The Shining City
Posted by: Steven Perez in comics, tags: astro city, brilliance, chew it quesada and didio, confession, no one ever forgets
Like an itch that never really goes away, my recent posts on the current plague of the comic book crossover (one of which has been chewed up by the blog monster when my site went Chernobyl) had something tugging at the corner of my memory, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The storylines that I harangued against – CIVIL WAR (and its sequel SECRET INVASION) and FINAL CRISIS – vexed me so, almost as if I had seen them before, which, given the cannibalistic nature of comic book writing, probably would be a safe bet.
I looked back through the crate of comic books I still had, searching for a clue to what I had missed, when the penny dropped.
Yep, here it is. Over 200 pages of complete and total awesome. Imagine some mad genius taking all of the strum and drang of CIVIL WAR and SECRET INVASION, boiling away the shite and polishing the gleaming metal to a brilliant luster and then adding a moving coming-of-age story to the mix. THAT is CONFESSION. All the ideas and mega-fights you ever wanted to see, plus stuff that makes you think long after you’re done reading the story.
Oh, and did I mention the 1/2 issue included at the end?
Sixteen perfect pages that show how to write a coda to a universe-changing event. Oh, and it was given away as a promotion. As a lifelong comic book reader, I say that, if DC can do no better with all their many hundreds of pages to compile a suitable coda to CRISIS than this little gem, then they can hang it up and sell the company for scrap.
Two major crossovers, done in by a 208-page graphic novel that I’d be willing to bet that precious few comic book readers have even heard of.
Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.
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