Tarnished Angel

Just finished reading the Tarnished Angel and Dark Age: Book One story lines in from Kurt Busiek’s Astro City comics series and I’m mightily impressed. First, big kudos to Daniel or Bob or whoever it was at the JCPL who ordered this series for the library catalog, because it absolutely rocks. It meets Frank Miller and Alan Moore in a dark alleyway and kicks both their butts, to put it bluntly: excellent neo-genre writing (detective noir, cop drama, crime drama, family drama, super hero/fantasy, retro-pastiche), great art-work, captivating story lines. Tarnished Angel in particular blew me away. The protagonist, the late-era Robert Mitchum look-alike Steeljack, was a perfectly written noir straight man — just dumb enough, just earnest enough, just sad enough to be believable without being pathetic. I’ll definitely be reading more of this series, and I’ll be looking out for volume two of Dark Ages.