Name this comic

July 23, 2008 3:22 AM

A while back I remember reading a review of a comic/graphic novel. It was a superhero story but from the point of view of an ordinary person/people.

From what I can remember it told the story of the effects on an apartment building and its inhabitants from the consequences of a battle between two superheros... where what happened to the apartment building (blown up? knocked down? heavily damaged in some other way?) was a throw-away panel / plot point in another comic.

Anybody know what it was?

And, no, it's not Marvels.

posted by fearfulsymmetry to media & arts (12 comments total)

I feel like that ideas been done a few times, but I'm drawing mostly blanks.

Maybe World War Hulk: Frontline, or even Civil War: Frontline
posted by mad bomber what bombs at midnight at 3:45 AM on July 23, 2008

Astro City comes to mind.
posted by boy detective at 3:53 AM on July 23, 2008

I think I remember the one you're talking about, but I don't know what it was. I believe it was some years previous to the World War Hulk or Civil War stories. Was the apartment building hit by a battle between the Silver Surfer and some villain?
posted by tdismukes at 3:56 AM on July 23, 2008

Was the apartment building hit by a battle between the Silver Surfer and some villain?

Sounds about right...

It would have been at least a few years ago so well before WW Hulk or Civil War.

I seem to think it had painterly style/photo-realistic art to it, but I'm not certain... I did at first think Alex Ross but I can't find anything in his bio that matches
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:48 AM on July 23, 2008

I have the same memory of the Alex Ross style art. I think it might have been just a one-shot special of some kind.
posted by tdismukes at 5:47 AM on July 23, 2008

Not Scott McCloud's DESTROY!!, in which two superfriends fall out over a girl and destroy New York in the process?
posted by Hogshead at 5:54 AM on July 23, 2008

I'm seconding Astro City. Volume 2, issue 1 to be exact. Cover art by Alex Ross. Plot perfectly matches your description. Great title, worth reading the whole thing. It really complements the Powers/Top Ten line of books.
posted by Telf at 7:54 AM on July 23, 2008

There's an old Marvel comic called Damage Control. It's not great but kind of what you're describing. Damage Control is an organization of regular people whose job is to clean up the messes made in NYC and elsewhere by superhero battles. So if an apartment bldg. gets knocked down, they rebuild it. So you see superheros in these comics, but they're peripheral.
posted by nushustu at 7:59 AM on July 23, 2008

My guess is Marvels, a limited series drawn by Alex Ross and written by Kurt Busiek about major events of the Marvel universe from the perspective of the common man.

The inverse of it was Warren Ellis's Ruins which I found to be kind of a drag.
posted by X-Himy at 8:03 AM on July 23, 2008

Are you totally sure it's not Marvels? I ask only because physical damage to buildings caused by superhero battles definitely played a role there...
posted by ubersturm at 11:09 AM on July 23, 2008

Are you totally sure it's not Marvels?

Yeah, I've read Marvels quite recently and it did'nt match up to what I remembered of the review.

I'm seconding Astro City. Volume 2, issue 1 to be exact.

I was planning to read Astro City anyway, so I'll definitely check it out
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:43 PM on July 23, 2008

It's from Spider-Man's Tangled Web. Spider-Man and Electro smash into the apartment of two young boys. I have it in a TPB, but I believe it's issue #10.
posted by turaho at 2:33 PM on July 23, 2008