Four and a half stars.Another good story of the Astro City universe; about SteelJack (see the cover), a super human loser and about his redemption.

alas, poor dejected Tarnished Angel! Steeljack is an ex-con trying to hew to the straight & narrow, looking for work and a fresh start while staying right with the law... until circumstances intervene and he must fight for greater things - even if that means going against the law and straying onto more crooked paths. a classic post-war noir plot for a classic comic.Astro City's fourth volume takes the tone of its story and the look of its imagery directly from all of those grey and ambiguous mov...

A Robert Mitchum lookalike coated in steel skin, doing hard time and then saving his neighbourhood? What's not to like! Loved the backstories of "El Hombre" and "Mock Turtle", as well. Great volume.

When Steeljack got paroled and tried to go legit, he couldn't find a job. Now he's trying to figure out who's killing the washed up criminals in Kiefer Square, his old Astro City neighborhood. Will Steeljack discover the killer before he becomes the next victim.I knew this was going to be something when I saw Kurt Busiek dedicated it, in part, to Lawrence Block. Since I've read a few hundred detective books over the years, this one was right up my booze-soaked alley.The Tarnished Angel is about

One of the best Astro City volumes of them all! Volume 4 of Kurt Busiek's innovative superhero chronicle about the world of Astro City, features the great 'Steel jack' arc where a paroled low-level super villain final sees if he can change his ways... despite everything and everyone saying he can't.What makes it special is Busiek's deep look at the lives of the petty criminal and villains for hire and how they probably spend and waste more money on their 'work' than the spend on their actually r...

Busiek and Anderson craft a noir set in Astro City. Steeljack is let out on parole after 2 decades in prison. While no one wants to hire an old man covered in steel who is trying to go straight, the people in his neighborhood trust him. They hire him to discover who is killing off old washed up career henchman and minor villains. Steeljack is out of his depth but plods on, discovering a much larger plot. I like the noir angle and longer form storytelling of this arc. I really like how Anderson a...

A re-read. A single great big meaty story. Dark but not too dark. Sad but not too sad. Predictable but not too predictable. Not all that deep. But just damned good.It's just a crime based superhero book told from the point of view of one of the villains. But a damn good one. Lots and lots and lots of text but a really fast read. Quite good enough art. Tons of characters but they don't distract. And always coming back to our main pov hero Steeljack. This book and this series is in such sharp cont...

I like these stories, and love most f Kurt Busiek stuff, but these story feel VERY long. So this is about Steeljack. After years of being in prison he is finally released and decides to try to do good. Try to live a normal life. He's done being a bad guy, or fully bad anyway, and wants to fix his life up. However, when small time villains begin to get picked off they hire him as some type of private eye to help them figure out what's happening. Will the villain turned hero be able to figure it o...

Possibly my favorite Astro City story. And that's saying something....

Another trade with a long story arc. Was Busiek making a habit of it? This story follows former villain Steeljack, out on parole. He wants to go straight, but it's hard when you're literally made of steel. He's highly visible, and there's a distinct limit to what a steel man is capable of. Adding to his troubles is his neighborhood, home to many of the other middle tier villains he used to hang out with. Except that they're now all turning up dead. The police don't care, and the heroes don't car...

Vol 4 swaps back to a single story, and it’s one of the series’s best yet! Steeljack is a recently paroled supervillain ex-con trying to make sense of the life he’s got left, with a fading hope that he might be able to redeem what he considers his failure of a life so far.His difficulties adjusting to any sort of life outside Biro Island are compelling and feel similar to what many people must experience today, while still being noir-ishly stylized. Once the core mystery shows up, I had a blast

Steeljack is probably my favorite character in the Astro City universe, for his deep desire to be an angel, tied with his earthy reality. Unsurprisingly, this is also my favorite Astro City arc to date. The mystery is great and the many characters of the area are interesting, but it's Steeljack that really makes it all terrific. I've always wanted to see more of him, but of course this marked the end of the original Astro City run, followed by a five-year hiatus.

I'm not sure how I missed this volume when going through the Astro City volumes. Especially since it's got a noir focus, which adds to the appeal. We get the story of Steeljack, a low-level villain trying to make good after two decades in prison, but getting sucked back into the life. It's also an exploration of the second-tier villains, the ones who serve as chaff when the super-villains take the credit. Steeljack makes for a good noir hero, out of his depth but soldiering on. The story goes to...

A genuinely moving tale of a super-villain trying to go straight, torn between the ideals with which his mother raised him, and nearly 50 decades of bad company and worse advice. This is a novel about second chances, bad choices, and the crippling fear that you can escape neither your origins nor the consequences of your actions.

Busiek has had me since Marvels and he and Brent Eric Anderson (p), and Will Blyberg (i) don't disappoint with this edition to the Astro City universe. The Tarnished Angel is classic, hard-boiled noir centering on Steeljack, a minor-league super-villain who can no longer banish his love-handles and who's out on parole from another prison stretch.Steeljack returns to his home turf, yet another fully realized neighborhood in Astro City: Kiefer Square. Not a great part of town, but a real neighborh...

"I just want to run. To run far and fast, and get away. But I been running' all my life now, and I'm still in the same place." Astro City takes a break from the anthology format and returns to the extended arc structure with this great story focusing on one of the small-time, street-level criminals of Astro City instead of the grand heroes.Our main character is Carl Donewicz, aka Steeljack, a recently paroled super-crook with metal skin and a new desire to go straight. He finds himsel

4 1/2 stars

Wow what a story. This was basically a noir using superpowered characters. Steeljacket is a life long loser, a supervillain who's been in and out of prison forever. Now that he's old and getting broken down, he tries to go straight. Of course, that's never easy.On top of that, someone is murdering all the old villains from the neighborhood. They hire Steeljacket to get to the bottom of things. Many twists and turns later we find out there's much more to the story than what shows on the surface.A...

This is my favorite Astro City volume so far. It's remarkable that each volume is so different in style, yet they all work. Well, except Astro City, Vol. 2: Confession, that was a bit weak. Anyway, this was a full volume with a single plot, like Confession, but more focused and much more effective. The main character, a failed supervillain and all around failure, Steeljack/Carl, was very sympathetic and it was enjoyable to see how his story developed over the course of the entire book. The art w...

Now see, THIS is what I like about Astro City. It seems that Busiek's stories only really set themselves apart in this universe when they're given some room to breath and subvert expectations. In this story, we meet Steeljack, a former "black mask" (AKA super villain) who's just been released from an extended prison sentence and wants to go straight. What follows is a story that starts familiar enough, but expands to really utilize the unique universe of Astro City to its advantage, crafting a n...