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. 

Superheroes III

(xxxv) Tom Veitch's and Bryan Talbot's The Nazz relates superpowers to yogic powers and superhero art to Indian religious art.

(xxxvi) Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels reviews the history of Marvel superheroes from the point of view of a newspaper photographer.

(xxxvii) Frank Miller's run on Daredevil presents Marvel characters realistically.

(xxxviii) Paul Dini's and Alex Ross' Superman: Peace on Earth presents photographic-like painted art and prose without speech balloons. It shows the limits of Superman's powers in relation to world hunger and military dictatorship.

It seems impossible to finish this list as other works recur to memory. The list so far has less Marvel because I have read more DC. It would make sense to sort the list into Alan Moore works, Superman-related works, Marvel characters etc.