three with Cutlass (a female swashbuckler who has no cutlass) and the original Quarrel (Taggart Doolittle). The latter two have just had a baby named Jessica Darlene, so I guess I was right that the “Jess” seen talking to Crackerjack at Butler’s club several issues ago was Quarrel II’s secret identity. Street Angel has previously defeated Goldenglove.

Focus Villain: Goldenglove’s daughter Yolanda finds Steeljack at the cemetary and declares her intention to pick up her father’s energy gloves and criminal career. Unable to dissuade her, Steeljack lets her beat him up, and she disappears into the night.

Places and Names: The City Diner is on Forsythe (Street?). Nearby is the intersection of Heck Street and Elias Street, so I guess Astro City doesn’t observe the Manhattan rule that “streets” run parallel to each other east and west, and are intersected by “avenues” which run north and south. Halley is an American company, product unknown. Thunder Road is a trucking company. Irene is Goldenglove’s widow. Steeljack used to date Sharon.

My two cents: Where the last issue looked at recidivism in the life of an individual, this one looks at cycles of behavior which duplicate themselves generationally. Kids grow up watching their parents to learn what life is supposed to be like. Is it any surprise that Goldenglove’s daughter seizes on the opportunity to continue her father’s legacy? Why should she listen to Carl, whom she barely knows? (Below is a link to Kacey Musgraves' country music song "Merry Go Round," which deals with these maladaptive generational patterns which recur: "Same trailer, different park.") This speaks again to the importance of early intervention in breaking unhealthy cycles of crime, substance abuse, child abuse, dropouts, etc. Carl wonders how Quarrel II managed not to end up like her parents. J.D. Vance’s recent memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” got a lot of people talking about his personal story of how his grandmother invested heavily in him to break him out of the cycle of Appalachian poverty. It’s well worth the read, and well worth reflecting on which young lives each of us has access to, to show a better way, and a more helpful word of counsel than just Samaritan’s authoritarian admonishment from last issue.

Volume 2, Issue #16: The Tarnished Angel (March 1999)

Theme: The glass ceiling

Frame Story: Steeljack and Ferguson drink beers on a stoop in Kiefer Square. Carl refers to Ferguson as Middleman. Again I wonder whether this is just a description of his crime brokering job, or whether he is the “Middleman” mentioned in an early issue. “Middleman” is in boldface, which can mean either emphasis or proper name in the world of comics fonts. Musing over his own wasted life and the general cycle of generational poverty around Kiefer Square, Carl becomes despondent. Ferguson takes depressed Carl to hear the story of another villain of yore…

Focus Hero/Villain: Wealthy heir Esteban Rodrigo Suarez Hidalgo romanced charity director Maria Luisa Alvarado, who convinced him to become El Hombre: crimefighter, bullwhip-wielder, and role model to barrio youth. He joined Honor Guard and took on a young sidekick, bolo-throwing Bravo, but his time away from the streets caused barrio kids to see him as a tool of the system, while community organizer Ramon Vega encouraged a consciousness of ethnic identity which resonated with the poor. Vega and Alvarado married. Having lost his love, El Hombre became disillusioned with the social dimensions of his anti-crime crusade, and embarrassed that his action figures sold more poorly than those of white heroes. He hired the criminal Assemblyman to create a giant robot for him to defeat. Instead, Assemblyman’s creation runs rampant and incapacitates El Hombre. When Honor Guard cleans up the mess, they catch both Assemblyman and El Hombre. Bravo chooses not to reveal El Hombre’s secret identity, instead forming the Astro City Irregulars.

Other Villains: Peter Hanlan is called a “harmless rummie.” I don’t know what that means. Kennealy (“The Wolfhound”) comes to Ferguson seeking illicit work. Los Hermanos (a Madrox type), Getaway (a speedster Billy the Kid), and Platinum Blonde (think Jocasta) were foes of El Hombre.

Other Heroes: Seen but not named are older Honor Guard members Mermaid, Mirage, and Hummingbird, as well as Starfighter. Bravo’s first Irregular squad has Skitter, Umbra, Switchblade, Alligator, and maybe Orphan. I only know any of these names from the sketches in the back of the trade edition.

Places: Neighborhoods include Museum Row, Kanewood, Gibson Hills, and Patterson Heights.

Miscellanea: “I built a giant robot menace so I could look good defeating it, but it goes nuts, and I get rescued by the real heroes” is also the plot of the 2004 Pixar film “The Incredibles,” in which the heroes are stand-ins for the Fantastic Four.

My Two Cents: This issue seems to be a detour from the “hunting for the murderer of super-villains” plot of the previous two issues. However, thematically, it raises precisely the next topic to discuss. So much to talk about here! Buziek brings up three major themes worthy of discussion:

El Hombre means well at first, but he lacks personal commitment. He want to make a difference on his own terms as an aloof aspirational figure, spied admiringly on the rooftops as he goes about “Important Person” work in his superhero (=upper class) world. That approach is not completely without value; plenty of black adults have testified that seeing Uhura (a black woman military officer) on Star Trek or Cliff and Clair Huxtable (a gynecologist and lawyer, respectively) on The Cosby Show helped to norm professional achievement, encouraging them to stay in school and pursue social mobility. But that kind of “role model from a distance” will only get you so far. El Hombre’s most tangible triumph is the uplift of Bravo from the streets to the rooftops, which required a lot of hands-on parenting of the sort that The Confessor gave to Altar Boy in previous issues. It’s hard work, getting your hands dirty. You can’t worry about tracking mud back into your penthouse. When El Hombre gets promoted to national office (i.e. Honor Guard), he loses touch with the streets entirely, despite his lofty intentions to Make A Difference. His example is a sobering cautionary tale. Lots of people say they would like to see social change, to help poor people break out of the cycle of crime and truancy. But are they willing to live amongst them, to bring them into their lives, to sacrifice their own cushy lifestyles? Usually not. Christian theologians talk about “incarnational theology,” how according to the Bible, God didn’t just stay in heaven and show us from there what perfection is like. He incarnated, took on flesh, became a man, walked the dirty streets, got hungry and tired, and for his trouble got pelted with rocks and ultimately hung on a cross to die. Some things you just can’t do from a distance. You have to roll up your sleeves and jump in.

The second topic broached in this issue is what we call today “white privilege.” El Hombre is initially a more virtuous version of Crackerjack: hairy chest, gymnastic, uses a whip instead of a billy club to fight crime. Seems like a much nicer guy as well. Yet he’s humiliated to find that his action figures sell only a fraction of what the other members of Honor Guard sell. He’s from a minority culture, and majority culture kids tend not to buy strongly ethnic toys. This is a real thing. In 2008, the NPR program “This American Life” told Elna Baker’s memorable true story entitled “Babies Buying Babies”. The whole story is well worth a listen, but one of its multiple punchlines is that American parents would rather buy their child a deformed factory reject white baby doll than a perfectly “healthy” black baby doll. The “other” cannot be aspirational if we can’t see ourselves in him. I remember as a kid that I could watch sitcoms about white people in unfamiliar circumstances, from Gilligan’s Island to Happy Days to The Facts of Life. But sitcoms about urban black life (What’s Happening, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Good Times) seemed alien and unappealing. Willis and Arnold on “Diff’rent Strokes” were fine though, which I now realize is because they were black kids living in a white world, as were the Cosbys. Toys and T-Shirts with Black Widow or Rey on them don’t sell as well as ones with male heroes. (Comic books with busty female characters can sell well, to an older audience, for a different reason.)

This leads nicely into the third topic: integration vs separatism. El Hombre represents the integrationist approach: Minorities should emphasize our common humanity over and above cultural/ethnic distinctions. If you play the game well, you will be rewarded, regardless of petty things like skin tone and voice accent. El Hombre’s family has already played that game well in some distant generation, and he is born near the top of the heap. To Hidalgo’s credit, he doesn’t take it for granted; he applies himself to excellence, and he responds readily (albeit imperfectly) when a social worker points out the need of the underclass. As we saw above though, there’s a glass ceiling of majority culture which he can’t penetrate even with money and crimefighting fame. He’s ethno-culturally disqualified from climbing to the next stratum of the upper class.

His philosophical nemesis, the young lawyer Ramon Vega, fans the flames of ethnic pride instead. Since we can’t be accepted in their world, we’ll stop trying. La Raza! Ramon wins the heart of the social worker Maria Alvarado with his boots-on-the-ground commitment to his cause. Real world examples of this philosophy abound. Martin Luther King, Jr. was known not just for nonviolence, but for “we belong among you” messages like sit-ins on buses and restaurants in the 1950s. But young blacks growing up in the 1960s were often attracted to groups like the Black Panthers and the “Black is Beautiful” movement which, dissatisfied with the incomplete success of King’s approach, emphasized distinction over commonality. Blacks began to give their children African-sounding names instead of European-sounding names. More recently, black Seniors at Harvard University chose to have their own segregated graduation service, because they felt drowned out by majority culture in the integrated graduation service which their grandparents had sacrificed so much to bring about.

These are all huge topics without easy answers, and Buziek deserves a lot of credit for broaching them and putting a face on them in the course of just a few pages of comic book art. This is the power of good storytelling.

Yep.  A rummie is a drunk.  From, someone who drinks too much rum.  See also rummy.  

I'm just speaking to my own experience as a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. Your point is well taken that these shows did in fact have a following, despite my own xenophobia.



I had forgotten that Avengers story! Great point. When I asked Busiek about the Incredibles, he did comment to me that he knew that he wasn't the first person to use that plotline either.