joysweeper

Here's another three issues, the other half of the Astro City arc "The Confessor". Here's where it gets heavy.

Issue four is Eye of the Storm. Contrary to what the ending of the last issue implied, the Confessor didn't stick around. He bolted, and Brian followed, sometimes close behind, sometimes far.

The Confessor went and beat up all the thugs at one of the Deacon's drug drops, then the higher-class money men, and then the Deacon's soldiers came out, armed and ready for him.

Brian says he doesn't fear the Confessor or want to kill him - he doesn't know much about him, but he's a good man, who's saved dozens of lives, captured thieves, tracked down murderers. He has nothing to prove - and Brian thinks the Confessor wanted him to figure it out, left all these clues. The Confessor turns away, but smiles and says Brian's more observant than he thought. Brian wants to understand, if the Confessor will tell him about it.

The Confessor pinches the bridge of his nose, turns, and says Brian's earned it, but not now - it's almost dawn. He vanishes in front of Brian this time, hazing into mist, and Brian wonders if he'll even show up when the sun sets again. In the sky, he sees strange lights.

More massive skipping over! Four pages of Honor Guard fighting an alien ship. The team doesn't turn what's left over to the feds, which angers the mayor. The monster hunter Mordecai Chalk stops reporting in. Talk and radio shows report public sentiment souring further. The Black Rapier wanted to get into a museum to use something there to call ex-Guard Starwoman, but EAGLE troops stopped him. Someone says that this is like the seventies again - tells a pro-hero guy that he wouldn't be so trusting of anyone with a cape if he knew what happened back then. Brian listens to everything.

When he shows up he finds a note that leads him to a rooftop, where the Confessor is crouching on a gargoyle.

He spent a lot of time visiting the injured and sick in the hills, and once saw a beguiling young woman. He came back to that house again and again, telling himself that the man was influential and his good opinion would help efforts - but lying to himself. The vampire woman embraces and bites him in a suitably nightmarish panel. "For laborers were not the only ones who had come over on the great ships that crossed the Atlantic."

Brian asks if it works - if the Confessor's never killed anyone. The Confessor looks away, saying "Please... do not ask me that..." Brian fumbles a little, then asks why this, why be a superhero?

Brian says it has to be more than that. The Confessor wanted someone he didn't have to lie to. Silence for a panel, while the Confessor looks at the sky. "And... if that's true...?" Brian says he has to go think and will be back later, and runs away to sleep fitfully.

The next day, Honor Guard still refuses to hand over the alien craft. The enraged mayor says it's time to decide who controls this planet - humans or super-powered babysitters? He, with the Fed's approval, is shutting the heroes down.

They're subject to arrest on sight, and resisters will be dealt with even if it means shooting to kill. Brian reacts in horror. "He - he can't do that! They won't let him - they'll stop him-!" Over panels of unaffected civilians not caring and members of the Irregulars being arrested, his caption boxes go "But they didn't. They didn't--!"

The Confessor puts his hand on Brian's shoulder. "A lot of things look simple... from the outside." And above, aliens talk to each other in their unreadable alien script, then their ships start to move in on Earth.

Next issue is called Patterns.

A Shadow Hill resident finds Mordecai Chalk half-dead in an alley corner. He's rushed out by EMTs who say he's lost a lot of blood and they don't know what half his cybernetics do, but the other half are fried.

The mayor issued a statement calling the city to pull together, saying that crime's up since the police and EAGLE troopers are occupied with the superheroes, who are harming the city by resisting. Brian is scornful, his dorm people don't care.

The other heroes, he knows, are doing their best - Winged Victory was captured and imprisoned when troopers invaded one of her school. The Crossbreed hadn't been seen for days. Honor Guard and their HQ are nowhere to be seen. Samaritan was spotted fighting alongside the Unclean in New Delhi, and all over the world - he wasn't quitting.

But Brian can't really blame the ones who had. The First Family put up a forcefield, nothing getting in or out. Jack -In-The-Box was shot at by a helicopter over the Gaines river, maybe dead, maybe missing again like in 1982. The mayor's fault.

Brian's dormpeople don't care, or think the heroes should've cooperated. Furious, Brian storms away from all of them.

A mystery man whispers to him that his friend - the man in black - might want to look into retirement, or a vacation, or he could come in and cooperate as an example. He wouldn't want people talking about what happened on Shadow Hill a week or so back. Brian doesn't tell the Confessor when he shows up that evening. The Confessor prompts him, asking if he's made a decision about continuing as Altar Boy. Brian, eyes in shadow and obviously tormented, says "Hey, I'm here, aren't I?"

Caption boxes. "Alien shape-changers. Vampires who prayed to keep from drinking blood. Mystery killers who couldn't be caught. The mayor. And even he wasn't alone - this wasn't the only city having hero trouble. It was supposed to make sense. It was supposed to fit together somehow. But - he saved people. He captured crooks. But he was a vampire. And when I asked him if he'd ever killed anyone - I didn't want to think about it."

That's during two pages where they fight looters. Brian muses that crime is going up, but it wasn't the heroes making it happen. Then there's a scream, and the Confessor says it's northeast, about three blocks.

"It was easier when there was something to do. When I could concentrate on whatever was going on - instead of vampires doing good - and heroes being locked up - and little girls dying, and the garbage they threw at me." They go to save a woman from a rapist only to find that she was bait for a trap, with EAGLE troops. They'd been trolling for Crackerjack.

In two pages Brian and the Confessor take the troopers out and get away, but the next day, Crackerjack was taken anyway. Honor Guard was located and isolated. Remaining at large were the Gentleman, the Confessor, the Hanged Man, and - Brian changes the channel to find that the mayor's calling in special troops. He starts to think of quitting. Caption boxes say "It wasn't because I was scared. It was - it wasn't like I thought it would be. All this fuss - all this hatred - and then - and then -"

"And if the forces of anger and unreason are growing, if humanity is losing sight of their path - then is it not all the more crucial that they be shown their choice? That they be shown the way?" Brian says he's worse than his dad. The Confessor says Brian's father sounds admirable and he'd like to have met him. Brian becomes angry, says his father was an idiot who died broke, was laughed at - does the Confessor think anyone would listen to him if they knew -

Then he tells the Confessor that they do know; one of the mayor's stooges told him to get out or he'd be exposed. He tells the Confessor to think about how they'd react and ask himself if he still wants to save them.

At the crowded park, weird ships come down. The mayor starts to talk, and the Confessor's speech balloon shows up. "You lie!"

He charges for the mayor, and this is when Brian gets there and just watches. Noticing that his mentor plows into the EAGLE troopers like he didn't care about his own safety anymore, he had to know what he was doing, leaping in front of these security cameras.

But the Confessor, in his dying moments, is able to wrench the gun away and fire a stake. At the mayor, who is pinned to a column.

Right on camera, the mayor's body transforms. "And finally, I understood. I think we all did."

Last issue. This one's called "My Father's Son."

I absolutely can't do justice to the invasion pages. Suffice to say that aliens attacked all over the planet, and all over the planet the heroes rose to stop them. Astro City was where the invasion was most concentrated, and the heroes managed to escape or break out of captivity to meet it. Everyone did.

Brian was about to be shot when the stage erupted beneath him and the Crossbreed appeared, Mary flying him away while Noah shouts "Peter! Shield the crowd! Daniel, David, Joshua - smite them!"

Brian tries to help and wades in, only to be shot in the shoulder. Noah, who's got some kind of lightning power, tells him he's in shock, let them take care of it. They're just giving the populace and human troops time to escape. Peter manages to get gigantic stone crosses to come out of the ground and pin the ships. "Good! a few thunderbolts to seal the hatchways-"

The Crossbreed were hiding out in an ark. They never left. Daniel bandages Brian and Noah says he should rest - the Crossbreed's going back out. Brian is shocked that they're going back. "Why do we fight for a city that spurned us? They need us. Is that not enough?"

Brian protests that the citizens threw rocks at them, drove them away! How can they ignore that? He's told that they ignore nothing. But they're here to spread God's word, and it they only spread it to those who were already listing, what good would they be? Brian has to ask - they rescued him, but the Confessor... He's told that they regret not being able to save him; they came as soon as he attacked. They knew he was a vampire, and that wasn't a problem. Regardless of what he was, he was doing God's work. "He was saving innocents and serving truth. And in the final judgment, what is more important? The burdens we bear - or the way we bear them?" Then they leave him alone with his thoughts.

Long story short, Earth wins. Forces the aliens, Enelsians, to retreat.

The real mayor and impersonated government figures from 45 other cities and countries were found imprisoned on the mothership. The mayor calls a press conference and thanks the heroes, apologizing for what they had suffered in his name, backing them up. People, assuming that the Confessor had been responsible for the Shadow Hill killings, stand down.

Brian sums up the invasion plan. Counting on how people would make assumptions, fit things into easy patterns, they'd snuck agents in when Honor Guard's alien detector was malfunctioning, and when it was detecting other threats. Discrediting heroes instead of killing them, so as to enslave them later. Landing troops in force and in disguise, positioning them to take the planet's innocents hostage, which would let them enslave the Earth and face down the Galactic Council. The same plan wouldn't work now; extra alien detectors are being made. But it almost did. It would have.

If not for the Confessor. His vestry had been found, and people walked through it now, knowing everything - and nothing. Now he was dead and they'd never know why. Brian's dorm people ask him if he's thought about what classes he's taking, and he doesn't know.

The city starts to heal. Brian doesn't think the people praising the heroes are the same ones as the ones who were shouting for their heads. He remembers what the Confessor told him about both faces always being there, the darker one hidden most of the time, but coming out over less than this. Other thoughts. Mobs. The way his dad valued sick kids over deadbeat parents. Things weren't quite done yet - and then another mutilated body turned up on the outskirts of Shadow Hill.

Standing on a roof in his Altar Boy costume, Brian feels that the air suddenly smelled different, cleaner. Kind of funny. Patterns everywhere, and no one ever realized that not everything fits together. The Enelsians took advantage of the Shadow Hill killer's existence, but that was all. The mayor held a memorial service for the dead.

The Hanged Man showed up after the eulogy and drifted along the line of relatives, looking into each one's eyes, not saying anything - but each of them relaxed. Somehow he'd let them know justice had been done.

He smiles. Shots of the city from high up, and then an alarm as three thug types try to get furs into a truck fast. Doesn't matter that the police won't get there for at least five minutes.

I love this comic.

Buy the trade sometime, all right? It's got this arc, "The Nearness of You", an intro by Neil Gaiman, and the cover gallery. Which is awesome. Here, look at the cover for the last one.
Requested tag: title: astro city.