Silver Agent Man

Astro City Special: Silver Agent #1

In Kurt Busiek’s epic “Astro City” series, the Silver Agent is one of the guys who ties everything together. He’s at least as important a character as the all-powerful Samaritan — he’s the symbol of how the Silver Age of comics fell before the Dark Ages that came afterwards. His backstory has him being accused of murdering a supervillain, put on trial, convicted, and executed — only for everyone to discover after his death that the villain had faked his death — the Silver Agent had been executed unjustly. And even worse, a time-traveling Silver Agent began to appear at various crisis points after his death — heroes and citizens begged him not to return to the past and his ultimate execution, but he refused, intent on sacrificing himself to preserve the timeline.

We finally get some more of his story. We start out in the distant future of the 43rd century, where the Agent had been pulled so he could assist the heroes of the future against a supercomputer called the iGod (snicker). Once they defeat it, using a code-bomb called a Tweet (snicker), the Agent remembers his past as a polio-crippled kid in a family full of hard-working public servants. Wanting to serve his community, he teaches himself to walk and gets a job as a mailman — not the most glamorous career, but something to help him feel he’s contributing. When he uncovers an attempt to rig an election, he tries to stop the crooks but gets chased into a cave, where he discovers a glowing silver machine that heals and empowers him, giving him the strength to fight off his attackers and become a hero. Can the Agent overcome the temptation to stay in the safe, comfortable future and avoid his fated death?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A very cool story so far, with excellent dialogue, characterization, and humor, and fans of “Astro City” will definitely want to read this.

Mystery Society #2

While Anastasia Collins welcomes the Secret Skull, an undead adventurer, into the Mystery Society, Nick Hammond is in Area 51 rescuing a couple of genetically-engineered psychic little girls. Of course, once freed from captivity, they’ve got powerful enough abilities to knock the stuffing out of the government’s secret war machines. But once they get back to the Mystery Society’s headquarters, they learn that the government is already busy manufacturing false spin to turn Nick, Ana, and their associates into the bad guys. After that, the Society’s next new member literally falls from the sky — the brain of Jules Verne inside a steampunk robot body! And after that, the military attacks — is there any way to escape? Well, turns out the Mystery Society has its own flying saucer…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really, the story is running all over the place, seemingly at random. But I’ll forgive a lot for the sake of flying saucers and the disembodied brain of Jules Verne..

Girl Comics #3

Final issue of this anthology series dedicated to women creators. Besides another edition of Colleen Coover’s endlessly awesome introduction, we get Marjorie Liu and Sara Pichelli with a cute story about Wolverine and Jubilee; Louise Simonson, June Brigman, and Rebecca Buchman with a story about the Power Pack taking on a babysitting job for the X-Men; Lea Hernandez bringing us a look at the latest battle between Wolverine and Magneto; Carla Speed McNeil inviting us all along for Kitty Pryde’s 21st birthday party; and a couple of stories about characters I don’t even recognize.

Verdict: I’ll thumbs-up it, even though I didn’t recognize all the characters, ’cause I did enjoy most of the stories here. Wow, this one was almost the All-Wolverine issue…

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July 19, 2010 · Filed under Astro City, Girl Comics, Mystery Society

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