What's it like to live in a city ruled by superheroes? Kurt Busiek's brilliant series Astro City tries to answer that question by focusing on the ordinary people whose lives are affected by epic battles fought in the skies. Busiek's stories, vibrantly illustrated by Brent Anderson, focus on such unlikely subjects as a bellman at an Astro City hotel, or a superhero's ex-girlfriend, or a young reporter who stumbles on a superheroic scoop. Busiek is currently in the middle of the longest story he's told yet, an ambitious counterhistory of the 1970s in America called The Dark Age, focusing on two brothers—Charles, a police officer, and Royal, a crook—who were orphaned when their parents died in the crossfire between superheroes and villains.

Unlike Heroes, Astro City lives squarely in the world of capes and tights. But at heart, Astro City shares with Heroes a fascination with the ways ordinary citizens confront the extraordinary.