Astro City II #10: “Show 'Em All”

This review was commissioned by @Alitur.


My but I've been doing a lot of comics recently. I'm not complaining, though. It was never really my intent to be a primarily anime-focused liveblogger; things just sort of worked out that way. And, at least recently, the comics I've been looking at have been quality. I expect that trend to continue today, since the last Astro City issue I read was excellent.

Between the title and the cover art, it seems likely we're looking at a supervillain protagonist.

He kinda reminds me of Vermin Supreme, just a little bit. Well, let's see what his story is and whether or not he manages to show 'em all.

Open on a secure facility. Soldiers with contragravity boots that let them walk across walls and ceilings as well as floors are guarding it, with the help of an advanced system of smart cameras, pressure sensors, and telemetry. This place has been broken into before, apparently, and security has received a significant boost since then. But, it's still not quite secure enough to deter the Junkman!

He confidently foils the locks, sensors, and alarms, while using his hoverboots to bypass the pressure plates. When he reaches the vault (I guess this is a bank, probably?), he does some kind of trick using an etch-a-sketch to pick the lock, and hauls the loot away in a series of black garbage bags.

It's not clear what the loot IS exactly. Presumably money or gold bars, if this actually is a bank. If this is some kind of supertech warehouse or the like though, then it could be just about anything. It takes him several trips to move all the loot; he's one elderly man working alone, and the hoverboots don't really help with the strain on his arms and back. He muses to himself that he's going to be in considerable pain for some time after this, but it will be well worth it. He carries the bags to his garbage truck parked out back, and prepares to make his escape. A superhero named Jack-In-The-Box leaps by as he gets in the driver's seat, but doesn't seem to notice the crime in progress. Or, if he does notice it, he's got something more important to deal with at present.

I do love the slogan on Junkman's truck. Although...using a garbage truck as your cover when you let yourself be known as “the Junkman” might be a wee bit obvious.

Jack-In-The-Box, it turns out, is Junkman's longtime nemesis, so he's very glad to have escaped notice by him this time. After driving back to his high tech villain lair hidden in one of Astro City's landfills, he reminisces on their history. He also feels a great deal of extremely smug satisfaction in reading about the bank robbery in the morning papers some hours later; nobody seems to even suspect that this was a Junkman op, instead making wild speculations about more powerful and violent foreign-based supercrime cartels.

The delight with which Junkman goes over this particular detail with makes it seem like he planned for it. Like, maybe he's been playing easy on Astro City's police and superheroes up until now, so that they wouldn't think to pursue Junkman leads in connection to this very tightly executed crime.

Anyway, the Junkman - Hiram Potterstone - worked for most of his life at the same engineering firm. When his termination came, it did so unexpectedly, and he did not take it gracefully.

Hmm. Well, while that's certainly sad for him, I can only imagine that a guy who's been doing stable work as an engineer for decades is at least pretty financially secure and able to pursue his inventions more or less independently. I wouldn't really call this something worth turning supervillain over.

He looked for other jobs at other engineering firms, but no one wanted to hire a sixty year old. It...seems like he should be able to just start his own damned company, with the skill and experience he clearly has. Not everyone has the mentality to be an entrepreneur, sure, but if you have the personality to launch your own supervillain career I feel like starting a company would also be up your alley. Apparently not though. More than anything, it seems like he takes this rejection personally, and is motivated less by frustration and more by sheer, petty spite at being said no to. So, he became the Junkman; thrown away like trash, and now coming back for revenge.

...

Let's all take a moment and shed a tear for the generation of white boomer men who have to deal with ageism after decades of high-paying work and comfortable retirements.

...

His first few heists were draws, at best. Astro City has a high concentration of superheroes, and while he did occasionally manage to pull something off he was never able to keep the loot for long. That Jack-In-The-Box hero in particular seems to have a knack for tracking down stolen treasure before it can be made to disappear, and on multiple occasions Potterstone had to go to ground and let his prizes be taken back.

But, this time is different! After years of not-terribly-successful villainy, he's managed to misdirect his opponents and squirrel the stolen money away in Cayman Islands account. Potterstone is spitefully thrilled that everyone is assuming that younger, sexier supervillains must have pulled off this bank robbery, and dismissing the Junkman as a likely culprit.

So, he flies down to Brazil, a newly made multimillionaire, to start properly enjoying his retirement.

He isn't in Brazil for more than a few weeks, though, before a conversation with one of his escorts ruins it for him. The news is covering some superhero's latest superheroics, and the girl and the other hotel lounge inhabitants are cheering. Potterstone starts talking shit about capes, about how they aren't all that, etc. The girl says "dude they literally saved us from aliens last week," and rather than acquiescing Potterstone just starts going on about how they still have no leads on the Astro City bank robbery.

Holy fuck how conceited is this guy.

The girl and a passing waiter assure Potterstone that they're sure the heroes will find out who did it yet. They always do, in the end. If not for this, then they'll get the culprit for something else. Potterstone's face darkens.

That conversation apparently ruined the entire city for him. This fucking guy I swear.

He goes to France next. Then Spain. Then Italy. Then Japan. Doing everything he ever wanted, in his own words. Going by the imagery, everything he ever wanted consists pretty much entirely of beaches and hookers. But, no matter where he went, he couldn't escape the idolization of young superheroes doing very important things that don't involve his smalltime ass.

He loses his enjoyment in the travels and sensual indulgence. He stops being happy with the money he's sitting on. In his words, each travel destination starts to feel like a hiding place or a disguise, rather than a victory retirement. He sees the young heroes being celebrated, and it feels like they're winning and he's losing. What's the point in getting away with it if nobody knows? He didn't want to beat them, or at least not just. He wanted to show them.

Not long after, Potterstone flies to the United States, and Junkman robs a bank in Detroit. This time, his execution is less flawless, and an alarm gets triggered. It's implied, though not made explicit, that he did this on purpose. When a hero - local Detroit bigshot MPH, a speedster type - arrives onscene, Potterstone has a gadget on hand specifically designed to disable him. Magnetically charged ball bearings that stick to the hero's magnetic field that he produces when speeding, and cover him so thickly that he can barely move at all. The cops aren't far behind MPH, but Junkman is less worried about them.

He only got a fraction of what he would have wanted to steal, but the money isn't the point anymore.

The next target is a jewelry store in New Orleans. The local hero who confronts him here is a bit sharper, and interdicts Junkman on the rooftops before he can even reach the store. This time, Potterstone escalates massively. He doesn't have anything that can disable this guy, but he can do something else. He tosses what looks like an inflatable beach inner tube, that quickly inflates to a monstrously large size. And, well...

The text clarifies that the gas inside of the inner tube is easy to neutralize, all the hero needs to do is electrify it with his trademark lightning powers. But that said, it was hardly a bluff. The gas actually is deadly, and would have breached and killed people if the hero hadn't devoted his full attention to it.

Potterstone wasn't exactly a sympathetic protagonist to begin with, but as far as supervillains go he seemed relatively harmless. More of a threat to financial institutions than to people. Now he seems like a full blown sociopath.

No money or jewelry at all, as it turns out. But still. He panicked a major city, and escaped the grasp of its main hero while humiliating him with a silly-looking hostage bomb. The jewelry would have been a nice bonus, but it wasn't the main objective.

He's all over the news now. And, better yet, they've started putting the Junkman's newfound competence and escalation together with the unsolved Astro City bank robbery from several months ago. Good. Though it annoys Potterstone that the news is still devoting far too much attention to the heroes trying to stop him than it is to Junkman himself.

Even though, you know, the New Orleans lightning guy saved people from death while also preventing Junkman from reaching the jewelry store in the first place, thus preventing the crime from even happening.

It's pretty clear at this point that nothing will ever be enough for Potterstone. He's just punishing the world for his own aging.

Anyway, he's still got more plans.

He's hitting the AstroBank tower; the same place he robbed half a year ago. The building's security has had yet another upgrade, but not a huge difference. He ever recognizes the scratches on the same access hatch that he used to enter the tower last time. The equipment he's bringing, is likewise mostly the same as what he used five months ago. Naturally, Jack-In-The-Box is waiting for him right there.

I didn't have a clear enough look at him until now, but Jack is clown-themed. Big red nose and everything. I wonder if this played a role in the development of Potterstone's aggrieved entitlement. He wanted everyone to respect him, but kept getting foiled by a literal clown.

So, Junkman tries to use some immobilizing foam grenades, but Jack manages to dodge them, and grab Junkman's satchel full of gadgets. It looks like Junkman may have dropped the satchel intentionally, but I'm not sure. In either case, without his supply of gadgets he's unable to either fight or escape Jack-In-The-Box, who takes him down quickly.

As he tackles him to the ground, Jack asks him why the hell he came back here. He'd gotten away with a huge fortune. Why would he dive back in and risk capture again? Let alone hitting the same target with the same method, when the law had already put the last incident together with Junkman's MO and it had been in the papers? Potterstone just facetiously says "yes, why indeed, I must be an idiot" and reaches for a concealed weapon, forcing Jack to tase him. With his clown nose. His clown nose is a taser.

In jail awaiting his court date, Potterstone listens to the news and reads the papers. They've found his old junkyard lair, picked up his civilian identity's trail, raided his hotel room. They've found everything except the money, and that likely won't take them long to recover as well after this point. Potterstone lays in his cell, and looks smugly content.

Court date rolls around. The prosecutor has an easy case, and enough evidence to explain not only how Potterstone did all his crimes, but also speculate as to why. In a presentation that puts all the emphasis on Potterstone and how crafty he is, and lavishes attention on his personal details.

Potterstone sits next to his defense attorney, who is pretty much just phoning it in due to the strength of the case against the defendant. He's just waiting for the defense to rest, before he activates the devices he installed in the courthouse before his arrest.

The "you are now leaving astro city" sign at the end might suggest that his escape is successful. On the other hand, they know all his tricks at this point, and that he's tricky, and they also know his real name and appearance. I wouldn't be surprised if Jack or his friends were waiting just outside the building, expecting him to have done something like this, and even if not I doubt he'll make it far. He's good at what he does, but he's been foiled multiple times before his first successful theft, and not all of his mistakes since then appear to have been intentional.

However, even if he gets recaptured, so what? It still gets him more attention. As long as he gets that, he'd probably be happy to just drag this out for however many years he has remaining to him.

The end.


There's a particular social pathology that makes people want to be worshipped. You can find it all over the world, and within any demographic. But, for some reason, it seems to have become incredibly, disproportionately common among white American men over the last half century. And, it isn't just a case of the most ignored and downtrodden going mad for want of the attention their peers get, either. It's a common thread you can follow from teenaged school shooters all the way up to high profile federal office holders. It hadn't gotten so pervasive and unignorable yet in 1996 when this comic was written, but it was visible.

The generational conflict is also something that hits harder today than it probably would have when this issue came out. The spite the world war two aged Potterstone feels toward the Gen X aged heroes is almost like a dry run of the modern hatred between boomers and Y or Z's. America's celebration of youth is definitely one of the causes of this; Potterstone's complaints about ageism are at least somewhat on point, even if he got way the fuck too bent out of shape over it. But it's not JUST that.

Of course, putting the focus on Potterstone's grievances takes it away from places where he might not be so eager to be examined. For instance, why doesn't he have a family or friends? Moderately successful, lifelong engineer. He was certainly secure and stable, socioeconomically speaking. But he's not only single and childless, but also doesn't have any close FRIENDS who he wanted to spend time with in his retirement? No one besides prostitutes that he wanted the company of during his world travels? No one he misses in Astro City?

Everything points to Potterstone having always been an empty, narcissistic shell of a person who wants everyone else's respect and attention but never gave any in return. No interest in any sort of relationship that isn't exclusively centered on him. He was like that long before his forcible retirement and the beginning of his supervillain career.

Really, if it weren't for the New Orleans incident I could just be slightly pitying of this poor old fool. With his willingness to put lives at risk for the sake of his egomania, though, he's pretty much just a monster. A very common, very banal kind of monster who's learned how to game the system to make themselves seem both more interesting and more sympathetic than they actually are. Garbage.