In the ancient ritual of comic book fans everywhere, I made a trip down to my comic shop this past Wednesday. If you’ve followed Oddity Prodigy Productions at all, you’ll know that the shop in question was Captain Blue Hen Comics. It was a solid week of comics. The new issues of Shazam and Freedom Fighters came out, two books I’ve really been enjoying. There was an appearance of Naomi in Action Comics, which is exciting. The mini-series introducing her was a recent highlight.
That’s not what I’m here to talk about however. One of the fun things that Captain Blue Hens does is ask a question of the week. They put it up on a board behind the counter and ask everyone who comes by to vote on the answer. This week’s question was “Who are the best superhero buddies?” As you can see in the pic, there are ten options.
All of the pairings are fun, but really only one can be the answer, and it’s pretty obvious right? Despite the obviousness of the answer there were votes all over the place. In fact as I stood in line, a customer voted for ‘Damian/Jon’. I couldn’t not believe it. I could perhaps give some slack for someone voting for ‘Danny/Luke’ since “Power Man” will always sound weird if not immediately followed by “And Iron Fist”, but ‘Damian/Jon’? Absolutely not.
I used to run a comic book shop so I try very hard to not be ‘that guy’ when I’m in them. Comic shop employees will almost always be up for talking about comics with customers, but rarely do they want to engage in dumb arguments about things like ‘Who would win in a fight?’ While I may be speaking out of turn, I think most probably don’t enjoy being the arbiter in disagreements between friends. Regardless, when it was my turn at the counter, I may have suggested to the handsome devil at the cash register that anyone who voted for a pairing other than Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, might in fact be a federal agent.
Blue Beetle and Booster Gold are comics ultimate buddy cop duo. This isn’t to say the other duo’s listed aren’t good, or even great it some cases! Green Lantern and Green Arrow, the original hard traveling heroes, were brought together on the strength of their shared color schemes for some incredible stories. The problem is they don’t even really like each other! Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are fine, but really more of a couple than buds. Rocket Racoon and Groot are fine, but it’s more of a pet/pet situation. The rest are all fun pairings, but hardly central to any of the characters existence. Even Power Man and Iron Fist have had their own TV shows, separate from each other. And frankly, Wonder Woman and Superman aren’t buds. Not really. Even if you replaced them with pairings like Hawkman and the Atom, Captain America and the Falcon, or Cloak and Dagger, they’d still be the wrong duo.
Nope, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold top this list.
Blue Beetle was originally created way back in 1939. At the time he was Dan Garrett and was being put out by Fox Comics. Eventually Fox went out of business and Beetle ended up with Charlton. While at Charlton the Blue Beetle moniker went to Ted Kord to the 1960’s. Charlton eventually faced the same fate as Fox Comics, and would sell Beetle, along with a number of other classic characters, to DC Comics. The character, as Ted Kord, was introduced to the DC universe just prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and he had his own series that ran for 24 issues in the mid-80s. He is as well traveled a hero as they come, but never found his true calling until 1987.
Booster Gold was a new hero created in 1986 by Dan Jurgens. A down-on-his-luck former sports star from the future, Booster came back in time along with his robot companion Skeets, to find fortune and glory in the present day. From his introduction he was a different kind of hero, and his series ran for 25 issues before fizzling out.
I loved both books as a kid. They quickly became two of my favorite heroes, but it wasn’t until 1987, when Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire joined forces to create a new kind of Justice League, that they found their true selves.
The Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League runs was one of the most influential and enjoyable runs of any comic anywhere. It’s the kind of run spoken of like Walt Simonson Thor, George Perez Avengers, or Chris Claremont on (every X Book). It had a huge impact on almost all of the characters involved, but none more so than Beetle and Booster.
The two characters had been non-traditional heroes without much success, but then through Justice League, they found each other and became something more. They became lovable doofuses, always struggling for respect, but never quite taking anything too seriously. In the era of “Grim and gritty” comics, not long before the birth of Vertigo, Spawn, and a million other titles where no one dared smile, they were a modern Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. Their very existence and popularity was something of a ‘screw you’ to the prevailing winds in the comic industry. In a post Dark Knight / Watchmen world, instead of killing criminals they were making jokes about oreos and having fun.
While they couldn’t stem the tide of pouches, big guns, and increasingly violent characters, they became avatars for a kind of fun superhero style that has been swimming up-stream ever since. Without them there’d be no Quantum and Woody, maybe no Impulse, and possibly not even a Young Justice. Making superheroes funny wasn’t invented with them, but it was to some degree perfected. Perhaps in part by proving that fun and goofy could sell just as well as grim and gritty.
Over the years since they were paired together, they’ve never really been apart. Well, except when DC decided to kill Ted Kord for a while. The less said about that the better, but during that era there was a Booster Gold solo series, in which the whole book was driven by Booster’s existential crisis of being without his best friend.
When looking at that list of characters above, they’ve all had their own books, or stories. They’re fun together but their stories don’t NEED the other to function. Blue Beetle and Booster Gold don’t really work without the other anymore. Their place in comicdom and comic history is that they are the ultimate buddy team.
And you’re going to tell me that Damian Wayne and Jon Kent are a better duo?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA