Astro City

Years ago, a fellow comics fan said he would lend me Astro City. I had never heard of it and thought he meant an Argo City mini. I read some of the collections but not all eight and certainly not the Dark Age or the Silver Agent. The first run was 59 issues. I thought that the collections were superb, a really fresh take on superheroes: what it would be like for ordinary people living in a city where there are superheroes and a haunted suburb. The Superman equivalent has not space traveled from a destroyed planet but time traveled from a prevented future.

There were unexpected details like:

Astro City still has Superman and Batman as fictitious characters;
a cartoon anthropomorphic animal is literally animated and signs up for new media presentations like ads etc;
people picnic on the flat roof of a skyscraper to watch a super-powered battle overhead.

I have got no 1 of the new run from Vertigo but am not sure where this is going yet. Hopefully, it will be as good as the earlier series. I am contemplating buying the collections, which apparently are among those works that are always in print, after I have completed Garth Ennis' The Boys.