The Spectre #11

“The Mission”

Cover Price: $2.50
Bargain Price: $0.25
Cover Date: January, 2002

Hal Jordan’s a really bland character. He’s brave and confident and fearless and whatever and, while that’s great for the Silver Age, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for complexity today. Hal has been GL since the late fifties. It’s probably about time we told new and interesting stories about someone new and interesting. J.M. DeMatteis’ Spectre series, however, is a surprisingly refreshing take on Hal. Here, Hal is over his head as the new Spectre, unsure and downright distrustful of his powers. He’s dealing with the wrath of God, judgment, and his own guilt over his time as Parallax. He’s still the brave Hal Jordon, but here there’s a little more depth as we see Hal dealing with his recent troubled past in a heroic and human way, while dealing with situations that are completely new to the jaded space cop. DeMatteis adds a really nice sense of wonder to the proceedings of this particular issue, which deals with Jordon learning that there are different aspects of himself and his personality that even he wasn’t aware of, wandering the world to bring the wrath and redemption of God to people of different cultures and faiths, allowing the Spectre to be in multiple places at once and to cater to a variety of different faiths and expectations. It’s a pretty clever twist on the idea of the GL Corps that leads to some interesting ideas and a nice, refreshing take on a well-worn character.

Booster Gold #32

“Tense Future”

Cover Price: $2.99
Bargain Price: $0.25
Cover Date: July 2010

People seem to forget that Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis’ JLI was just as much about action and drama as it was about comedy. True, the comedy was a big part of the proceedings, but so were but the intense fights with Desparo, The Grey Man, and the mutated Thunderer as well as personal tragedies, exemplified by Blue Beetle’s brain washing. These were the spine that held that series together and offered a nice, if extreme, counterpoint to the interpersonal comedy the writing duo pioneered in those pages. The resulting mix was what made that series special, not merely one or the other. All that said, as the cover implies, this issue of Booster Gold does certainly have the “Bwa-Ha-Ha,” but it brings the action and drama as well. Booster finds himself in the future, helping a small group of refuge esescape catastrophe on Daxam. Unfortunately, the group runs into the Emerald Empress, leading to a truly excellent action sequence as Booster battles her Emerald Eye, drawing it away from the refugees and figuring that the Empress herself is not as big a threat. Booster’s monolog and his repartee with the refugees is classic Giffen and DeMatteis, but the scene that awaits Booster when he returns from fighting the Eye, revealing how badly he underestimated the Empress, not to mention one of the surviving refugee’s reaction to the aftermath, prove this issue a much closer spiritual successor to the JLI than much of the duo’s other recent efforts.