Blue Beetle, BOOM! and Genius

MINOR SPOILERS

While I wait for my script co-ordinator to process the new draft, some quick comic business. OH, and I'll be totally abusing the Amazon links, because I'm learning how they work.

BLUE BEETLE #29 with MATT STURGESS

... is a goddam home run.

Don't get me wrong, Will Pfiefer did an excellent job, and I'm always a fan of Baldeon's work. But damn, Matt Sturgess has written the book I dreamed of doing once we finished the origin story.

The strength of the book has always been the nuts and bolts of superheroing. Matt's now exploring what it's like to be a 16 year old Hispanic superhero with a secret identity in El Paso. He's managed to pull in the Minutemen, illegals, and the media all in a non-preachy way. Characters have specific viewpoints, but they're not always what you expect, and all very credible. Matt's seemlessly taken over the book, but improved it with his mad plotting/structure skills.

Not to mention, he brings the funny. I'm kind of giddy that I get to watch the Paco/Brenda train wreck from the outside now, like a fanboy. He gets all the characters, their voices, their tone. I can't wait to see what he does with La Dama.

I cannot accentuate this enough -- I read BB #29 three times in a row.

An interview here has Matt discussing his plans for his run, which I hope is at least as long as mine. Rafael is continuing on the book, of course, and somehow manages to top himself every issue.

BLUE BEETLE POST-GAME

I would have loved to do a proper wrap-up when issue #25 dropped. But, you know -- dead-zone. You want to write the long article, the whole "running a TV show" thing gets in the way -- and you realize a short note was probably smarter in the first place.

Kieth taught me ten years of comic writing in one. Cully's character design is iconic, and that includes all the non-costumed side characters. Rafael made me look better than I am (Issue #17, kids). Joan Hilty talked me out of three bad ideas and into two good ones, for a net +5 on the Editing Score and therefore a big win.

We wanted to establish a new superhero for younger readers, and add a different viewpoint to the DCU. Something you could give your 12 year old nephew to read without first forcing him to complete a degree in DC Continuity.

A lot of people hated us, then some of them liked us, and then some of them loved us ... while a lot of people still hated us. Those people can go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers. The BB fans were supportive, enthusiastic, and it felt good to see all the positive reviews roll in by the middle of the run. And I genuinely like the BB fans. They are the good-natured, "Comics Should Be Fun" folks. (Hell, even the Goons liked it by the end of the run.)

Special thanks to the Comicbloc humans for a safe forum haven.

End of day, Jaime Reyes is going to be every young kid's Blue Beetle, much like the Green Lantern of my nephew is John Stewart. And Jaime's a damn fine Blue Beetle to have.




BOOM! goes online

Although the Farscape news is pretty great -- yeah, yeah, I was on that train pretty hard -- what's fascinating right now is that BOOM! has put a bunch of their back-issue anthologies online for free reading. They're uploading a page a day. They all have RSS feeds, too, very progressive, even if still bound to the hated portrait layout. I've got stories in most of these, somewhere ...

Ninja Tales, "Desert Sun" starts here.
Zombie Tales, "Memento Mori" is here.

GENIUS

I wrote a blurb for Marc Bernardin's Monster Attack Network, and have always been a fan.



Well, he's stepped up with a new book that's... fine, I'm not going to do it justice. Here's the one-liner:

"What if the greatest military mind of our generation was born an angry 17-year-old girl in South Central L.A.? And what if she decided to secede a few blocks of her 'hood...through force?"

This earns the best possible compliment one writer can give another.

Fuck you, Marc.

Shocking, adult, conflicted, and all off an inspired high concept. Read about it here, read the amazing reviews, and go vote for the damn thing so I don't have to finance it myself so I can read the entire arc.

All right, time to proof some dialogue. Product links below, if you're interested, for the whole 25-issue BB arc