MGK Archive of Cool Stuff, two

I wonder how reliant on context this one is. Astro City fans (i.e. anyone who’s read them) get the coolness of this; how obviously awesome is this for non-readers?

(Good choice though.)

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Great story, that. How can you not love a book that’s about Robert Mitchum versus Hank Pym?

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I love Astro City, but I found this to be my least favourite arc. There’s good stuff in there, for sure, but it does go on a little too long, and the central mystery is too predictable (actually, that’s a common problem with AC).

Admittedly, it might have to do with my dislike of heavy-duty internal monologue in superhero comics, and Tarnished Angel being a psuedo-noir there’s obviously a lot of internal monologue.

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@CB: Here’s your context: that guy there is Steeljack. He started as a not-so-bright tough who let some supervillain cover him with a bulletproof steel skin–think “Baron Zemo gives Atlas his ionic strength powers” and you’ve got it. Thing is, make a guy bulletproof and strong, that doesn’t mean he’s a great crook. Steeljack just recently got out of jail, and was trying to go straight, back in a neighborhood that apparently breeds third-string crooks and villains. Someone’s been killing those third-stringers, and since he can’t seem to hold any other job, the neighborhood hired him to investigate the “black mask killer” and put a stop to it.

Well, he found out who it was, and they were out of his league. Desperate, he broke into the flying fortress of the local-universe equivalent of the Avengers or Justice League to fill them in and plead his case. The black mask killer is about to put a plan into motion that’s going to make a lot of people dead, and it’s going to happen in the next twelve hours. The Avenger League’s response? “We’ll look into it. And since you broke parole, and broke into our base, we’re going to send you back to jail, too.”

Which brings us to those four panels.

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