Nearly all of Marvel’s comic books take place in New York City, the same metropolis that the publisher is based in real-life, but imagine if someone tried to tell stories involving all the Marvel characters in one comic book. That’s kind of the point of Astro City, a creator-owned title launched by Kurt Busiek in 1995.
The eponymous city hosts a great number of heroes and villains, and the comic tells stories from the points of view of Astro City’s various citizens. A typical Astro City story involves anything from a day-in-the-life of a superhero, the difficulties of a former super-villain trying to walk the straight and narrow, and what life is like for the so-called normal people who live in a city surrounded by super-human beings and people in costumes.
Taking inspiration from the biggest and brightest of both DC and Marvel – like Superman (the time-traveling Samaritan), Batman (the religious-themed vigilante The Confessor), Captain America (the tragic Silver Agent) and the Fantastic Four (the eccentric explorers The First Family) – there is no shortage of directions an Astro City movie can be taken in, but one thing’s for certain, it will be like nothing else made in the genre.
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