Kurt Busiek's Astro City: The Annotations

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              KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY VOL. 2, #14
                        The Big Lockdown
                                
                       Narrator: Steeljack
                        Date: March? 1998
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Cover:    Steeljack being escorted out of prison.

1/1:      First appearance of Steeljack/The Steel-Jacketed Man.
          Steeljack is visually based on American actor Robert
          Charles Durman Mitchum (1917-1997), star of movies such
          as "The Night Of The Hunter" and "The Story of GI Joe".
          Many of Mitchum's roles resembled Steeljack.

 /2:      The flying figure is Starwoman.

3/1:      Here the flying figure is Winged Victory.

4/3:      Like Kiefer Street (see Vol.1 #4, 2/1), Kiefer Square is
          a reference to artist Henry C Kiefer. Unlike Kiefer
          Street, which is on Shadow Hill, Kiefer Square is in
          Chesler.

5/3:      First references to the Chain and Block and Tackle. A
          newspaper article in Vol.1 #3, 6-7/1 implicates the Blue
          Knight in several murders, which #8, 5/1 appears to
          confirm. It would appear from the comment here that those
          the Blue Knight murdered may have been supervillains.

 /5:      First appearance of the Scarlet Snake.

8/5:      First reference to Dr Ganss.

10/1:     "I swan" is slang for "I swear". According to the Oxford
          English Dictionary, its origins are in north England,
          though it is probably more commonly associated with the
          American south. Jack-In-The-Box I is using it here to
          humorous effect.

14/1:     The calendar in the background may date this story to
          March 1998, though it may also be a generic (ie month-
          independent) calendar.

16/2:     Samaritan is counting the seconds between stops, as he
          was seen doing in Vol.1 #1.

22/3:     First reference to Handgun.



Release History:
Version 1.1 released 11th July 1998
Version 1.0 released  5th July 1998

Notes:
Citation format is page/panel. For instance, 18/1 refers to page
18, panel 1. Two-page spreads are treated as a single "page" for
the purpose of panel enumeration; for example, 6-7/3 refers to the
third panel on a spread covering pages 6 and 7. Issue number is
included if different from the issue being annotated, with issues
from Volume 1 specified as such.

KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY, its prominent characters and their
likenesses are trademarks of Juke Box Productions. All quoted text
is copyright Juke Box Productions.

Additions, corrections and comments should be sent to the editor.
Reproduction of these annotations, in whole or in part, without the
permission of the editor is forbidden.

Annotations for other issues of KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY may be
found at http://strindberg.ling.uu.se/~anders/KBAC/main.html
(HTMLized versions) and http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/kbac/ (text
versions).

Sources:
"Who's Who In Astro City" (http://www.bonner.rice.edu/morrow/kbac/
kbacww.html)

Contributors:
Shannon Patrick Sullivan, shannon@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (editor)
Kurt Busiek, kurtbusiek@aol.com
David Meadows, david@goldenheroes.softnet.co.uk
Tony R. Rose, trrose@libaxp.ualr.edu
Elayne Weschler-Chaput, firehead@panix.com