I never got around to buying/reading the last few AstroCity collections, and it turned out that they're now all available on Hoopa as part of the Metro Book collections, so I checked out the final volume. The framing story is that of a mysterious blue-skinned character known as the Broken Man. It turns out that he's the last of a series of historical supernatural characters that embody music. This gives Busiek a chance to explore the history of Astro City and its previous incarnations.
Unlike the first few AstroCity volumes, which focus on the mundane characters living in AstroCity, this one is truly focused on the superheroes. What I like about the heroes is that these are all really quirky characters. One is literally the figment of his daughter's imagination (unfortunately, I got exposed to the same idea in Kurt Busiek's Creature of the Night). Another is an amulet that confers the power of a bonded animal with the human it's attuned to. This one was fun, because the amulet got bonded with a Corgi puppy. The result was hilarious (imagine a superhero being told how adorable and cute he is after saving the day).
One great mundane story was a follow up to a story told in the first volume of Astro City where a man lost his wife as a result of a time changing battle between heroes and a volume, and as a result his wife never existed. In that story, he was given the choice to forget her and absorb himself into his new timeline or to remember both time lines. In this story, we see the followup consequences of that. It was a great story.
I enjoyed the book. It kinda ends tentatively --- we never see what happens to the Broken Man. I get the impression Busiek abandoned Astro City because his other contracts were more lucrative. It's a unique universe, however, so I hope he comes back to it.
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