Uncertain, Fugitive, Half-fabulous

Astro Boy is, at its best, part Superman and part X-Men (back in the day X-Men), with a healthy facade of slapstick comic strip.

Astro Boy is the original, formative character who really gave birth to a bunch of genres and set what the medium itself would be used for in the future. He's also super strong and can fly, with a bunch of other powers that are hard to keep track of. What's more, he's not human and never will be, and kind of wants to be, but in a way this makes him more human than the rest of us. So yeah, the Superman parallels are definitely clear.

Where X-Men aspect comes in is far more obvious in Volume 2 than Volume 1. Astro Boy lives in a world of humans and robots, and the robots-as-second-class-citizens thing is done in a at-times understated, but very good way. Tezuka never beats you over the head with the comparison, and keeps things light, but like the X-Men, robots can stand in for most victims of intolerance.

For example, in one of Volume 2's stories, Astro goes to a fictitious country that has just become the first place in the world to elect a robotic president, but his election has left a large part of the untrusting human populace uneasy (awfully timely for something written in 1960, huh?). In the other large story in this volume, one famous, high profile robot supposedly committing crimes has humans ready to repeal laws that let robots have electronic brains that give them as much free will as humans, letting one convince them that all are just as bad. Again, pretty relevant stuff hidden away as part of a kid's action adventure story.

(As a fun side-note, in the first volume, Asimov-like rules for robots are explained. But in this volume, one begins to get the feeling that these rules--"don't hurt humans" and the like--are more moral taboos for robots than they are ingrained imperatives. Astro Boy will definitely knock a motherfucker out when he has to, and he even tries to convince the aforementioned robot president to go ahead and arrest and punish humans who are trying to kill him.)

Anyway, when Astro Boy comics are just fun (and funny) they're still very good, but when these little allegories creep in, the series is really at its best.