As I’ve mentioned in the past, Green Lantern is a series I’ve always found more interesting in concept than in execution. Despite the odd excellent story here and there (usually involving Alan Moore and/or Dave Gibbons, or when teamed up with Green Arrow), I’ve often felt that a great idea has been wasted on some pretty boring characters – John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, and none moreso than Hal Jordan himself. I was mildly entertained by Green Lantern : Rebirth, which brought Jordan back to life and hastily retconned his evilness (short version : a big yellow space worm did it), but it didn’t take long for the resurrected Lantern’s own title to become a snoozefest itself.

Nevertheless, I like to pop my head around the door from time to time to see what’s happening with the series. Lately, though, that’s proven difficult as the interminable Sinestro Corps War has gone on – while I’ll admit the idea of a “negative” version of the GL Corps isn’t a bad one (and we’ll gloss over the fact that it was already done decades ago with the Star Sapphires), it’s possible to run something into the ground, and so it’s proven, with the imminent promise of a whole spectrum of Corps based on different emotions (and the Black Lanterns, who rather than being a civil rights movement are apparently all dead. See, never say that power rings aren’t equal opportunity). It’s all a bit tiresome, to be honest, and despite Geoff Johns’ enthusiasm for building a “new” GL mythos, it’s also somewhat impenetrable for new or casual readers.

That said, the latter point is something you can’t really aim at the current story arc – dipping in this month, I was somewhat surprised to find the second part of a story titled Secret Origin. Yes, despite the fact that there’s nothing about Emerald Dawn that really needs retconning, and that all the pertinent details were conveyed back in Rebirth, we’re once again being taken back to Jordan’s flyboy days and the appearance of a certain red-skinned alien. While it may appear pointless at first glance, you can at least see a few reasons for doing this – for starters, it provides a handy few months worth of material at a time when, Batman aside, the big characters can’t really do all that much as they wait for Final Crisis. Secondly, it allows Johns to retroactively insert elements of his newer mythos into the history of the character – and so we see that Abin Sur’s death was, at least in part, down to a growing sense of fear corrupting his ring and will-power, and we’re even shown the Sinestro/Parallax logo in his eye at the critical moment.

Just because there are reasons to revisit Jordan’s origin, though, doesn’t mean that the book itself really justifies its existence. This isn’t Superman : Birthright, after all - nothing truly significant is being changed here. It’s simply a retelling, with a few extra details added in to make it more relevant to the current state of play. There are various examples of… well, I don’t know what you’d call it, really - “retrospective foreshadowing”? It’s all “Oh, look, Carol Ferris hates Hal, we know how that turns out” or “Hector Hammond is Carol’s boyfriend, that adds a new layer!”, and that kind of thing. Perhaps the one interesting addition - an explanation of just why Abin Sur was flying a spaceship in the first place - isn’t even Johns’, it came from an old Alan Moore story (the same short story, in fact, out of which the entire “Spectrum Corps” and forthcoming Blackest Night storyline has been spun).

I mean, it’s all perfectly solid, serviceable stuff - Ivan Reis’ art is decent enough, it’s never jumped out at me but it does the job and there are no glaring flaws - but you just wonder why the current GL readers need a fresh telling of a well-trodden story. If you like classic, All-American flyboy type tales, then I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of it, as you probably find Jordan himself far less annoying than I do (I mean, his Superman-esque debut appearance comes when he rescues a fighter jet… from an accident that he caused himself). But, while this is evidently being pitched as a Big Deal - the sort of thing that will get collected in future trades as “the definitive GL origin story” - it winds up feeling like little more than pre-event filler.

It’s been a fair while since I read a DCU comic - almost nothing since the end of 52, in fact. Still, even someone as largely disinterested in DC Universe comics can’t fail to notice that big things are happening. DC’s second weekly series, Countdown, has ended, apparently without getting to the place it was supposed to. Whoops. Someone get Grant Morrison on the horn. Enter DC Universe #0, which sets the stage for Final Crisis in all the ways that Countdown managed not to. Apparently.

DC Universe #0 isn’t so much a story as a guided tour of the current state of the DCU. Both Marvel and DC have been screwing around with mega-crossovers for years now, and just keeping up with continuity is getting to be a harder and harder game than ever. DCU #0 tries to explain where most everyone important is and what they’re doing, with the notable exception of the Shazam family of characters. The problem is, it neither explains who anyone is, nor what situation they’re in. It just shows them doing some stuff and you have to try and piece it together from what’s going on in their parent titles. The Batman segment is especially impenetrable. It’s Batman and the Joker! I know those characters! I shouldn’t be left unable to understand a damn word of their conversation.

The opening description of the recent Crises is almost impressively succinct for what’s been going on, but the rest of the book is a jumble of characters and situations that fail to engage. It feels more like a sampler than a story in itself, which is a pity because it ends with a fairly important revelation that you suspect really needed a stronger companion material. Narrating this tour is a mysterious figure. (Spoiler time, folks. Please exit the review immediately if you’re bothered.) Initially, I thought this was part of the fruition of Morrison’s “Sentient DC Universe” idea that he was talking about a few years back, but it becomes fairly clear who it is - it’s Barry Allen. If they’re serious about bringing back the man Seb and I once named as our No. 2 Best Death in Comics, it needs to be for a better story than Crisis Nine or whatever this one is, and it certainly should’ve been done in a better comic than DCU #0.

There are some nice touches - the way the caption boxes fade from Black to Red is a great detail, and that final page is a fantastic image. Lopresti’s Wonder Woman is Hughes-esque without being gratuitous, and the Spectre sequence is probably the best of the bunch, appropriately creepy. Perez drawing anything is always worth seeing. On the whole, though, it fails as a book. It’s supposed to be leading into Final Crisis, and yet it doesn’t adequately introduce anything or anyone. It’s the comics equivalent of channel-surfing. My first DCU comic for some time, and probably my last one until this Crisis is over as well…

And so Booster Gold continues to confound expectations by being… well… quite good, actually. Even those of us who followed him into his latest solo title through sheer character loyalty (from either Justice League International, 52 or both) surely didn’t see that one coming. But Johns and Katz have found a perfect niche for him – some twenty years after he was first introduced – as he travels through the history of the DC universe secretly righting continuity wrongs. A concept like that simply can’t help but be fun, and so it’s proving.

It helps, of course, when the storyline is as fanboy-pleasing as the current Blue and Gold, in which Booster has managed to rescue best friend Ted Kord from the head-shooty fate that awaited him at the end of Countdown to Infinite Crisis (god, how long ago does that feel now?). We know, of course, that due to all those laws about mucking-about-with-history, this can’t possibly last – but there’s a sneaking feeling that a workaround (the fact that no-one can know Ted is alive, and so his existence must remain as secret as Booster’s) might just be in place to keep him around. Still, though, the title of the book is Booster Gold – so unless they’re planning on renaming it, we may as well just enjoy it while it lasts.

This latest issue actually manages to tie in with the unloved Zero Hour crossover event from 1994 (hence the numbering – every major DC title had an issue #0 at the time to tie in WASN’T THAT CLEVER), which was the first attempt to tidy up the mess of Crisis on Infinite Earths by basically doing it all over again (sound familiar, much?) As Booster and the League Of Blue Beetles (don’t ask) encounter Zero Hour’s villains Parallax (Hal Jordan… don’t ask) and Extant (Hank “Hawk out of Hawk and Dove” Hall… no, really, don’t ask), though, what’s surprising is how much it’s played for laughs. The ridiculously pompous manner in which the overpowered Jordan spoke is quite deliberately replicated, and the villains’ plot shown to be the rather silly mess that it was. This is all the more remarkable when you consider that the writer of the original story, Dan Jurgens, just happens to be Booster Gold’s artist. And you’ve got to credit him – and DC – for at least recognising the somewhat-crapness of the story and being able to poke fun at themselves (even if DC are making exactly the same mistakes all over again with Countdown at the moment).

Speaking of Jurgens, his work here is about as good as it’s been at any point since his mid-90s heyday. Perhaps it’s working with material so close to him (in addition to Zero Hour, he was Booster’s creator, and big loud time travel stories have always been his forte), perhaps it’s having an inker as solid as Rapmund. But there’s a solid consistency to the linework that complements his always-strong character design and storytelling.

The second half of the issue, with its trip into the future – or, rather, Booster’s past – feels a bit unnecessary, as a lot of the background is stuff we’ve already garnered through exposition in previous issues (and the one main new point that’s made, about Michael’s sister, is ruined somewhat by giving her the wrong colour hair); nevertheless, when it focuses on the Booster and Beetle team being reunited, and retains that crucial sense of fun, this is really quite enjoyable fluff.