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Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's long-running Astro City series ended in 2018 with issue #50, but the plan at the time was to continue their story as original graphic novels (OGNs). And while two years have passed, that's still the plan - and news about the superhero series' return is expected "very soon."
"I've got a bunch of other stuff in the works, and there was lots of pandemic-related upheaval there, too," Busiek tells Newsarama. "What I've been telling people who ask is 'We hope to be making some exciting announcements soon,' and I think 'soon' might be very soon — but it's not quite here yet, so that’s all I can really say."
Originally launched in 1995 as a creator-owned series, Astro City follows the superheroes, supervillains, and regular civilians who live in and around the fictional metropolis of Astro City. In the past 25 years, over 100 issues have been released - and have been collected in 17 collected editions to date.
In the final years of the Astro City comic book series, a majority of its sales came from the collected editions and digital versions - not the serialized comic book. DC Black Label Executive Editor Mark Doyle brought up the idea to switch to OGNs in 2018, arguing (according to Busiek) that since the graphic novel format sells the most, "why not do it in that format first, and put the prime solicitation and promotion into the form that most people will be reading it in?"
"This way, we can do longer stories without the need to get them published 24 pages a month, which is good, because we've got a number of them built up we've been wanting to get to," Busiek told Newsarama 2018. "And as long as we're getting enough pages done per month, we don't have to hit that 24-page finish line every four weeks or so; we can do it at the speed it needs, and if we get a 200-page book done one year and a 180-page book done the next, that's fine; it's not like we have to get have to get 288 pages done every year, which we did under the monthly system."
Look for news of Astro City's return here at Newsarama.
