At one point, Moses is compared explicitly to Batman. It's a jarring, campy moment. Then again, Moses could do worse. Batman is the most complex figure in the Justice League, and the most urban.

And what could be better suited to a graphic novel than images of a city? Balez, the illustrator, renders New York in an appealing palette of browns, ochres, grays, and tans, punctuated by blazes of deep orange. Meanwhile, fashions evolve along with Moses' career, right up to the point when his passers-by appropriately look like extras from Mad Men, heading to Moses' Lincoln Center after a long day at Sterling Cooper, and then over his Triborough Bridge (whosetolls funded much of his work) to their homes near Rockaway Park, which Moses developed.

But those defeats led to a cascade of rebukes and demotions as Moses finally proved vulnerable and politicians caught on to other ideas. New York may have been Moses' city for most of the 20th century. These days, though, we are living in Jane Jacobs' world. In the end, the pictures and speech bubbles of Robert Moses ask, who is the real hero: the builder, or the writer?