The Nearness of You

Sorry, no clever use of quotes for today's post, just the title of today's topic. Today, I want to talk about one of the most brilliant issues of a comic ever, Astro City 1/2, "The Nearness of You." This was given away as a freebie with Wizard Magazine back in 1996 or 1997 (I can't remember which year for certain), and it was written by Kurt Busiek. It is hands down one of the most elegant books I've ever read, and I'm going to show you a little bit of that.

First off, this book deals with the subject of retcons. For those not familiar with the term, a retcon means "retroactive continuity"; that is, a change in a comic's storyline that affects events that have already happened. One of the most argued retcons in recent memory would be the Spider-Man storyline, "One More Day," wherein a deal was made with Mephisto (Marvel's resident devil) to erase Peter Parker & Mary Jane's marriage in order to save the life of Peter's Aunt May. These retcons can be big or small, and sometimes, the littlest ones can have a greater impact than expected, as we'll see in this story.

When the story opens, we see a man named Michael dreaming about a beautiful woman. He knows everything about her, but yet he knows that he never met her.
His "memories" and daydreams of her start impacting his life: his boss threatens to fire him because he messes up, a date gets angry with him for seeming so distant. He starts wondering if he's going insane because he just cannot get this mystery woman out of his mind.

He calls all his family and friends to see if they remember her, but not a one of them does. Fed up with his inability to sleep, he starts taking sleeping pills; unfortunately, they don't help him for very long.

One night, he starts to take extra sleeping pills, just so he can forget her, when he has an unexpected visitor: the Hanged Man. The Hanged Man is the guardian of Shadow Hill and is closely related to all supernatural events in the city. He shows Michael a series of events from Astro City's past.

A villain called Time-Keeper tried to rob a bank in 1943 but was foiled by superheroes. In his rage, Time-Keeper created a device that allowed him to alter the time stream; Eterneon, Lord of Time, tries to stop him, but to no avail. Time-Keeper starts altering time, but it gets out of his control and time starts to fragment and people and even Astro City start disappearing. Michael doesn't see every aspect of this event and of the battle that raged to heal the time stream; he does see that the heroes managed to save the day.

Through the Hanged Man's visions of the past, Michael comes to realize that his mystery woman was a real person who died in the time maelstrom. Hanged Man tells him that she was his wife and that the reconstruction of the time line was not exact. Through the reconstruction, her grandparents wound up never meeting because a hero and his villains fought on a Sunday instead of a Monday. One little change caused her to never be born. He tells Michael that it's beyond his powers to bring her back, but that he can make it so Michael doesn't remember her any more.

Like I said, this is hands down one of the most beautiful and moving stories of any comic I have ever read. The imagery of the mystery woman is so compelling, and Michael's choice not to forget her breaks my heart every time. If you can find it, I completely endorse getting it, as I do all of the main Astro City title (not so much Dark Age, but it's still a good read). I'm about to start a reread of Astro City, so you'll be seeing more of it here.

And that's it for today. I apologize for the short post, but I'm under the weather. Hopefully, there will be more in tomorrow's post.