Fantasy requires a certain sense of atmosphere and wonder to work; I think pop culture has gotten too comfortable with various genre tropes to automatically create a sense of real magic when these supposedly magical creatures pop up in a narrative. As a premise, the whole Urban Fantasy thing has lost a lot of its power; maybe it's time "fantastical" started to mean "imaginative" again.

Because that's the other thing about cultural osmosis: what starts small can become overwhelming, and it's too easy to follow along in everyone else's footsteps. Originality is what wins out in the long run. Rat Queens is rather amusing, but it's hard to imagine it lingering in anyone's memory. It's the result of absorption rather than the kind of thing that gets absorbed.

Still there's no getting around it; this kind of space opera nonsense just plain works, at least to a certain subset of the nerd population of whom I am definitely a part. For all the disappointments we've been handed under the Star Wars banner"and all the disappointments likely to come"there's a reason people keep returning to it. This kind of strange new vantage point is the kind of thing that reminds us of how deeply Star Wars still has its hooks in us.

While both script and art occasionally veer into chaotic territory"I'm not clear on who these guys who are shooting at Fox and Sissy one moment and riding alongside them the next are supposed to be"it's an effectively hypnotic and compelling tale, suitable for reading round a campfire in any era.

This is all a lot more experimental than I would have expected for this series, and I think that's a very good thing. As rich and deep as the world of Astro City is, and as happily as I would continue to read about it for decades, there's been a sense for a while now that Busiek and co. have said all they really need to say with this series, and the rest is just filling in the details. But since the Broken Man arc started, Astro City has felt weirdly refreshed, which was particularly needed after the extensive and somewhat exhausting "Dark Age" storyline. Rather than building to bigger and bigger crescendos, the series is suddenly moving sideways and reinventing itself for the modern era. Given how many times it's seemed like Busiek was on the verge of abandoning this series altogether, it's heartening to see it's still capable of surprises.

I'm sure Slott, of whom I'm a fan, will turn this into something clever and entertaining. But as I've hopefully conveyed by now, the real appeal of this issue isn't what's going to happen. It exists, zen-like, as an artifact unto itself, something to look at and marvel at, even beyond Allred's typically ideosyncratic artwork. I missed his work on the FF books and elsewhere in the Marvel U., but his classic creation Madman has some of the same dreamlike spirit of the old Silver Age comics, and he's, wonderfully, managed to transfer some of that into the Marvel Universe with Silver Surfer.

But for all that"and I agree with it, to some extent"Sandman remains a masterwork, and this comic shows every sign of fitting right in with the old stuff. I can't even pretend to be objective about it, as is hopefully clear by now, but this sure as hell doesn't feel like a disappointment or a desecration of a classic. It feels like Sandman returning, as if it's never been away. Suddenly, it's right back where it started, and whatever the existential problems for the character, for the reader, it can only be a delight.