Blue and Gold #1

Blue and Gold #1

DC Comics 2021

Written by Dan Jurgens

Illustrated by Ryan Sook

Lettered by Rob Leigh

Desperate to regain the spotlight, Booster Gold looks to attract the public’s (and Justice League’s) attention the same way any washed-up, second-rate hero would-social media. The not-so-tech-savvy hero from the 25th century enlists the help of his best friend, Blue Beetle, who possesses both the money and the brains to help his old pal navigate the scary world of internet influencers. Watch out, evildoers, our heroes are live and online!

Part of me is thrilled that Booster has reverted to his old ways and another part of me wishes he’d utilise the time spent in the timestream with his pops to have grown up a bit. Overall though this is the kind of series that reminds us of the pair’s time in the 90’s version of the League. It has humour and action, seriousness balances out the silliness and it’s just a pure and utter joy to be able to laugh and smile again when it comes to the DC Universe. When it’s all said and done this is a perfectly balanced book that brings the fun back to the funny book genre and it’s a well needed distraction from the dark and angst set that has become the norm.

I love, love, love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceedingly well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction, the social media boxes as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a magnificent job in fleshing out the characters. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story we’re treated to a delightful beginning of their reunion tour!

I appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow. The layers contain the characterisation and the plot twists that drive the story forward and whether they work with the main arc or swirl around it they add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably done.

The interiors here are phenomenal! The linework we see is clean, crisp and strong and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create the detail work is astonishingly well rendered. We see some nice use of backgrounds throughout and how they enhance the moments as well as work within the composition of the panels to bing us depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope of the story is magnificent. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliantly rendered. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show a master colourist at work. The creativity and imagination that we see throughout is mind numbing.

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Booster has the potential to be a great hero and along the way he’s become that joke so here’s hoping he can retain that sense of humour that makes him ridiculously silly and completely and utterly effective in the realm of superheroes. Still Blue and Gold is a team that would do well on a permanent basis, which of course depends on how this eight issue run does. What Dan does with the writing here is pure genius on his part and while the legacy of these two is far from written if the writing and characterisation remains this stellar and the interiors this high level of quality stuff than I’m ready for the two of them to be permanent fixtures on stands.