Astro City #5: Reconnaissance Review
Medium: Comic
Release date: 12/1/1995
Review date: 11/3/2024
Score: 6/10
Alright, here’s “Astro City’s” first sort of miss for me, issue #5 “Reconnaissance.” This issue we follow an alien invader disguised as an old man known as Mr. Bridewell secretly observing the Astro City super community in order to report back to their invading fleet, with the alien known as Bridewell apparently being the one to decide when to broadcast if or when it's time to attack Earth. The issue ends up playing out kind of comedically as the alien flips between a grudging respect for the big name heroes of the city he observes from afar leading to a hesitation to alert the fleet, and an apoplectic rage at dealing with the day-to-day antics of the street level heroes the alien actually encounters leading to a desire to destroy the city. The concept is handled well enough, with Mr. Bridewell’s neighbor Eugene actually being the bumbling himbo super hero Crackerjack whose antics only further enrage and confound the extra terrestrial after individual observation - I just feel like the spark isn’t quite present this time around compared to past releases. Maybe it's just that comedy is harder to sell than the more normal super hero theatrics of previous issues, but tonally I just didn’t vibe with this one as much. “Reconnaissance” has plenty of super hero/villain name drops like other issues of Astro City, we hear about a Starwoman, a Quarrel 2, a Street Angel, a Roach (“My name is Palmetto!”), and a Jailbait (oof I don’t know about that one Kurt), which were fun to parse as always, but compared to the previous four issues I found “Reconnaissance” to be a little lacking, which in some ways is a relief; I’d been pretty positive on all the series’ previous issues and was starting to worry that I wasn’t judging the comic honestly, so good to get “Astro City’s” fallibility established too - they can’t all be winners.