MattBrady
11-13-2002, 12:30 PM
<img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/Astro_City.jpg" width="175" height="269" border="0" align="right">Updated with art
While Newsarama has <a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/dc.html" target="_blank"> reported</a> on the return of Astro City as a series of miniseries beginning next February with the five issue Local Heroes, the city will be making a return even earlier than that – in a way. All of December’s Wildstorm titles will contain a free Astro City story, while at the same time, contain no extra pages. No – no laws of physics were broken…
According to Astro City creator and writer Kurt Busiek, the story idea came when Wildstorm asked him to write some promo text for December’s in-house Wildstorm newspage. “I messed around with it for a while, but didn't want to do just your usual, ‘Here's the concept, here's why you should buy it’ thing -- I wanted to do something different, something that showed how Astro City is different.
”So after messing with it for a while, what I wound up deciding was that the best way to give people an idea of what Astro City is all about was to just give them a story, to show rather than tell.”
Busiek’s editor on the series, Ben Abernathy was all for it, and since Wildstorm was planning on using the page for Astro City promotion, there was no problem with Busiek using the entire page to tell a story.
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/ACNEWS.jpg" target="_blank"><img width="250" height="208" alt="Anderson's "photo" for the Astro City story" hspace="2" border="0" src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/ACNEWS_t.jpg" align="left"></a>Given that the focus of February’s Local Heroes will be on how the common man/resident of Astro City sees and experiences the city’s heroes, Busiek chose a unique way to tell his story. “I wrote the story in the form of a short newspaper article,” the writer said. “It's only six paragraphs long, but it's a full story, with a human perspective on the superheroic, an appearance by Honor Guard, an attempted takeover of Earth by an alien conqueror, and trouble with squirrels in the suburbs. Brent [Anderson] drew a ‘photo’ for it, and Wildstorm dressed it up to look like an actual newspaper clipping, torn from a copy of the Astro City Rocket.
Aside from having 22 pages instead of six paragraphs, the difference between writing a comic story for the regular series and the one-page prose story, according to Busiek, is a matter of perspective. “In a comic, you get to see the events unfold, but a newspaper article reports what's already happened,” Busiek explained. “I've written a lot of newspaper articles for Astro City, though, always as background elements in a larger story. This was mostly a matter of using that approach, but making sure it worked as a story on its own -- that the pacing, the revelations, the ending all work dramatically as well as newspaper writing. And the art, of course, is a supplement to the story -- it's a ‘photo’ that runs with the article rather than a piece of the narrative. The piece is better with the art, but newspaper stories don't leave stuff out to let the pictures carry the tale -- they tell the story fully.
”It was a lot of fun, coming up with a story that worked in that format, at that length. After it was done, I did realize that it could be turned into a full-length story -- with a different ending -- pretty easily, and considered writing another piece and turning this into a script. But in the end I decided it was good as it is, so let's let it stand. Still, I might write the full-on comics version someday…. We're talking about other ways to use it, to get it out to readers as a taste of the series, but for the moment, it's free-with-purchase of any December Wildstorm book.
”I'm pretty pleased -- it was fun to do, and I'd much rather give people a free story than give them an essay on how the series is coming back. Which would convince you to try a new flavor of ice cream more -- a description of it or a spoonful of it?”
While Newsarama has <a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/dc.html" target="_blank"> reported</a> on the return of Astro City as a series of miniseries beginning next February with the five issue Local Heroes, the city will be making a return even earlier than that – in a way. All of December’s Wildstorm titles will contain a free Astro City story, while at the same time, contain no extra pages. No – no laws of physics were broken…
According to Astro City creator and writer Kurt Busiek, the story idea came when Wildstorm asked him to write some promo text for December’s in-house Wildstorm newspage. “I messed around with it for a while, but didn't want to do just your usual, ‘Here's the concept, here's why you should buy it’ thing -- I wanted to do something different, something that showed how Astro City is different.
”So after messing with it for a while, what I wound up deciding was that the best way to give people an idea of what Astro City is all about was to just give them a story, to show rather than tell.”
Busiek’s editor on the series, Ben Abernathy was all for it, and since Wildstorm was planning on using the page for Astro City promotion, there was no problem with Busiek using the entire page to tell a story.
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/ACNEWS.jpg" target="_blank"><img width="250" height="208" alt="Anderson's "photo" for the Astro City story" hspace="2" border="0" src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Wildstorm/ACNEWS_t.jpg" align="left"></a>Given that the focus of February’s Local Heroes will be on how the common man/resident of Astro City sees and experiences the city’s heroes, Busiek chose a unique way to tell his story. “I wrote the story in the form of a short newspaper article,” the writer said. “It's only six paragraphs long, but it's a full story, with a human perspective on the superheroic, an appearance by Honor Guard, an attempted takeover of Earth by an alien conqueror, and trouble with squirrels in the suburbs. Brent [Anderson] drew a ‘photo’ for it, and Wildstorm dressed it up to look like an actual newspaper clipping, torn from a copy of the Astro City Rocket.
Aside from having 22 pages instead of six paragraphs, the difference between writing a comic story for the regular series and the one-page prose story, according to Busiek, is a matter of perspective. “In a comic, you get to see the events unfold, but a newspaper article reports what's already happened,” Busiek explained. “I've written a lot of newspaper articles for Astro City, though, always as background elements in a larger story. This was mostly a matter of using that approach, but making sure it worked as a story on its own -- that the pacing, the revelations, the ending all work dramatically as well as newspaper writing. And the art, of course, is a supplement to the story -- it's a ‘photo’ that runs with the article rather than a piece of the narrative. The piece is better with the art, but newspaper stories don't leave stuff out to let the pictures carry the tale -- they tell the story fully.
”It was a lot of fun, coming up with a story that worked in that format, at that length. After it was done, I did realize that it could be turned into a full-length story -- with a different ending -- pretty easily, and considered writing another piece and turning this into a script. But in the end I decided it was good as it is, so let's let it stand. Still, I might write the full-on comics version someday…. We're talking about other ways to use it, to get it out to readers as a taste of the series, but for the moment, it's free-with-purchase of any December Wildstorm book.
”I'm pretty pleased -- it was fun to do, and I'd much rather give people a free story than give them an essay on how the series is coming back. Which would convince you to try a new flavor of ice cream more -- a description of it or a spoonful of it?”