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Astro City, Vol. 8: Shining Stars (2011)

by Kurt Busiek(Favorite Author)

4.09 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1401229840 (ISBN13: 9781401229849)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

WildStorm Comics

series

Astro City

review 1: Picked this one up last night at Zia Records and read it all in a few hours. Every bit as good as the other Astro City volumes I have come to know and love ("Confessions" is my favorite collection, still). I mostly bought this one because it promised the story of the Silver Agent, and it is indeed in there (the long-awaited story did not disappoint me as I feared it would, though I found it a bit needlessly messianic). The other stories are great too - "The Eagle and the Mountain" has the Samaritan having dinner with an arch-nemesis, the Infidel. "Beautie" explores a character that didn't get much attention in the previous volumes I've seen, a member of Honor Guard. The Astra stories, "Graduation Day" and "The Gordian Knot," explores the lifestyle of someone who "grows up ... moresuper," so to speak.
review 2: Some of these collections have been better than others. This one takes a step back again in overall worth. Several unconnected stories, a couple played out over two issues. The first, about the Samaritan and his arch foe, the Infidel, is perhaps the strongest. It is followed by a forgettable story about a life-sized "Beautie" (read: Barbie) doll who fights crime and doesn't understand what it means to be human. Then there is the two-issue piece about Astra Furst's graduation. She's a member of the "First Family" which is so obviously meant to be the Fantastic Four that it's almost embarrassing how similar they are. Astra is famous and her every move is tracked by gossip magazines and websites and that's really about all there is to the story. And then there is a two-issue story dealing with the Silver Agent that covers much of the same ground as every other Silver Agent story I've read in other collections of Astro City. In the introduction, Mark Waid talks about how he used to view these stories as little more than pastiche, but had come to understand they were much more than that. Well, I'm not so sure this time around--my experience reading this volume was that these stories were pastiches and little else. Unfortunate, because I know they can be more, based on my past reading of this title. less

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