Well, now, this is a pleasant surprise. I’ve been following Booster Gold since it kicked off, but aside from the odd mildly entertaining issue, it hasn’t really lived up to the promise shown by its premise. Simply put, if you’ve got Booster Gold hopping around through time setting history straight, then surely the thing to do is to have him show up in as many classic and/or memorable stories as possible? It’s been done from time to time – such as a Killing Joke issue that came off as somewhat misjudged – but never really exploited to its full potential as an idea. Until now.

Because not only does this issue see Booster thrown slap-bang into the middle of the events of an old DCU comic, but it’s one that’s a bona fide classic. Regular readers will know of my affection for Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans, and in particular issue #2 is actually one of the first comics that I remember ever reading. So having the events of its pages – and there’s as much story in that one issue as you’d see in a six-part arc nowadays – as the backdrop to this issue holds immediate appeal from the start – but it’s even more pleasing that it’s done in a clever and involving way.

The line that Jurgens has chosen to take with this particular excursion of Booster’s is to have the Ravager story play out almost exactly as it did in that issue – except to account for the presence of Booster and the villainous Black Beetle. So to begin with, the difference is mild, and Grant Wilson’s vendetta follows a familiar course – but as the story rolls on, it deviates further from established “history”, culminating in a surprise ending. Dialogue is either faithfully reproduced or altered to suit the changed circumstances while remaining familiar – and various scenes will strike a chord for anyone who fondly remembers the original. And yes, Jurgens even finds time to alight on a certain memorable poolside scene – although, as with Perez, there’s a slightly more innocent feel to the artwork than if someone like Ed Benes had drawn it.

Indeed, this facet actually gets to the nub of why having this comic intersect with New Teen Titans works so well. Wolfman and Perez’s work was magnificent, but it also looks quite old-fashioned nowadays – but the thing is, so is Booster Gold. In the ’90s, Jurgens may have been “cutting edge”, but neither his writing nor his art style have really moved on at all from then. Which is actually fine, so long as you like it (and I do) – but the point is, this isn’t a very “modern” comic, and its charming old-fashionedness therefore  goes hand in hand with the similar attributes of the comic that it’s essentially throwing Booster wholesale into the pages of.

Meanwhile, of course, Booster now shares his pages with a 10-page Blue Beetle strip. And it’s decent enough, really, like much of Sturges’ run on the cancelled title was – a fairly straightforward action story with solid artwork and a handful of amusing character moments. I’m not sure it’ll do much to get people buying Booster Gold purely for it (aside from those who were already fans of Jaime) – you’d probably need John Rogers back for that – but it’s just nice to see stories featuring the book’s set of characters again, and I hope DC continue to see it as a good idea.

If there are two things we’ve had too many of in comics recently, it’s Final Crisis tie-ins (the thing ended bloody months best man the divx movie online ago, folks) and comics about supervillains. So this one was on a bit of a hiding to nothing, really. Still, it’s a mildly intriguing concept, and Sturges turned in solid – if unspectacular – work during the dying throes of Blue Beetle, so it seemed at least worth a look.

I have to say, though, that I’m not really sure what it’s trying to do. There have been a few series over recent years – Salvation Run, Secret Six sherrybaby download free and anything featuring the Flash’s “Rogues” come to mind – that have attempted to imbue villainnous characters with some level of sympathy, and despite the fact that it features the killer of the Martian Manhunter, his position as something of a lame, bargain-basement villain suggested that Run! might do the same. Unfortunately, it woefully misjudges how to actually pitch the whole baddie-as-lead-character concept.

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Because while Mike “Human Flame” Miller is undoubtedly something of a loser-villain, he fails spectacularly to inspire the sort of empathy required by such a character type by virtue of being… well, a complete and utter shit, frankly. There are absolutely no character traits to him that make him worthy of carrying his own series – he’s completely vile and self-serving, without even being in any way charming, or showing the sheer ballsy callousness that makes, for example, the Thunderbolts worth reading about. The opening, in which an awakening from a coma causes the instinctive reaction of punching out a nurse, sets the tone – as Miller brushes off the event with “I’m sure she had it coming”. This isn’t the deliciously dark amorality of, say, Diggle’s Dark Reign : Hawkeye. This is just someone you want to punch – especially when he cons his way into his wife’s house with promises of a renewed happy family life before tying her to a chair while he digs out his old costume.

And furthermore, Sturges blurs matters by not locking down whether Miller is supposed to be the loser he’s always been portrayed as, or a genuine “badass”. He successfully muscles in on a drug deal, triumphs in a burger bar shootout (also managing to fry some poor bugger in a giant sheep’s costume), and while the events of the closing pages attempt to address this, they don’t really succeed when held alongside the violent, murderous actions of the first half of the issue. This confusion over tone spreads to the choice of artist, as Freddie Williams – better known for cartoony action renditions of teen characters – is called upon to portray a snarling, tubby, hairy (as shown, incidentally, to unnecessary extent in the early hospital escape scene) bad guy on a flame-driven rampage. He doesn’t do it badly, but it never feels quite right – but then, nor does the fact that some five years after Jason Rusch’s introduction, some people still insist on drawing/colouring Firestorm as a white guy.

For a series built around its lead character being on the run, this shows a remarkable lack of dramatic tension – and the reason is clear. You can’t get involved in a “chase” story if you’re actively willing the hunted to be caught – and Miller is such an unpleasant, unappealing character that if the issue had ended with the twist of his being killed off and a different participant taking up the lead, I would honestly be looking forward to the second issue more. There’s nothing really wrong with it on any technical level – it simply struggles to convince us why we should be interested in this story.

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And so The Little Series That Couldn’t finally meets its end. It’s hard to know exactly what else Blue Beetle could have done to earn some much-needed support from DC – apparently, coming up with the best new lead character the publisher has had in years, not to mention a superb and immediately-engaging supporting cast, throwing in a unique and kind of brilliant costume and power set, enjoying immediate popularity when translating the character to a new popular Batman cartoon series, being more respectful to the character’s antecedents than Dan Didio has ever been, and telling stories that start out as witty teen-tries-to-cope-with-powers comedy drama (under Giffen and Rogers) before exploding into an utterly awesome and epic alien invasion saga (under Rogers solo), simply won’t cut it if you’re not written by Geoff Johns. Alright, so the series had settled down into being “good” rather than “excellent” under Matthew Sturges, and never seemed to have quite the same visual spark without Cully Hamner or Rafael Albuquerque on art duties, but it was still generally entertaining and one of DC’s absolute best current superhero books – so cutting the series so drastically short and fobbing Jaime off into the terminally-dull Teen Titans seems like unduly harsh punishment.

As it happens, underneath a  wonderful Hamner cover (echoing his equally wonderful cover to #1) is an issue that sees the title going out with a bit of a whimper, rather than a bang. There’s a definite sense of trying to tidy up Jaime’s individual mythology and supporting cast as quickly as possible – so as to leave him little in the way of unnecessary baggage for his ongoing team-based adventues – and it’s probably this that results in the rushed and somewhat ill-thought-out sudden death of one of those secondary characters. There’s nothing like enough page time for the likes of Paco, Brenda and Traci – the people who’ve helped make the book so distinctively great – and the battle with the Kdra, despite its tragic consequences, feels too inconsequential when compared with the final issues of Rogers’ run. Visually it suffers, too, and you can’t help but wish Hamner had been able to return for the interiors as well as the cover. It feels rushed and particularly sloppy in the closing pages, while I still can’t get over how Barberi misinterprets the “horns” on the back of the costume, especially as you’ve got them being done properly on the issue’s front.

But Sturges still knows how to throw out some neat moments, and he – like Rogers – is suitably respectful of the legacy of the Blue Beetle name, so there’s plenty of spiel in Jaime’s “hero reconsidering his role” internal monologue (a standard feature of any character’s final issue) about living up to Kord and Garrett. Indeed, it’s this that leads to perhaps the best moment of the writer’s brief run – as Jaime falls through space, he ponders that “Dan Garrett in this situation would probably have done something dashing and bold that got him out of the scrape just in the nick of time. Ted Kord would have done something clever and out of left field. And he would have chuckled while he did it. But I don’t know what Dan would have done. And I don’t know what Ted would have done. I’m not them,” before coming up with a solution that combines the best of both of them. It’s a lovely moment, and demonstrative of what this character and series are… were… capable of.

It’s a crying shame that DC haven’t given this excellent title more support – I know that when something’s just not selling, it’s not selling, but I’ve never seen promotional material for it like I have for, say, Captain Britain, and simply not bothering to try and capitalise on the success of Jamie’s Brave and the Bold episode was downright baffling – and it makes me more than a little annoyed at them. I’ll be trying to keep up with Jaime’s future adventures as best as possible, and hopefully his supporting cast will still be around as well – but the unique little niche that Blue Beetle had carved out for itself will be sorely missed.

Another batch of capsule reviews from the Comics Daily team, including Blue Beetle #33, Captain America #44, Secret Invasion: Inhumans #4, Ultimate X-Men #98 and X-Force #9. Read the rest of this entry »