The Final Arc Begins in We Only Find Them When They’re Dead #11

The Final Arc Begins in We Only Find Them When They’re Dead #11 #comics #comicbooks

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The Brotherhood of Arrako have heard the challenge

Al Ewing & Joe Bennett: The Immortal Hulk Omnibus, Volume 4 (2022)

And I’ve just finished the Tarnished Angel arc, the whole comic’s been incredible so far and it definitely deserves it’s reputation, but there’s something that popped up during said arc, revolving around the villain of that arc, that I wanted to talk about. Spoilers ahead.

So, a lot of Astro City revolves around archetypes familiar to superhero comics and what influences said comics, and there’s plenty of direct shout-outs to existing creators in the city’s locations, sometimes related to the subject of the stories. A giant mountain called Mount Kirby, a streetpass named after Shuster, Kiefer Square named after Henry C.Kiefer, etc. During the Tarnished Angel arc, we’re following Steeljacket, our ex-con supervillain turned detective, as he’s trying to uncover who’s been killing supervillains in his hometown, and he ends up meeting an old superhero named Hidalgo, who used to be a Zorro / Batman / Oliver Queen type of character. The story hints at Hidalgo’s nature as Steeljacket lists the places he’s crossing before he’s taken to the mansion, referencing both Bob Kane (Batman’s bastard dad), as well as Walter Gibson (The Shadow),

And sidenote, it’s pretty funny that Steeljacket’s meeting this character at a place called Patterson Heights, considering James Patterson would write The Shadow about 25 years after the release of this story. But moving on,

It’s revealed that Hidalgo used to be a great hero who was distraught and tormented over his repeated failings and unpopularity and his growing awareness of his own problems, so he ended up hatching a plan. He had a mad scientist enemy of his named The Assemblyman create a giant rampaging robot he could easily defeat to win back the crowd;

(Man, that scientist’s haircut and goggles sure look familiar…)

It didn’t work, people died, and his involvement was discovered, which led to his downfall. Eventually Steeljacket encounters a mysterious robotic supervillain by the name of Conquistador, who’s been hiring villains from Steeljacket’s hometown Kiefer Square for one big job across the entire city. He very quickly figures out that it’s Hidalgo setting up a trap, and later, Hidalgo tells him he intends to kill all the villains under his employ in order to make a grand debut under a new identity. 

Eventually Steeljacket holds him off long enough for the heroes to arrive and stop him for good and so on. But just to recap here, here’s the story of Hidalgo / El Hombre / Conquistador:

He used to be a heroic masked vigilante who fought crime on the streets, explicitly modeled after the pulp heroes who would most heavily influence urban superheroes like Batman, but who eventually committed great failings and/or underwent terrible tragedies that caused them to “die”, in ways figurative and literal, and eventually be reborn as cybernetic supervillains.

(Images from Al Ewing’s El Sombra trilogy, and Venture Bros)

Is this enough of a pattern for this to be a thing? I don’t know why this keeps coming up, nevermind those times the actual Shadow was turned into a cyborg or was seemingly used as a basis for cyborg characters

(Pictures from Bob Morane and Yu-Gi-Oh)

(Covers from Andy Helfer’s Shadow run and Masks 2)

Why this? Why cyborgs specifically keep cropping up in these contexts? Wouldn’t vampires or ghosts make more sense? What is it with Dark Avenger pulp heroes and killer cyborgs? 

Something’s going on, man.