Inspecteur Ruiz

Stepping out of the richly textured world Kurt Busiek and Brent E. Anderson built in Kurt Busiek's Astro City, Inspecteur Ruiz made their debut in 1999 — right in the thick of that landmark series' celebrated run — and has kept a quiet but persistent presence in Astro City's pages ever since, turning up across a quarter century of stories. It's a testament to the depth of Astro City's world-building that a character like Ruiz shares the stage with figures as memorable as Steeljack, The Silver Agent, and Cleopatra, inhabiting the street-level texture that makes this universe feel so genuinely lived-in. For collectors who love the idea that a great superhero city is populated by far more than its headliners, Ruiz is exactly the kind of discovery that rewards digging into the full run.