Talk:Astro City
Black Rapier
As I understand it, the BR is based not so much on Batman so much as Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) and other gimmick weapons heroes.--Mitsukai 19:16, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Almost all of the "based on" attributions are wild guesses, most of them completely inaccurate. The Black Rapier, mentioned about, is not based on either Batman OR The Blue Beetle, for instance.
Few if any of the characters are intended as one-to-one analogues for anyone, but rather expressions of archetypes seen in comics, myth, pulp fiction and other tales of heroes down the ages.
Also: Goldwater Heights is not named for Barry Goldwater, but for John L. Goldwater of Archie Comics -- why would a series that references comics creators for its placenames suddenly reference a Republican politician instead?
I'm not sure why something that purports to be an encyclopedia would publish so much unsourced speculation as if it were fact.
-- kurt busiek
Probably because the nonsourcing speculators (guilty!) are, essentially, the publishers. Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, and very many anyones do. Wikipedia relies on correctors such as yourself (and, assuming you are indeed Kurt Busiek, who better?) to ensure the ultimate accuracy of what appears in its articles. Overall, it seems to work fairly well.
The whole "based on" thing goes back to early versions of the article, and those of us who have added to the article have tended to repeat the formula. Better phrasing would perhaps have been "corresponds to" or "seems a cognate of" or "apparently inspired by" or "echoes." The fact is, Astro City's in-references to the comic book industry and homages to the comics of yesteryear invite such speculation. And some of the the homages are hardly wild, even if unsourced, being obvious to any reasonably informed observer. Samaritan, for instance, quite plainly honors Superman, and the First Family the Fantastic Four.
That doesn't mean any of us believe Astro City characters are direct copies, infringements of copyright, or any other sort of ripoff; the homages are often quite subtle and complex, and most, as you note, defy any attempt to seek one-to-one analogies. To take the example of the First Family, other than the Fantastic Four, elements of the Challengers of the Unknown, the Doom Patrol, the Metal Men, and certain members of the Avengers and the X-Men can all be found echoed in members of the team and the team itself. And unsourced or not, it's hardly off base to see in Julius Furst, who shares a first name and a facial appearance with DC editor Julius Schwartz, a homage to that particular personage! It could certainly be coincidence, but in a series as redolent with in-references as Astro City, one is justified in doubting it!
I seem to detect a bit of irritation in your note, perhaps understandable given that some of your fans may have misconstrued your intent as a writer and gone overboard in their enthusiasm. But this article too is a homage of sorts. While correctives are welcome, please remember that this is your readers' attempt to honor YOU, along with your collaborators. So you might not want to be too hard on us.
Cordially,
BPK.
Oh, I don't mean to be too hard on anyone, and I appreciate the great response ASTRO CITY's gotten over the years. I do get cranky, though, at the continued assumption that any Astro City character must somehow be some other character with the serial numbers filed off, and that the first wild guess at such things is assumed to be accurate. In some cases, the article was saying that various characters were based on characters I've never even heard of, and one swath of them was apparently notated by a fan of the Wolfman/Perez TITANS, who assumes that any robot or cyborg must be "based on" Cyborg of the Titans, even though Vic Stone isn't even the first robot-man Gar Logan was ever on a team with, much less the first in comics or literature.
In some cases, resemblances are clear -- though they're often more resemblances than direct references -- but in some, they're just baffling. Winged Victory was listed as "based on" Hawkgirl, apparently because she's female and has wings -- isn't it more likely that our character's female and has wings because she's inspired by La Victoire de Samothrace (aka The Winged Victory)? Must Noah of the Crossbreed be a weather-controller because he's based on Storm, rather than, say, having his powers rooted in the Noah legends, which did involve a big ol' storm?
But yeah, had they said "resembles" or "echoes," I'd have often been baffled but less quick to react, since it would at least be identifying speculation as speculation.
Uncle Julie, by the way, is indeed an homage to Julie Schwartz, and I left that in -- the part I took out of that one was that he was also assumed to be based on "Terrible" Turpin of the NEW GODS series. He's actually about equally inspired by Julie Schwartz and by William Frawley and William Demarest as Uncle Bub and Uncle Charlie on MY THREE SONS. The Fursts themselves are rooted in the Fonda acting dynasty, the FF, the Robinsons of LOST IN SPACE, and THE FORSYTE SAGA, though there aren't any one-to-one parallels intended. The closest is Augustus Furst, who many assume is meant to be Reed Richards, though he's actually far more drawn from the interchangeable scientists of the Lee/Kirby monster stories more -- Reed is of that type, but wasn't the main model for the much-married, monster-hunting Augustus Furst, who has no powers himself but has accreted a family around him slowly, over decades of adventuring.
Many of the other characters are a similar jumble of influences, drawn from some perceived-by-me archetype or other -- Samaritan's early influences are my childhood flying dreams, a book called CATAPULT: HARRY AND I BUILD A SIEGE WEAPON by Jim Paul, a "generic" superhero call (I think) Captain Cash from a Neal-Adams-drawn magazine ad in comics form, Robert Mayer's SUPERFOLKS, Moses and BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY -- and maybe a little from a pin-up Leonard Starr did in SUPERMAN #400. With all that roiling around underneath, it's probably more understandable why I flinch when people assume he's just Superman again. [His cape, by the way, which was credited to Captain Marvel, comes simply from looking for imagery associated with his name, and an attempt to make him look _different_ from the other "flying strongmen" of comics history.]
In any case, my intent in the post above was more to explain why I'd chopped out whole sentences of the entry than to castigate people for liking the series enough to make such an extensive entry in the first place.
kdb