Astro City Special: Silver Agent 2

Normally my comic reviews run as part of Robot 6′s weekly What Are You Reading? feature, but family events (and falling asleep on the sofa) caused me to have to scramble this past weekend and only submit part of my reviews. So, this week, I have opted to run the remainder of my reviews at my own blog.

First up, after years of wanting to know the full story of the fate of Astro City’s Silver Agent, readers finally got that closure last week in the final installment of the two-issue Astro City Special: Silver Agent. Busiek’s fortunate in that addition to possessing an affinity for time travel stories, Busiek has the understanding to write such stories effectively. Too often time travel in comics is a muddled mess, not so here. So much of the appeal of Astro City’s success is the sense of community and family that permeates some of the series best stories. In this final installment of the tale, Busiek gives us an incredible couple of moments with Alan Craig/Silver Agent and his nephew Thomas. It’s a bittersweet and touching scene that goes to the heart of why Busiek remains one of my favorite writers in comics.

I was pleased to get a double-shot of writer Jim McCann this week. In the first instance, McCann and artist Chris Samnee teamed up for a short story in the I Am An Avenger five-part anthology miniseries. I’ve not been a faithful reader of The Young Avengers over the years, so I was pleasantly surprised to find how entertained I was by this short story. I’ll admit that part of the reasons this story clicked with me is that McCann tied the old Avengers guard with the present day, utilizing Clint Barton/Hawkeye as a common ground.

My other McCann fix involved Hawkeye & Mockingbird 4. The characters have been going through some rough times in recent issue, not that the challenges evaporated with this issue. That being said, McCann is able to inject his sense of humor with the dialogue in this issue. McCann’s approach to the modern day version of Marvel superheroes imbues it with a fun vibe that reminds me of 1970s/1980s comics writer, David Michelinie. In addition to the character banter, I was pleasantly thrown by the Phantom Rider curveballs that appear in the final pages of this issue.