Like Hellboy, Kurt Busiek’s Astro City doesn’t take place in chronological order. That made it fun to read THE ASTRO CITY CHRONOLOGY by Donny Yau, even though it badly needs another round of editing. Overall, though, it’s a handy guide to the stories and to events referenced in the series. Maybe good enough I’ll give up my own effort to do an online chronology; we’ll see.
During the Bronze Age, I was largely baffled why people insisted Jack Kirby was a genius, given most of his post-Fourth World stuff struck me as, at best, competent (exceptions being Kamandi and the Eternals). A recent post on Marvel editor Tom Brevoort’s blog mentioned that Kirby’s DEVIL DINOSAUR, dismissed when it came out in the 1970s, is getting fresh reappraisal; as I have the Marvel app (primarily for its use in my Silver Age reread), I figured I’d check out the nine-issue run. Nope, still not impressed.
The premise is that somewhere in prehistory, the man-ape Moon Boy lives with his BFF Devil Dinosaur, a red skinned T. rex that’s also intelligent and superhumanly (supersaurian?) tough — as one caption notes he’s no ordinary dinosaur, though Kirby doesn’t explain why.
Over the course of the series they cope with a meaner tribe of ape men,
giant ants, a human giant, a trip to the future and, in the best story, malevolent aliens exploring Earth. This multi-part story turns into the “Adam and Eve” cliche of science fiction — an ape-man and the ape-woman Eeve are trapped by a computer (resembling a tree) in an Eden where everything will be provided for them but fortunately the devil (dinosaur) frees them to live their lives as they choose. It works better than it should but overall this was another book where Kirby’s tremendous creative spark (I appreciate him much more now than I did) was missing.
BATMAN: White Knight by Sean Murphy lost me in the first issue when it became obvious Murphy was going with one of my least favorite Bat-tropes, the Joker being obsessed with Batman and convinced they’re a sort of twisted soulmates: Gotham would never tolerate Batman’s ultraviolent handling of crime if the Joker didn’t convince the citizens they need the Bat on that wall (the sort of thing the Lego Batman Movie parodied beautifully). After the Batman pumps enough psychotropic drugs in the Joker to turn him back to sane Jack Napier (his original name in the Burton film), the Joker becomes a public hero as the symbol of police/Bat brutality, then begins to attack Batman for the over-the-top collateral damage — the tables are turned! While criticizing the Bat’s methods is certainly legit (though this is the kind of destruction he carries out in the movies, not the comics) this is heavy handed and fell completely flat for me. I gave up the TPB after two issues.
#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders. Covers by Alex Ross and Jack Kirby
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