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Posted by:

MyHeadHurts

Date:

March 18th, 2007 12:29 AM

Header:

Jurgens back on Booster!

Bulletin:

(Reposted from my livejournal--some links or images may not work)

Last week's rant revolved primarily around Captain America. He's a character that I remember loving when I was younger, based on a series of stories that I had when I was a kid including Cap #350. After the story that replaced Steve Rogers as Captain America, and the story that introduced Carnage, the next major arc I remember reading--and the story that really brought me back into comics in a big way--was The Death of Superman. Even back then, as inexpert as I was, I looked at the seven-part Doomsday story and recognized the excellence of Dan Jurgens's art (he was drawing the Superman monthly back then, and Justice League America).

It was during the Death of Superman story that I first encountered a Dan Jurgens creation who has, in the intervening years, become my favorite mainstream superhero character. Booster Gold, the hero-for-profit who became DC's first post-Crisis on Infinite Earths superhero, was the guy who named the monster who would eventually kill Superman.

I've of course written on Booster quite a bit in the last few months, notably here and somewhere way longer ago, when I actually reviewed Jurgens's run on the Booster Gold monthly from the '80s.

Years later, Jurgens is still one of my favorite creators ever--having not only worked on Booster Gold and the Superman books for quite a while, but also some great stints on the Justice League and Teen Titans books, Captain America, Thor and of course DC's first semiofficial Crisis sequel, Zero Hour. So it was with a good deal of enthusiasm that I greeted the news tonight that Jurgens, along with Geoff "Yellow Cosmic Fear Bug" Johns and inker Norm Rapmund (one of the guys who always does a great job embellishing Dan's pencils) has been named to the creative team of a new Booster Gold ongoing monthly comic, spinning out of the events of 52. Booster's had a good year--going from disgraced and dead to top-tier hero with his own monthly. Apparently, it will revolve around a lot of time-traveling, which will be interesting becuase with the return of the Multiverse, we could see Booster in places like Kingdom Come and The Nail with relative ease.

Jurgens himself is a draw for me, and Booster is a draw unto himself (I always enjoyed Dan's characterization of Booster in the monthly and then later in JLA, but to most readers, Booster is defined by his run as half of the "Blue & Gold" team with Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle (seen in the picture at right, getting his head knocked in while Booster attacks Doomsday from behind), during the historic and hysterical Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis run on Justice League International. Since the death of Ted Kord a few years ago in Countdown to Infinite Crisis, DC seemed to be making a point to kill, maim or render unrecognizable all of the characters of that generation's Justice League. When, during DC's big event 52 this year, Booster and Buddy Baker the Animal Man both bit the dust, it was seen by many fans (myself included, albeit with some skepticism) as evidence that DC didn't think "funny" books could sell and was distancing itself from the characters involved with the "Giffen League." The speedy return of those characters shows, to me, what DC really thinks of them: that they're great characters with a lot of untapped potential, and that readers needed to be reminded of their greatness so that they could become an integral and important part of the DCU again. As much as I've always loved the Giffen League, the characters depicted in it acted entirely unlike they ever did before or after--and many of them have become the butts of jokes for years after their membership in the "funny" Justice League.

At any rate, this is some of the more exciting comics news that's been announced this convention season. Between Booster Gold and the restoration of Manhunter to ongoing status, DC is taking up all the space on my pull list that's been vacated by Marvel books I won't be picking up in the aftermath of Civil War and Captain America #25.

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