Welcome to Inside Astro City, a column focusing on the Vertigo Comics series Astro City from Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross, this month featuring guest-artist Joe Infurnari! Each month, we’ll take a look at the current issue of the series, and ask series writer Kurt Busiek questions about the book. This month, we spotlight one of the newest heroes of Astro City, the adorable and powerful American Chibi, with Inside Astro City #27!
Author: Matthew Peterson
Matthew Peterson
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.
As the father of an eleven-year-old, I hear about all manner of shows, Youtubers and properties for which I have no context, so it’s nice when her interests and mine collide on the comics page. Will Dad have any clue about Widget’s new favorite thing? Your Major Spoilers review of Bee And Puppycat #9 awaits!
Whether or not we are able to admit it, we all enjoy being right. Constantly factually correcting someone on tiny points of order has become indicative of the terrible stereotype of awkward nerdfolk, but even I have to admit there’s a sense of satisfaction in it. Sure, you can’t engage in such behaviors constantly, because nobody likes a smart@$$, but sometimes it’s important to tell people that Ant-Man isn’t some new character created to “rip-off” El from ‘Misfits Of Science.’ (This is a true, actual conversation that I have had, by the way.) As with anything, the key is moderation,…
Comics in the 1990s weren’t all about excess… at least not all about excess in a BAD way. Your Major Spoilers (Retro) Review of Superboy And The Ravers #1 awaits!
The last few decades of comics have been transformative in many ways, with massive (if occasionally short-lived) changes being made and many characters coming out the better on the other side. Captain Marvel, The Guardians of The Galaxy and more are now household words, and The Flash and Green Arrow are better known now than anytime in their eighty-year histories. Still, some characters have gotten (as the kids today say) hosed by those same forces. Cyclops, once a stand-up guy and natural leader, is now considered either boring or insane, depending on the author. The Martian Manhunter, who has never…
The magical girls of Zodiac Starforce have enough trouble on their hands, given team leader Gemini’s strange mystical affliction, but even their astrologically derived might isn’t ready for… VOLLEYBALL. Your Major Spoilers review of Zodiac Starforce #2 awaits!
Some would call it the greatest rivalry in pop culture: Star Wars, that quasi-fantasy ‘Knights In Space’ versus evil ebony samurai tale; or Star Trek, cowboy diplomacy with pew-pew phaser guns and great sideburns. Rodrigo says it’s a question of knights versus cowboys, Stephen a question of science fiction versus fantasy, but I have a different theory: It’s all about cool laser swords versus cool rayguns. Indeed, I’ve always loved the design of the Type II phaser, even when I was a young lad, and have one carefully hidden (read: “misplaced”) in my Major Spoilers office right now, leading us…
Darkseid goes toe-to-toe with the Anti-Monitor, with the entire Justice League caught in the eye of the storm. Will any of them survive unscathed? Your Major Spoilers review of Justice League #44 awaits!
It has been 75 years since Dick Grayson first burst onto the scene. In that time, there have been something like ten Robins (more if you count alternate realities and future vision), each with their own version of the red, green and gold uniform. Thanks to yesterday’s review of ‘We Are Robin’, featuring six different variations on the Boy Wonder’s garb, I’ve been assessing and arguing about which works the best, which leads us to today’s bare-legged-and-you’d-better-learn-to-deal-with-it query… The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is torn between Tim Drake’s original ninja-style costume and Dick Grayson’s seldom-used wing-cape costume as seen…
A Robin has fallen. What effect will their loss have on the greater Robin movement? Your Major Spoilers review of We Are Robin #4 awaits!
As we approach October of 2015, one absolute certainty is that the Internet is going to tell us that every day is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future. (After all, they’ve been doing it regularly since about 2012.) Still, aside from the unfortunate fashions, a world of hoverboards, self-drying jackets and full 3-D holographic displays has great technological promise, leading us to today’s nanite-filled query… The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is looking forward to the year 2062, and the collapsible flying cars foretold by George Jetson, asking: What fictional future technology do you most wish were…
Fifty-six years ago this Saturday, television history was made, and the bar for thought-provoking, entertaining and skin-crawling programming suddenly made a precipitous upward leap. Not long afterwards, comics got in on the act… Your Major Spoilers (Retro) Review of The Twilight Zone #1 awaits!
Last night, after getting to bed at a decent hour for the first time in some time (Major Spoilers business three days per week, plus my other junk, although “late” for me is actually “early” for Stephen), I uncharacteristically found myself wide awake at 3:30 a.m. After failing to convince my brain that it was time for sleep, I took one of the Stephen King collections that live on my bedside table for just such an emergency, and 25 minutes of gross-out terror later (“A Very Tight Place” is that kind of story) and found myself once again drifting towards…
In all my years of reading comics, there have been a great many completely inexplicable moments: A talking duck walking out of the swamp; The Legion of Super-Heroes rejecting Polar Boy but accepting Bouncing Boy; Batman not dying horribly in his first outing… But of them all, the one that most makes me say “What” (in that flat tone of voice that the Tenth Doctor used for inexplicable events) is Wonder Woman and Superman as a couple. I understand the basic premise, but simply *can* *not* believe either character committing to such a strange relationship, leading to today’s utterly baffling query……