Giffen/deMatteis Team Saves the DC Universe from Suck

[Myasishchev]

In which I review Keith Giffen and J.M. deMatteis' arrival on DC Comics' Booster Gold.

Quick syllabus: Booster Gold. Blue Beetle. Mr. Miracle. Big Barda. Martian Manhunter. In the 1990s. Future Maxwell Lord involved somehow. And fighting in space. Against an alien sorceror named Hieronymus the Underachiever. NEED I SAY MORE?

Long version:

They may have only started with issue 33, but Booster Gold is fucking back. He was never physically gone (not even during Fifty-Two--spoiler alert! for a five year old comic), but I could never get really excited by Johns' or Jurgens' Booster Gold books.

Even Johns' Blue and Gold arc, which was good and as well-intentioned as Geoff Johns gets these days, was not--not really--the book I actually wanted. Maybe it was my own JLI-goggles, but, you know, if I'm buying a book with Booster Gold and Blue Beetle in it, I'm sort of expecting, you know, laughs. Fun. More than one joke that totally worked. (And bear in mind that joke was "Come with me if you want to live," which is funny, sure, but aside from originality issues, it was a lonely little gag.)

But where was the patter? The rapid-fire dialogue style? The light-hearted-fun-that-could-turn-into-blood-curdling-tragedy at a moment's notice? Well, that's vested in the persons of Keith Giffen and J.M deMatteis. They are back, and they are on.

A couple of caveats here: I am an on-and-off follower of comics these days, for reasons of time and money and also, unfortunately, a perception of decreased quality of output. But a lot of times things just pass me by entirely, because I am dumb and lazy. I deserve my own circle of hell for letting the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle book drop off my radar before his series ever began, and there's Giffen's Justice League: Generation Lost, which I assume is awesome until Judd Winick's taint takes over that book.

I can guarantee, however, that the G/M Booster Gold is something I'll be following monthly, the first time I've done this since... Christ, Ellis' run on the Authority? Planetary, when it was still almost a monthly, not a centennial edition with every issue? I don't know. It's been a long time.

It is awesome beyond compare. This is not hype or an overreaction. This is fact. This is scientific. This comic is not about superhumans, it was made by superhumans. Okay, that might be hype... but it's amazingly great.

The plot so far is open to charges of open and notorious fanwankery, and maybe it is, but in a beautiful and glorious way: Booster goes back to the late 1980s-early 1990s. And has adventures with the JLI. Yes, it's bringing-Ted Kord-back-from-the-dead-through-the-magic-of-time-travel again. But this time this device, this tragic bromance, beaten like a dead horse from Fifty-Two till the present, finally fires on all cylinders, and works. G/M actually manage to recapture the spirit old days again, without overly sacrificing Booster's character growth. Also, prominently featured are Scott Free and Big Barda. Less prominently, J'onn J'onzz the Martian Manhunter. This is employing the dead-but-not-dead-then* conceit to its fullest potential. Because Booster Gold is on a quest to defeat some kind of transtemporal Max Lord scheme**, it is also a plot reason to the time-travel beyond "I wanna see my pal again," although of course that dimension is never absent. They also go to space for inadequately explained reasons, recognized as such by the text (or at least Skeetz), and fight an alien sorceror named Hieronymus the Underachiever.

Most importantly, however, the book is JLI-level funny. Maybe funnier. At least as funny as Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League. Which... well, okay, if you ignore the huge cognitive dissonance involved in the fact that Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League was being published at the same time that the bad part of the DCU (which is, all of the rest of it) was dealing with Sue Dibny's murder, Ralph Dibny's heartbroken meltdown, and Maxwell Lord being the Black King of the Hellfire Cl--I mean Checkmate, and shooting Ted Kord in the head...*** that book is one of the greatest humor comics of all time. G/M's Booster Gold is that funny.

Now there are some problems. There, always, are problems. There are three.

The first is the most glaring. I realize it's some kind of contagious spastic tic for writers dealing with Booster Gold, but they can all shut up already about how he's really a hero. I know he's a hero. I get it. I read Fifty-Two. I read the previous issues. And I didn't need to read Fifty-Two or the previous issues to know that Booster Gold is a basically good guy who is capable of very occasional flashes of brilliance and extraordinary self-sacrifice. I especially do not need to be told by G/M, who wax about it to a point that... you know, this might actually be parody. I'm going to reevaluate this as hilarious.

The second is possibly a lot, lot less complicated than what I'm reading into it. It might not be a problem. It might be a clue.

Follow me here, and correct me if I'm way off about my info, my reading of past events, or my logic:

In the current Booster Golds, Booster's hanging out with Beetle, in the past--in the 80s/90s. To spoil a little bit, when Booster goes back, he's attempting to pretend to be his past self. He is found out within two panels, by J'onn J'onzz (telepath). Great jokes ensue, but at any rate he does appear to be able to fool Beetle for a while. Of course, he only appears to, and Beetle reveals pretty quickly that he is "not an idiot" and it's ridiculously obvious that this Booster is from the future. This naturally leads "past" Beetle to question the future. What's strange about this is that Beetle has a weird, even cloying tone to his questioning, asking if he and Booster are still "best buds!" and similar superlatives in the future.

Okay, this is all true, and of course it's possibly included just to be a little sad, because Beetle's future is being shot in the brain, and, yeah, it's all stuff 90s Beetle would know... but it's also not really how 90s Beetle (or 2000s Beetle) acted around Booster. If anything, Booster was more likely to pull the "but you're my bestest friend! let's go [insert zany scheme here]!" move. Beetle usually put up a front of annoyance at this sort of behavior, ranging from mild snarkery to apopleptic fury. (It helps that Booster, despite any claims to contrary, is in fact impulsively stupid.****) This dynamic never really changed permanently until Beetle died.

Add to this that they've played with a real Ted Kord resurrection for a while. Add to this the mysterious "BWA-HA-HA" at the end of Johns' Blue and Gold arc. (Subtract from this Ted Kord's corpse showing up to do that played-out Black Lantern schtick in Blackest Night. Subtract it from collective memory. Just like I trust we all have with Carol Ferris' love-is-a-stripper schtick.)

My conclusion? 90s Beetle is not 90s Beetle. 90s Beetle is 2000s Beetle. Ted Kord, time master. Or something.

Bonus: this explains the plot-hole of J'onn J'onzz not calling a JL meeting and telling everybody, including 90s Beetle, that there's a Future Booster running around.

So if I'm wrong, this is a flaw (a forgiveable one, to be sure); if I'm right, it's foreshadowing.

Oh, and a third, huge, almost story-wrecking flaw that I hesitate to mention...

I sadly regret to inform everyone that there has not yet been a "Buster!" "That's Booster!" callback yet. I expect the mob to meet me at the DC officers. Don't forget your pitchforks.

Edit: oh, I wish I could say it was all drawn by Kevin Maguire. I would pay $6 an issue for interiors by the godlike pencil of Kevin Maguire. But interiors are very ably handled by Chris Batista, albeit with some rough patches here and there, presumably because of time constraints. (Points in his favor: his Barda is good, and I like a good Barda, who is difficult for many to draw it seems. Like Adam Hughes. I'm not convinced he's ever seen her before. Fucking coat rack bullshit.) But I may not be able to adequately judge the art on this title. Hell, maybe even the writing. It could probably be stick figures shouting "BWA-HA-HA!" every other page and I would ejaculate over every panel of it. Buy it anyway.

*Yes, I know, the last few pages of Final Crisis #7. Final Crisis is fucking clown shoes.
**Fascinatingly, also to redeem Max Lord--Booster is convinced that the Max Lord that shot Ted Kord was not Max Lord. Sperging readers of JLI will recall that J'onn J'onzz looked into Lord's heart once and saw that he was a good, if douchebaggish, man. It's a thin cord to hang a redemption arc on--I was never wholly opposed to the concept of Max Lord being a bad guy, it was all in the crummy execution--but I say go for it.
***Whose idea was it to let someone else other than Giffen and deMatteis write the last Ted Kord--and penultimate Maxwell Lord--story?
****And Giffen and deMatteis must, at least intuitively, know this. Interestingly, the main voice this time around claiming Booster isn't an idiot is Booster himself, instead of Rip Hunter or Michelle or Beetle or whoever. Frankly, you take away that mild brain damage Booster seems to have, and you lose the core, not to mention the appeal, of the character. For example, going back in time, and trying to pretend you're your past self... to a telepath. That's pure Booster Gold.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Nice to see someone so passionate about a character...I've been a casual fan of Booster over the years but have come to love him in recent years, have read on and off issues of the ongoing and checking "Time Vanishers". Big Skeets fan and looking forward to their appearance with the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle on "Smallville" this season.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I miss Ted Kord. I really do. And I miss the JLI. I have a real fondness for that period. It's when I started reading comics and it was just plain FUN. I had FUN reading about these guys... and then the dark times came...

Bleh.

 

[Whofan]

It's kind of interesting that J.M deMatteis does fairly light-hearted DC work, while his Marvel work is extremely dark and serious. He actually made Spider-Man dark and depressing for a while.

 

[Myasishchev]

I miss Ted Kord. I really do. And I miss the JLI. I have a real fondness for that period. It's when I started reading comics and it was just plain FUN. I had FUN reading about these guys... and then the dark times came...

Bleh.

It's not even so much that I dislike the grimness of some of the latterday developments in the DCU. It's all been in the execution.

Let's look more closely at Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Let's ignore that that is a stupid title for this book.

Ted Kord's death wasn't badly handled, but it wasn't well-handled either. I wonder how consciously inspired by Watchmen it was; aside from the thematic similarities, it's essentially a heavily condensed, worse version of the mask-killer investigation. Imagine Blue Beetle as a sort of combination of Nite Owl (a real stretch, I know) and Rorschach and Max Lord as Adrian Veidt.

It's really hard to do that kind of story in the DCU. It worked in Watchmen because--amongst other things*--the heroes were isolated, and few. It works less well here, because they hang Kord's isolation on everyone else being such a dick that they don't even return his phone calls. It's sort of hard to buy, especially, that J'onn J'onzz--telepath--would so summarily dismiss his fears. I'm not saying this kind of story is impossible, but they needed more justification than "Ted's a jackass" to ignore him. I mean, Kord's been a superhero for decades. No one ever even treated Kyle Rayner like this,** and he was at least as big a goofball. And if it's just the ring that made people pay attention to Kyle, did anyone ever treat Connor Hawke this badly? Even when he first started out?

Also page 19 makes my stomach turn and tells me who wrote it. Ted, stop slobbing on Hal Jordan's knob. Please.

*Really great writing and storytelling, a more compelling mystery, a strong emotional investment in the Dreiberg/Juspeczyk relationship, a face-heel turn that didn't seem forced, and plot points that didn't rely on an off-screen character death like Skeets' or lightning bolts. Which was weird.
**If it pleases me that Ted Kord may be coming back, can I no longer be angry that they brought Hal Jordan back?

 

[Derishton]

Entirely agreed on the current Booster Gold run.

One thing, though: I guess I'd defend, though without great conviction, J'onzz in Infinite Crisis. He does look seriously overworked at a time when the DCU is heading to another big crisis, one which the JLA at least seems to see coming. It's not so much that he ignores Kord or dismisses him as a jack-ass, but that in the face of everything else he suggests that they deal with what looks like an industrial break-in (albeit a weird one) after the dust has settled.

 

[Myasishchev]

Honestly, even if they hated Ted's guts, you'd think they'd be interested in a hundred pounds of kryptonite.

Although I can sort of see if they're pissed that Ted was keeping a hundred pounds of kryptonite without substantial security arrangements, it is never made explicit in the text that he didn't, or that they were.

On a tangent, I've never got J'onn's interest in the war between Rann and Thanagar, either, which is what J'onn totally tunes Ted out for. You don't intervene to stop a war between polities on Earth, why should you intervene in or even care about a war four light years away? That's Green Lantern stuff, if that (I've never been clear on what the jurisdictional competence of or source of legitimacy for Green Lanterns was). Sure, Adam Strange is a good guy, and you've had adventures on Rann, but Earth is neutral. Do you want Thanagarians reprising on humans? Also, iirc, the Rannians were, in fact, jerks. The correct response to Strange when he calls trying to involve your adopted planet in a brutal war is "Hang in there, kitty."

It doesn't help that the Rann-Thanagar War is the absolute worst of the Infinite Crisis tie-in miniseries. Even OMAC had some redeeming qualities. (Villains United and Day of Vengeance were great, though.)

 

[Professor Zoom]

I miss Ted Kord. I really do. And I miss the JLI. I have a real fondness for that period. It's when I started reading comics and it was just plain FUN. I had FUN reading about these guys... and then the dark times came...

Bleh.

It's not even so much that I dislike the grimness of some of the latterday developments in the DCU. It's all been in the execution.

Let's look more closely at Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Let's ignore that that is a stupid title for this book.

Ted Kord's death wasn't badly handled, but it wasn't well-handled either. I wonder how consciously inspired by Watchmen it was; aside from the thematic similarities, it's essentially a heavily condensed, worse version of the mask-killer investigation. Imagine Blue Beetle as a sort of combination of Nite Owl (a real stretch, I know) and Rorschach and Max Lord as Adrian Veidt.

It's really hard to do that kind of story in the DCU. It worked in Watchmen because--amongst other things*--the heroes were isolated, and few. It works less well here, because they hang Kord's isolation on everyone else being such a dick that they don't even return his phone calls. It's sort of hard to buy, especially, that J'onn J'onzz--telepath--would so summarily dismiss his fears. I'm not saying this kind of story is impossible, but they needed more justification than "Ted's a jackass" to ignore him. I mean, Kord's been a superhero for decades. No one ever even treated Kyle Rayner like this,** and he was at least as big a goofball. And if it's just the ring that made people pay attention to Kyle, did anyone ever treat Connor Hawke this badly? Even when he first started out?

Also page 19 makes my stomach turn and tells me who wrote it. Ted, stop slobbing on Hal Jordan's knob. Please.

*Really great writing and storytelling, a more compelling mystery, a strong emotional investment in the Dreiberg/Juspeczyk relationship, a face-heel turn that didn't seem forced, and plot points that didn't rely on an off-screen character death like Skeets' or lightning bolts. Which was weird.
**If it pleases me that Ted Kord may be coming back, can I no longer be angry that they brought Hal Jordan back?

I agree with a lot of what you said.

I do also, oddly, think Countdown is one of the better Ted stories. He keeps going after everything dismisses him. He knows he's onto something, onto something BIG that maybe he can't handle alone, but he keeps going. Truly heroic on his part.

And then...blam.

Sigh.

I've also liked Ted... he isn't Bats, he's not perfect, he doesn't have any super powers, but he keeps standing up.

 

[Myasishchev]

The text itself is quite respectful of the dude, I'll grant, but it contorts everyone else into a jerkass to make its plot work. They needed a better reason than "busy," imo, for why no one would care about Ted and Booster's leads. Plus, the story just seems way too compressed.

 

[Demiurge]

Loved the old JLI stuff - I'll check out Booster again. Caught the first dozen or so of his book, but sounds like it really picked up. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Derishton]

I've just re-read the bit with J'Onzz and Ted, and it's clear J'onzz is dismssing Ted even before the call from Adam Strange comes it. I still want to say there's a lot going on at this moment, but it's even less defensible than my earlier tepid defense can allow. Wonder Woman is actually more understanding, but she's also in a rush. J'onzz doesn't even allow Ted to state his case, and acts entirely unlike he has in other appearances with JLI member sin post-JLI comics. It is too compressed, although that might give it some of its weird power since: Beetle has been way more prominent since he died, and his death is pretty iconic at this point.

 

[Mr Light]

I just caught up to present with Booster Gold. I must say I prefer the Jurgens Era. I really loved how they went back and re-visited important events in continuity and how Booster was a hero that nobody could know about.

The new issues just feel completely different. It's nothing but cheeky wordplay. I know that's how the old JLI was like but it just feels... wrong. I'm enjoying it, but not as much. I also don't like the way they pretty much jettisoned all the old characters like Rex Hunter, his sister, Black Beetle and the Time Stealers, his ancestor Supernova...

But there's the Vanishing Point mini-series (a spin-off of the Search for Bruce Wayne) which is by Jurgens and has those characters, so basically the series has split into two; the old Jurgens book and this new Giffen sitcom book.

 

[Myasishchev]

I've just re-read the bit with J'Onzz and Ted, and it's clear J'onzz is dismssing Ted even before the call from Adam Strange comes it. I still want to say there's a lot going on at this moment, but it's even less defensible than my earlier tepid defense can allow. Wonder Woman is actually more understanding, but she's also in a rush. J'onzz doesn't even allow Ted to state his case, and acts entirely unlike he has in other appearances with JLI member sin post-JLI comics. It is too compressed, although that might give it some of its weird power since: Beetle has been way more prominent since he died, and his death is pretty iconic at this point.

You know, that's true.

I think before that, the most high-profile thing Kord had done was Living Assault Weapons. Well, he and Booster had a cameo in JLA's World War III arc. Where Grant Morrison treated him like a fat loser, although presumably he got superpowers like the rest of the human population and helped fight Mageddon, probably far more effectively than, say, Perry White, because of his experience. Further, I'm pretty sure Ted Kord could kick Ned Slade's ass, Grant.

To elaborate on my earlier point, I actually sort of wonder how much of Kord's latterday characterization has been unintentionally bound up with that of his expy, Dan Dreiberg. When exactly did Beetle become a fat, middle-aged, sad-person? Actually, way back in JLI, during a dream sequence written by G/M. But, you know, at least Dan Dreiberg got laid.

And yeah, they needed someone like Hawkman (I think he was in the JLA around Countdown to Infinite Crisis) or maybe even Green Arrow, someone who didn't know Kord that well, to be able to dismiss him so utterly. Yet the people that come close to throwing him out on his ass are Manhunter and Batman, who know he's goofy, but the real deal. Sometimes I think Geoff Johns was familiar with the JLI era only through secondhand sources, although this seems unfair because the early stuff in CtIC actually rang basically true, and probably came the closest to replicating G/M patter.

 

[Derishton]

There was a few issues of the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI run where General Glory helped Ted fight his weight problem, which led directly to the Gardner/Kord boxing match just before "Breakdowns." He was back to his normal weight for much if not all of Jurgens' run.

 

[Myasishchev]

They're still saving it.

Indeed, Booster Gold 36 is the only new DC book I could bring myself to purchase earlier today; the only other one I considered was the Green Lantern with the (Sexual?) Predator on the cover, with his Realdoll Carol Ferris chained to his crotch. Yes, if this Predator is the same one as the old one from back in the day, this image is not without some symbolic merit; at the same time, the Predator was a very stupid idea in the first place, and the latterday Star Sapphires are even more off-putting when they're tied up like William Moulton Marston's wife. For the record, I only considered buying this to confirm whether or not my prejudices against the direction the Lantern comics have gone since Sinsestro Corps War are correct, but then I decided I like them (my prejudices).

Anyway, awesome issue overall. Booster, Beetle, Miracle, and Barda defeat the immediate threat to Magicworld or whatever it's called, Beetle gets laid but pays a price for his promiscuity, the Darkstars who've been tracking the cosmically-misplaced quartet are thwarted and then unthwarted at least in regards to Booster and Beetle, and those two are imprisoned while Miracle and Barda fuck off for home. Vril Dox is also here! There's one very good joke early on with time travel and Barda, and of course it's generally quite funny throughout. So, highly recommended, but...

Little problem: after the pretty funny escape scene involving Booster, Mr. Miracle, and Big Barda, but not Beetle... Scott and Barda just abandon Beetle, having to be badgered into even giving Booster a boom tube back to the far-off planet Beetle's trapped on. WTF heroes? I mean, I know the primary cultural trait of any New God is supernatural douchebaggery, but still. This seems especially jerkish for Scott Free, who has always struck me as much less of a "fuck 'im" type than Barda, but although it's funny (of course), they both come off as total dicks. I dunno, maybe G/M just wanted to write them out for the next set-piece (Starlag [ha ha... eh], the Darkstars' prison satellite-thing), but this seemed like an unpleasant way to do it. I'm not even sure if that's a good idea--on a strategic level--since Scott and Barda are great characters that, for obvious reasons, we don't see much of anymore, and they fit in fine in the sort of space odyssey that G/M are writing here. Actually, they arguably are better fits for that sort of story than are Booster and Beetle.

Bigger problem: Pat Oliffe does fill-in art on this issue. He is not as good as Batista. He's solid, sure, but he either scrimps on detail work or was rushed--but at least he managed to do the whole comic, which Batista failed to do last month. However, Batista, when he was actually drawing, did a better riff on Maguire... and while that might suck for an artist with his own style, personality, blah blah blah, Maguire or a darn good imitation is, pretty much, what I want to see here, unless you can blow me away with your own style, which neither Batista or Oliffe are going to do. I still don't understand why Maguire himself isn't drawing this. Is he otherwise engaged with something right now? I'm sure it's no oversight; did he ask for too much money? I'm grasping at straws here. Maguire did do cover duty again; it's outstanding, although it relates very little to the specific events of the issue.


Also, apropos of nothing, can anyone explain to me why Scott Free, son of Izaya, Highfather of New Genesis, is basically a normal, if athletic, human dude? I mean, Darkseid's son can take a punch from Superman. So can Barda, who is, at best, a minor deity, emerging from a faceless Apokoliptian background. Why is the son of the Ra/Zeus/Odin of the NG pantheon, for lack of a better word, a wuss? This has nothing to do with Booster Gold, it's just I've just never understood this.