Boo$ter Is Back!

Booster Gold, "52 Pick-Up Chapter 1: Secret Origins". Written by Geoff Johns & John Katz, layouts by Dan Jurgens, and finishes by Norm Rapmund.

The guys at the comic book store didn't sound too impressed with Booster Gold. The owner had been reading comic books since the sixties and had never heard of Booster, while his clerk incorrectly thought Booster's first appearance was in the pages of Justice League International. He was, uhm, wrong. Booster had his own series before he became a member of the Justice League.

The new series is as good as the old run. It looks like Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz are going to continue Jurgen's habit of dusting off really obscure characters, and in one sense I think they've outdone Jurgens. Booster's origin and concept are, well, kind of goofy. Giffen and DeMatteis recognized this, but it came at the cost of ignoring the character's sci-fi roots.

Johns and Katz have successfully managed to re-imagine the character without an unpleasant ret-con, which is a rarity these days. I haven't seen such an interesting take on a comic book superhero since Alan Moore deconstructed the Swamp Thing in the early eighties. The more lighthearted approach that Johns and Katz bring to the title is reminiscent of DC's better titles from that decade, without the major drawback of comic books from my childhood, which was a lot of superfluous exposition.

With Jurgens doing the artwork, the new series has the creators imprimatur. While I miss the little $ sign in the title, the infinity symbol was a clever touch, and if it was designed by the books letterer, the editor should give Rob Leigh a raise. I think I'll pick up issues as they come out at the comic book store. Usually I'd wait for the trade paperback to come out, but this series is good enough to warrant buying the title on a monthly basis.