The third piece of SteelJack's slow rise from grace, entitled "The Tarnished Angel," begins with several pages full of artwork at once handsome yet lifeless, accompanied by text which serves as little more than a tedious recap of the previous two issues (of course, it should be noted that the dismissal of "lifeless" is used only in relation to Anderson's normally breathtaking work.) SteelJack, after some Astro City Pale Ale -induced, Spawn Alley-esque brooding alongside an obscure old thug by the name of Ferguson, is introduced to this issue's chief narrator, one Esteban Rodrigo Suarez Hidalgo, a fourth generation millionaire who grows bored with financial office shackles and relocates to Los Angeles (the original birthplace of his family's wealth.) There, Esteban hopes to help and inspire his people, through charity work and a good moral example. At this point, SteelJack is unceremoniously demoted to a supporting role, nothing more than a background character who only speaks up every few pages to ask the narrator a question or remind the reader of his overall importance to the story.
Esteban tells of meeting the "disarmingly frank" Maria Luisa Alvarado, a charity fund director who is introduced to the story via its first noteworthy piece of dialogue, in which Maria playfully mocks Esteban's comfortable lifestyle in relation to that of the gang members to whom he preaches. Playful or not, Esteban takes Maria's teasing to heart in typical Bruce Wayne fashion, and so, with typical, determined Bruce Wayne logic (and virtually no script transition), he becomes Honor Guard member El Hombre, "...the daring masked adventurer...honor, justice and truth...laughing rogue who feared no evil...stop at nothing to set wrongs right..." (et ceteras, et ceteras... Insert Standard, Generic Superhero Line Here, in other words.)Things eventually improve, however, as Busiek sneaks in a brief, original, touching and thrilling look at race, power and betrayal. A young political activist excites Esteban's commUNITY by appealing to their collective, mutual dissatisfaction and fury with their oppressive, white upper class neighbors. This unity drives a painful gap between the open-minded El Hombre and those he wishes to protect, as the young gang members and criminals accuse El Hombre of being a willing servant to the whims and wishes of the oppressors ("The Silver Agent tell you to keep us out of his neighborhood?")
Quick cut to further fast, shallow, poorly-developed superhero traditions, as an angry child is taken in by El Hombre to become Robin -er, Bravo. Perhaps Busiek skims through such sections because he fears it would be redundant for readers to endure an in-depth retelling of "Batman's" origin, but one could argue that A) The Confessor (among other intentionally familiar heroes in the city) managed to be both a loving tribute and an innovative and exciting new combination of spandex seasonings, and therefore the very Zorro-like El Hombre may have had potential which was simply unexplored or neglected, as well, or B) Busiek is free to do his Batman and Zorro tributes, but he should not bother if he is going to simply cop out on the character development and the emotional intrigue of the "human" in his newest superhuman. After all, the only thing potentially more dull than a shoddy "tribute" to a sixty-year-old original character is any failed attempt to tell a new story about said original character, and yet the past decade has given us some of the most stunning and original Batman stories of all time (based on a character who had already been explored by countless writers for many decades)...if an aging character can still be handled so adoringly and brilliantly, then surely a tribute to that aging character deserves to be treated with similar respect and imagination.Instead, we quickly lose the issue's first intriguing character (besides SteelJack, who is not only already established but-- in this issue, at least-- mostly ignored); after but a handful of short panels, the bratty, flirting, insightful Maria marries the same activist who inadvertently (?) turned the community against El Hombre, and with that, she is gone. Then, as if to reward us for our continued patience, we are finally given a real reason to to relate to El Hombre, to sympathize with him and hope the best for him. Faced with the devastating realization that he is an insignificant addition to the Honor Guard as well as an essentially useless, possibly offensive "hero" to his own people, he immediately becomes someone to pity, to rally behind.
But our support for El Hombre bears no effect on the wisdom of his decisions, and, like Steeljack, he proves unable to live up to his own potential. In desperation, he contacts the supervillain the Assemblyman and asks for his help, which shows that perhaps his heroics were less a labor of love than a need to be seen as a good man. This is where issue #16 is at its strongest: challenging the nature of heroism, examining the true face of Hero, which is obviously often more selfish and insecure than the mask would lead us to believe.Karma curses El Hombre with a much-deserved betrayal and a number of tragic, undeserved deaths. Finally, a last squeeze of lemon on the whole destructive tragedy: the Honor Guard comes along to clean up El Hombre's mess, and his dark, dejected, disgraced desperation becomes public knowledge after the Assemblyman is captured and tells everything he knows.
--Though it is not an important piece of the story, we must focus for a moment on yet more legible newspaper articles in the pages of Astro City (English and Spanish this time); detail like this is rare indeed, and flattering to readers--El Hombre is through, though Esteban is safe. Bravo makes another appearance, and though it is brief it proves to be one of the more striking elements of the story, which ultimately ends on a sad note, as Esteban is still a broken man after sharing his tale. There seems to have been little therapy involved in his sharing.
This initially disappointing issue proved to be an exception in a number of ways. First, for a book which usually lacks in inspirational scripting, it certainly challenged the reviewer to select one final, elegant quote from the mass of nearly perfect options. Also, though there was little to look forward to in the cover illustration of El Hombre and Bravo (El Hombre, a visual combination of Zorro and Crackerjack, did not seem to fit into SteelJack's arc) we were not subjected to a swashbuckling, smartass spandex stud beating on minions all issue, but instead treated to a haunting and human flashback which eventually fleshed out El Hombre much more deeply than early pages would have led the reader to believe. More importantly, though, El Hombre's story made one of Astro City's most fascinating and believable characters all the more powerful, as Busiek drew obvious yet satisfying connections between Esteban and SteelJack toward issue's end.Though there is little in the way of plot progression in the cleverly titled "Tarnished Angel," the reader will still be eager for #17, for though this issue's end is a mild and pleasant one, with no real action or climax, we are left with more of SteelJack's same honest, understandable fear that closed the last segment so well, and also, there is still the curious and mysterious matter of Ferguson to explore (the reader will most definitely know his role by the end of this issue, and, like the reviewer, the reader will most certainly be wrong...remember Confessions, the story everyone had figured out about a dozen times before it finally ended?)
This was yet another issue of Astro City which took a lame looking gimmick (an animated lion, a human locomotive, a Zorro ripoff) and made it exciting and powerful, and issue seventeen will concern the arrival of the unlikely character, the Mock Turtle...Somehow, I suspect we need not worry.
Overall Rating: 9.3 Out of 10 (it would have rated higher, perhaps even close to perfect, were it not for the sludge-by-numbers style of the first third or so... ultimately very glorious and lean, deep and fun... read it.) R.I.Y.L. InHUMANs, Marvels, Zorro, The heart behind the hunt. Pop Culture Parallel- Dead Kennedys- Where Do You Draw the Line? (another great look at the relation between power and corruption, good intentions and selfishness.)"Honor Guard had recently begun licensing its members' images, donating the proceeds to charity- and I don't know what wounded me more- the discovery that my t-shirts and dolls were the least popular- or the discovery that the sales of such trinkets actually mattered to me."
E-mail the reviewer Back To HomeVol. 2, Issue #18
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