DCU : The Original Universe

comics rock. talk about them here. now. or just go to the "corn" section and wack off. i'll understand. i'll just sit here and read my spider-man comics.

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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Two minis from 1996/97.

Arsenal Roy Harper aka Speedy aka Arsenal aka Red Arrow. His daughter Lian gets kidney cancer (WTH? She's like two years old. Damn that kid had/is going to have a shitty short life) and Roy has to team up with Vandal Savage(who is doing some clone/stem cell shit with dead babies or something) to save her. But Roy's conscience gets the better of him. Rick Mays on art, who I sorta enjoyed back in the 90s. He worked on the Nomad ongoing. But mostly, the only thought that goes throughy mind every time I see Lian Harper is what a fucking assfuck James Robinson is, and how I will never buy any of his shitty comics at cover price ever again. Fucking hack.
Artemis:Requeim Artemis, the former Wonder Woman had a miniseries where she joined up with a team of Demon Hunters called the HellEnders. Retarded. The "Requiem" part of the title is the Codename Arti chooses for herself. Why does she need a codename? In case the demons find out her real name, I guess? I'm missing the first two issues. Apparently she died in the WW book and while in Hell she married a demon Baron. And I thought Marvel in the 90s sucked. The art was by a very young Ed Benes and it's very much 90s cheesecake Image wannabe art. All the women's costumes are those thong-in-the-crotch deals. Seriously, how did superheroines get anything done? They must've been constantly tugging costume out of their vag.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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The Authority. Okay, I don't what people's deal was back in the late 90s. Were comics just so shitty in the 90s that by the time a decently mediocre book came out in 1999 they were confused and thought it was the greatest thing ever and heralded the reinvention of comics?
Because to hear people talk, this book was so fucking awesome. I just read the first four issues. It's about a crazy dude who tries to take over the world. And a bunch of snarky superheroes with attitude stop him. That's hardly new. It was good, don't get me wrong. But it's nothing major.

Okaaay. I guess the first arc of Authority was fairly tame. Then it turned into the depraved profanity and nudity laced extravaganza it was infamous for. I only have two random issues of the first run, written by Mark Millar.
After that was a 14 issue series by Robbie Morrison and Dwayne Turner.
Then there was a 12 issue series by Brubaker and Nguyen called "Revolution" which I have most, but not all, of.
Also have some miniseries by Garth Ennis about a former SAS wanker who gets pissed and shags constantly. He also winds up dealing with The Authority(specifically Midnighter). They're a fucking laugh riot. If you can track them down, do so.
And lastly, a couple of Authority/Lobo crossovers written by Giffen and Grant. Li'l Jenny Quantum(the 3 year old reincarnation of previous team member Jenny Sparks, now being raised by gay couple Midnighter and Apollo) finds an issue of Lobo's Paramilitary X-Mas special and gets totally pissed that Lobo killed Santa Claus. Hilarity ensues.
In the follow up oneshot Spring Break Massacre, Lobo goes after the Easter Bunny who welched on the deal and the Authority follows.

Authority wasn't high on my buy list, but now that I've read these, I want to finish the run and it looks like I'm already 2/3rds the way to a completely complete Authority collection. The first series might be tougher to find because it's early work by that assclown Millar, but the rest should be easy.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Must be nice to be in charge of DC Comics. Your shitty Wildstorm characters wind up mingling with Superman, or your 8-year-old self's He-Man wet dreams get made into plastic.

I guess this means that if I were in charge of IDW, this guy named Wrench who had all sorts of awesome powers would be kicking Megatron's ass every week, and Prime would keep telling him how kewl he is. Oh, wait, that would be Drift, right?
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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So I started in on the 1990 Green Lantern series. I had about 30 issues from way back when I started reading, so I did not dig those out and read them with the stuff I bought recently. But most of those issues were 37-47, then 48-50 which is when Hal goes nuts and Kyle gets he ring. And then 51-58 which were Kyle's first few issues. Including the infamous issue 56 which coined the term "Women in Refrigerators" which has become a shorthand terminology for violence towards women in comics. And I remember the gist of those well enough and what I didn't was summarized in the books reading now.

I'll get to specifics on the first 100 issues or so in the next post, but what was interesting is this misconstrued notion (fostered primarily by raging Douche Fanboy Geoff Johns) that Hal Jordan is yardstick and ruler of Green Lanterns. But taking a step back, Hal has never been able to carry a Lantern book by himself for very long.
The original GL series started in 1960, and was on a very slipshod schedule. Mostly bi-monthly. After 10 years and 75 issues, he had to share the comic with Green Arrow starting with 76. And then after two years, the book got canceled. It picked up where it left off four years later in '76.
Green Arrow wasn't dropped from the title until the 120s in 1979. So that was Ten years GL shared billing with GA.
Then, around issue 180 Hal was replaced with John Stewart in 1984. So Hal oy managed another five years before getting replaced again.
Stewart headlines the book until issue 200 when the series was renamed Green Lantern Corps and showcased a variety of GLs including Kilowog, Stewart, Gardner and Jordan and several other.
The GL Corps book ran from 1986 to 1988 before it was ended as part of the fallout of Crisis.
In 1989 we got Emerald Dawn. The post-Crisis Origin Story for Hal.
Then in 1990 we got a new Green Lantern title, ostensibly to showcase Hal Jordan again. But as I'm reading these issues, I'm realizing Hal was sharing the spotlight with both Stewart and Gardner with entire arcs of issues being devoted to both characters. So probably only 25-30 of the issues were actually Jordan. (Stewart even got his own Spinoff book called Mosaic, and Guy received his own book as well) Then by issue 50, Hal was replaced with Kyle and for the next 130 issues it was Kyle's book. That made it until 2005.

At which point Johns announced a GL book without Hal wasn't really a GL book and gave us Rebirth and the current GL saga.
But that's not true at all. Hal struggled to carry the book since the beginning.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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I only read it up to 30 or so, but loved it for most of that time. I especially liked the way they had rotating teams (maybe writer and artist, but at least just the artist) for stories spotlighting different GL's.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Okay. Green Lantern. I read the first 100 issues. And by that I mean I read 60 of the first hundred issues. I'm missing six of those, and the other 34 are in my basement and I haven't read them in nigh 20 years. But I connected the dots on what I missed.
Well split it into two sections 1-50 which are Hal and Co. issues, and 51-100 which are Kyle issues.

Its interesting to note that the book lasted 15 years and 181 issues, it only had 4 main writers(I peeked ahead). Gerard Jones did the first 47 issues. Ron Marz did 48-125. After a short arc by Jay Faerber, Judd Winick came aboard and did 129-167. Then Ben Raab did a handful of issues(168-175) before Marz came back and wrapped up Kyle's series(176-181) before Johns' Rebirth mini. That's pretty impressive.
The series starts out with Hal trying to "find" himself. He's going from town to town, working odd jobs. Being GL is secondary to him. The first eight issues are all about him gradually coming to realize he's a Lantern.
10-13 are Guy and G'Nort.
14-17 are John Stewart dealing with Mosaic fallout from the first story arc (a crazy Guardian took towns from different planets and dumped them all on the same world to see how they would interact having to live with aliens from a dozen worlds.) Eventually it led to Stewarts own ongoing called Mosaic.
18 was a Guy issue.
21-24 dealt with dangling plot threads concerning Carol Ferris and Star Sapphire.
25 had Hal and Guy duke it out to see who would be "Earth's GL".(the Guardians had named Guy as GL at the beginning of the series). Hal wins.
This change led to Guy getting his own series and having a yellow ring.
After that my reading gets spotty, but there's plenty of gratuitous team-up issues (Flash, Wonder Woman, Deathstroke, etc) and the Corps get properly reestablished.
Gerard Jones was a decent writer, but he tended to go for the melodramatic. And some of his resolutions to problems were downright convoluted. As far as artists go, I've never been a big Pat Broderick fan. In the later issues Mark Bright took over and I always liked him on Iron Man and GIJoe.
As I pointed out though, it's interesting to note it wasn't a "Hal" book but for about 20 issues or so.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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I loved the series for the first two years. Melodramatic, yes, but still better than most books for its time. I liked how, in the first arc, at least, Hal didn't care about being GL, but the other GL's on Earth kept popping up and getting in the way of him just being Hal.

And, as I mentioned, I bloody loved how they rotated teams for stories focused on different GL's. Even bringing in Nodell for the retold origin of Alan Scott.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Then we get to the Marz issues. Of which I'm only 2/3rds of the way through his impressive 77 issue run on the series.
Of course, Marz had the enviable(or unenviable, depending) task of introducing a brand new character uncluttered by history, back story and continuity. But also, replacing "fan fave" Hal Jordan with a complete unknown. So it's a double edged sword. Also, as I discovered, he had to keep informing new and lapsed readers who Kyle was and why Hal wasn't around anymore. Which was something of an albatross for the entire series going forward and I applaud Marz for making it work.
48-50 was of course Emerald Twilight. Coast City gets vaporized. Seven Million people die. Hal goes crazy, destroys the Corps and the Guardians, etc. And Kyle gets the ring.
51-62. Kyle's first year. His GF Alex gets killed as stuffed in a fridge. He joins the Titans. And basically is on a learning curve with the Ring. Also starts sort of a relationship with Donna Troy.
63-64. Evil Hal comes back for "his" ring. Kyle and the JLA oppose him, and Kyle "earns" the mantle of GL in the eyes of the JLA. Funnily enough, Parallax thoroughly trounced the entire JLA AND Kyle. Then basically changed his mind at the end and told Kyle to keep the ring. So Kyle didn't really do anything to earn the name except get a beatdown.
65-70. Team up with Flash, Underworld Crossover, and in 70 he invites his hot model neighbor up to his room so he can sketch her nude, and Donna walks in so they break up. Ha! Dumbass.
71-73. Kyle gets a bug up his ass to find out makes a real hero, singe goes on the obligatory guest star tour of DC meeting Batman, Robin, Alan Scott, Shazam, and Wonder Woman.
74-75. Outer space adventure. Wraps up dangling plot threads from the recently canceled Darkstars comic.
76-77. The first of many team ups with the New Green Arrow, Connor Hawke. An organic, believable friendship starts between them. Nicely done.
78-79. A couple issues of standard hero stuff
89-81. Final Night. Hal Jordan sacrifices himself to restart the sun. Dies a hero. Has a big funeral in 81. Which I don't have because fuck if I'm gonna pay $20 for it.
82. Reconciles with Donna. Babysits her kid. Lets him wander into the tiger enclosure at the zoo.
83-85. Fatality is introduced. She's killing GLs and ex GLs because John Stewart accidentally blew up her planet.
86. Jenny"Jade"Hayden moves in as Kyle's platonic roommate. Kyle still manages to peep her naked in the shower. My man.
87. Martian Manhunter team up.
88-90. Kyle and Donna go visit Kyle's estranged mother in LA. Donna finds out her son and ex husband died in a car crash.
91. Genesis event crossover. DeSaad tortures Kyle. Pointless.
92. Another Green Arrow crossover.
93. Deadman guest stars.
94. A Superboy crossover.
95. Jim Starlin drew this issue. So that's pretty cool.
96. Part of a 3-part crossover with Flash and Green Arrow.
97-99. Gets thrown into the future and meets the LoSh and his descendant, a young girl who wields his ring for a bit.
100. Then the LoSH send him back in time but overshoot by ten years, so he meets Hal right after he got the ring, and he meets the Corps in their prime, and helps defeat Sinestro. At the end, the Guardians send him back to his proper time, and young Hal accidentally goes with him.

So as you can see, although evenly spaced out, Hal was still very much a part of the book and Kyle was often left playing second banana in his own title. And much of the theme of the series was "How will I measure up against ALL the other GLs who came before me."
But considering the longshot premise of a brand new GL winning over fans, I think the book did pretty well.
I'm looking forward to the rest of Marz's run and Winick's as well.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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anarky wrote:I loved the series for the first two years. Melodramatic, yes, but still better than most books for its time. I liked how, in the first arc, at least, Hal didn't care about being GL, but the other GL's on Earth kept popping up and getting in the way of him just being Hal.

And, as I mentioned, I bloody loved how they rotated teams for stories focused on different GL's. Even bringing in Nodell for the retold origin of Alan Scott.
I thought it was interesting the Corps was not in place at the beginning of the series. I'm fuzzy about what happened between the end of the GLCorps series and the beginning of this one. But only Hal, John, and Guy were wearing rings in issue 1. And then I thought it was kind of funny that it took them a couple years to reestablish it, and then destroyed it again when Kyle took over. so again, the Corps was around for about 20 issues and then got trashed again.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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At the end of one major 80s crossover (Crisis, I think), the Corps was severely scaled back and headquartered on Earth. It was a team book for a couple of years, and then got canceled. Either in another crossover or in the final issues of Green Lantern Corps, several of the remaining Lanterns were killed, the Central Power Battery was destroyed, and, somehow, only the human Lanterns had functioning rings still. I think they killed Sinestro, and his ghost entered the battery and destroyed it.

When the Guardians return (I think they'd left after Millennium or one of the other forgettable crossovers, and had been replaced by the even more forgettable New Guardians), they reinstitute the Corps and rebuild the Lantern. You'll notice when Hal (I think) charges his ring for the first time on the reformed battery, something yellow comes out. I think it was intended to be Sinestro (he did come back with very little explanation otherwise less than a year later), but was retconned to be Parallax.

The story with the Pogliachi Guardians (ha!) was intended to explain how the hell G'nort had a functioning ring during the interrim, and why none of the Lanterns other than Guy had any idea who the fuck he was.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Now that I think back, GL had a run in Action Comics when it Weekly back in late 80s. Perhaps all that Corps stuff happened then. I'll have to dig those out.

Anyway, back to GL. I finished the rest of Ron Marz's run up to issue 125(minus the two issues I'm missing). He did have a couple other writers fill in, so his 77 issue run was interrupted. Eric Luke did one issue, and Dan Jurgens did two.
When we last tuned in in issue 100, Hal from ten years ago had accidentally followed Kyle to the "present".
101-106. Young Hal tours around the 'future' like its no big deal. He finds out he'll eventually go crazy and turn evil. No big whoop. He visits the JLA and they ask him to join. No big whoop. He reunites with Carol and Tom. No big whoop. Eventually Parallax shows up and he, Kyle, and Hal all fight before they realize everybody needs to back to their proper times or Parallax won't ever show up during Final Night and reignite the sun. Duh.
107. Kyle decides to restart the Corps and gives the first new ring to his GF Jade.
108-111. Jade actually headlines the book for four issues while Kyle went off planet in some Prestige Mini series. That was a pleasant surprise. She teams up with Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and deals with a child molesting Santa. Then Fatality shows up.
112. Kyle returns and defeats Fatality. Jade's ring is destroyed. John Stewart winds up in a wheelchair.
113-114. A new villain named Effigy, who is a puppet of the Controllers(they were the "Guardians" to the Darkstars) is introduced.
115-116. Dan Jurgens issues. Booster Gold and Plastic Man guest star.
117. A Manhunter Guy had on display in his bar comes to life.
118. Donna finally reenters the picture. Kyle sucks at dealing with women, so Jade leaves him and Donna doesn't really want to be with him (for a completely asinine convoluted reason that could only occur in comics).
119. Day of Judgment fallout. Hal Jordan is now the Spectre.
120. Kyle helps a friend from an assassin from his past. The best thing about this issue is they go to "Donna" at the end, but the colorist accidentally colored her green for TWO PAGES. So it would seem its Jade. Kyle reconciling with Donna is a COMPLETELY different story beat than him reconciling with Jade considering all the drama in issue 118. Sadly, I don't have the next issue where they would mea culpa the miscolor in the letters page. Not do I have issue 123 where readers would notice in their letters.
121-124. Kyle deals with the Controllers again, and they get in his head and make him think he restarted the Corps and is married to Jade. So after he deals with them, he thinks about restarting the Corps and gettin back with Jade.
125. Marz's last issue. A quiet one and done farewell on the JLA watchtower.

Then Jay Faerber had three issues, of which I have none, before Winick's run. Which I will read next. (But I'm missing 8 of the first 15 issues of that run so it'll be spotty)
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Judd Winick's run from 129-164. This was Judd's first ongoing series for a major publisher. Later on he would add Detective and Exiles over at Marvel, writing all three simultaneously. But his first year on GL he was working out the kinks in his style. Not bad, but he sometimes went too dramatic in his storylines. Overall he did a fine job.

128-130. Kyle comes up against a "sentient" Manhunter who has rebuilt other Manhunter robots like him. Think the Borg and you get the gist of the story.
131-136. Introduces Nero, a mental patient given Sinestro's old ring to become Kyle's new main protagonist. Only have a two of the six issues, so I'm paraphrasing a bit.
137. Kyle's assistant Terry comes out of the closet. A positively done pro-Gay issue. A bit heavy on the drama, but that's offset by the good intent.
138-139. Kyle and Jade go to a planet mired in civil war (think Israel/Palestine in space). The realities of conflict surface and Kyle realizes the ring can't fix everything.
140-145. I don't know. Only have one issue, but apparently Kyle gets very, very powerful. And becomes Ion.
146-149. As Ion, Kyle can be everywhere and do everything. He fixes John Stewart's spine. Gives Jade back her original powers. And has a heart to heart with Superman about overstepping his bounds in assisting the human race.
150. Kyle reignites the Oan Power Battery and loses his Ion powers. The Guardians are reborn as little blue babies. Kyle also finally tracks down his missing father.
151-152. Brainwave Jr(former Infinity Inc hero) returns as a villain.
153. Kyle goes to his High School reunion. Terry gets beat up in an anti-gay hate crime.
154-155. Kyle beats up the guys who put Terry in a coma. Lots of anti-bully speechifying. In the end Kyle leaves Earth, but leaves John a ring.
156. John Stewart is Earth's GL.
157. Fill in issue by Faerber. Jade teams up with Donna Troy. They hash out their Kyle issues.
158-159. Kyle and Jade find Mogo.
160-161. Winick wraps his loose ends story wise.
162-164. His final story arc is a crossover with Green Arrow(which he took over that series the following issue and wrote that book for like the next 60 issues). He writes hilarious banter between Kyle and Ollie, so it was a nice send off.

Next up, Ben Raab's issues.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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Never been a fan of Ben Raab's writing. I think he was an asst. editor at Marvel and somehow snaked his way into writing books like Excalibur because they were in a crunch. Then he somehow parlayed that into gigs at other companies. Anyway, his tenure was mercifully short 11 issues. He started a lot of subplots back on Earth with Jenny and Terry and Merayne that didn't go anywhere.

165-167. Kyle tries to recruit for the Corps. A bunch of former Lanterns turn him down. So he goes out and does Lantern-y stuff like save planets from locusts and exploding suns and stuff.
168. I bought this one back in 2004 when I was getting back into comics and trying different series out. I was unimpressed. As forgot what it was about.
169. Uhm..Kilowog is alive and he's all--weird. I dunno what's going on. But Kyle goes into Kilowog's "afterlife" and rescues him again so that he's back to his normal pinkness.
170. Yuck. Raab takes an entire issue to literally recap his first five issues. What a waste.
171-175. Kyle and the new Corps go up against the evil son of Abin Sur and the Weaponers of Qward.


After Raab's run ended Marz came back and closed out the series. I bought those issues back in 2004, but I don't remember what happened in any of them.

Next up there's a few Annuals, oneshots and such, and then I'll be done with Green Lantern.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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The last of the GL issues I have.

Annual 1. 1992. Part of the Eclipso Event. Eclipso possesses Guy, Carol as Star Sapphire, and Hal at different points in the story. Written by G. Jones with wretched Andy Smith art.
Annual 4 from 1995. Part of DCs Year One event. Hal and Kyle somehow switch places in time. Hal tries to sleep with Kyle's not dead yet GF Alex. Hal is skeevy.
Annual 6 from 1997. Part of the Pulp Heroes event. Kyle gets stuck in a John Carter-esque world. Pretty good story by Marz and Jeff Johnson.
Annual 7 from 1998. Part of the Ghosts event. A bunch of dead Corps members show and Kyle has to "kill" them again to stop Nekron from getting into our universe. Tepid.
Annual 9 from 2000. Part of the Planet DC event, which I think was trying to introduce heroes from all over the world. This one introduced a female hero from Tunisia. She wore a cowl and basically a Red Sonja looking metal bikini, which seems a strange choice for a primarily Muslim country. But what do I know?

And some oneshots and stuff.

Green Lantern + The Ray. From 1996. DC had a series of "Plus" oneshots that teamed up their A-Listers like Batman, Superman, etc with lesser known heroes to give them exposure. In this issue, Kyle teams up with The Ray(the 90s version who is the grandson or nephew of the original. Something.) to fight Dr. Polaris in Tokyo.
Green Lantern 3D. From 1998. A gimmick issue that came with 3D glasses. It had Kyle and Jenny go INSIDE the Lantern. And had 3D art.
Green Lantern: Our Worlds at War. From 2001. Part of the OWaW Event. Somebody blows up Pluto and Kyle replaces it with a bunch of asteroids he 'greens' together. Also starts displaying signs of the Ion power.
Green Lantern 80 Page Giant. From 1998. The former GLs Guy, John, and Alan meet at Guy's bar and trade stories about themselves and also Hal, Kyle, and G'Nort.
Tales of the GL Corps 1. From 1981. One of DCs first miniseries. Krona attacks the Corps and we get his origin as well as Hal's for the umpteenth time. Also introduced Arisia and Chummuck. Which reminded me that Arisia was originally like 13 years old, and that her body aged and Hal started fucking her, even though technically she was still a kid. Hal is skeevy, part II.

And lastly, a couple of GL Corps issues from the recent 2005 series.
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Re: DCU : The Original Universe

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I read both Booster Gold's and Blue Beetle's 24 issue ongoings from the mid 80s over the last couple weeks. Both books were 'born' from the Crisis restructuring.
Booster was written and mostly drawn by his creator Dan Jurgens. He had a strong first mega arc over the first 12 issues of the book, but the second half of the series was mostly tying up loose plot threads. And Rainbow Raider's read name is Roy G. Bivolo. I don't know whether to cry or fistbump DC for being so cheesy in the silver and bronze age. The originality of the character alone merits a B. I'm surprised no one else has ever gone for the commercialism aspect of heroism. Especially in today's world.

Blue Beetle was by Len Wein, with Paris Cullens on the first half of the series, and Ross Andru and Gil Kane finishing up at the end. It was fairly straightforward superhero fare. Booster and Beetle didn't really get their famous Bwahaha personalities until Giffen, DeMatties, and Maguire's JLA book. So this Beetle isn't quite goofy enough. I've never read any of Ditko's original Charleston books from the 60s, so I don't know how much of the original was brought over to this DC reinvention. Wein had a lot of subplots that fizzled, and others that dragged longer than they had to throughout the 24 issues. The series wasn't great, wasn't awful. A solid C.
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