ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE BOOK 2: BROTHERS IN ARMS (Wildstorm/DC, 2010; Hardcover)
Collects Astro City: The Dark Age Book Three Nos. 1-4 and Astro City: The Dark Age Book Four Nos. 1-4 (cover dates July, 2009- June, 2010).
In this, the seventh book of Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's love letter to the Silver and Bronze Age of comics, we see things get darker and grittier. The time is now 1984 in Astro City, and change and dark times are running rampant in the city. The atmosphere in Astro City has always mirrored the change in the comic book universes of the time.
This title is what I like to call a comic book fan's comic book. One would almost need an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel and DC Comics of the '60s-80s for things to make sense. The nods and whys and wherefores would surely be lost on a “civilian” reader...or would they? I am kind of curious what a non-comic book fan would get out of this series. Much of this series deals with how regular people would react to the world if there really were such a thing as superheroes. It has a lot of heart and is among my favorite titles out there.
