Blue and Gold #3

Blue and Gold #3

DC Comics 2021

Written by Dan Jurgens

Illustrated by Cully Hamner

Coloured by Chris Sotomayor

Lettered by Rob Leigh

The million-dollar debut of Buggles! Booster Gold and Blue Beetle go...broke?! Ted Kord’s secret is out: the heir to the Kord Industries fortune has been cut off and cut out of his family’s company! Now the duo needs all the help they can get to fight off the Omnizon’s attack and set up their new business. Who can possibly save the guys from themselves? Meet the newest member of Blue & Gold...BUGGLES!

I’m glad that this isn’t as silly as the 90’s JLI team made them out to be. I wish Booster were more serious, like he was during the whole time travel series he did, but his aloofness and overeagerness to make money is balanced out by Beetle’s more serious and scientific approach. These two could actually be one of the most dynamic duo’s in comics if given the right opportunity but this isn’t that this is a fun, kitschy look at the pair. It certainly has its place as the world is a much more serious place and there’s way too much infighting going on with political parties and those who refuse to see logic. So it is a well needed escape from reality.

I am a fan of 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 exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encount. This does an absolutely marvellous job of bringing their personalities to the forefront. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story the more I want the issue to keep going.

I am enjoying how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. What these layers do is open up new avenues to be explored and these avenues add some wonderful depth, dimension and complexity to the story. With the introduction of Buggles and Ted’s confession to Michael we see how these avenues and their threads open up new possibilities. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is immaculately done.

The interiors here are utterly marvellous to see. The linework is fantastic and with its varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of the detail within the work is astounding. We see some really good, strong use of backgrounds throughout the book and this enhances and expands the moments beautifully. It also works within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. 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 various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a brilliant eye for how colour works.

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While I am immensely enjoying the way that this is being told I would like it to be a bit more serious but then that’s really just me. The world needs to giggle and laugh and these two gentlemen, lads/boys or whatnot, certainly are capable of getting readers’ to do just that. Dan understands these characters pretty much better than anyone alive and it shows in how well he’s able to write the absurdity of it all and still manage to get us to care about them, empathise with them and root for them to succeed. The writing is strong and interesting, the character development is spot on and the interiors really bring this to life with aplomb.