BOOSTERRIFIC! BLOG: Unwanted Gift

Friday, May 18, 2018

Unwanted Gift

I'd like to stop talking about the recent Batman story "The Gift", really I would. I'd like to file the three issues away in my longboxes and forget it was ever published. But it seems Tom King doesn't want to let me do that.

Please, no.

#BEGIN RANT (Warning: rant may contain spoilers)

I'm not intimately familiar with King's entire body of work, but I find it unlikely he's grown as popular as he is if all of his stories are as carelessly crafted as "The Gift."

The premise is laughably bad, an idea that should have been left on the back of whatever cocktail napkin King first jotted it on. How, exactly, is changing time to prevent the wedding of Batman and Catwoman supposed to be a gift? What kind of person would choose a vague dream over the lives of two loving parents? What kind of person would expect someone else to? Booster Gold was a former member of the Justice League, not a super villain. The excuse of immaturity can only be stretched so far.

The conclusion is no better. It's the worst kind of time travel plot device, where the resolution invalidates everything that came before. The Booster Gold who has been tortured by Bruce Wayne for the previous year can no longer exist. How can any Booster remember an event which never happened? (By the way, what happened to the corpse of the impossible Bruce Wayne? Or Skeets? Or the "other" Booster Gold? Damn this rabbit hole!) The resolution of "The Gift," as nonsensical as it is, makes it clear that its events can only affect one character (at most), and that character wasn't even the guy whose name is on the cover. If King hadn't tweeted otherwise, I would have assumed this story was filler so the wedding could take place in an issue with a nice, round number.

Speaking of Batman, he comes off just as poorly as Booster Gold does. As I wrote back in April, King ostensibly set out to recreate Alan Moore's "For The Man Who Has Everything..." by showing that the world was a worse place without Batman. However, instead of affirming the heroic value of one of the most popular fictional characters of all time, King instead successfully invalidates another of Moore's stories, The Killing Joke. In the end, all it takes is "one bad day" for Bruce Wayne to become a gun-toting murderer. Was that the goal, to demonstrate not that the world is better with Batman in it but that *Batman* is a better person because his parents died young? Unlike Booster, who King treats as a brain-dead court jester, Batman should be deserving of some respect. But no, his character is dragged through just as much mud.

If this story is any indication, King clearly cares nothing for characterization. Any excuse to write a feral Catwoman who kills for no apparent reason or a Batman who shoots first and asks questions never. (Or worse, Green Lanterns who shoot themselves in the head on a dare.) Judging by the quote above, I'm guessing that King intentionally ignored years of character development so that Booster Gold would be in position for that other story he wants to tell. Otherwise he certainly went out of his way to mangle some beloved characters for no obvious reason.

#END RANT

Maybe you were one of those people who who read "The Gift" and liked it. More power to you. In that case, perhaps you'd like to hear what BleedingCool.com has to speculate about this announcement.

Personally, I found the ridiculous premise, careless resolution, and misguided characterization insulting to some characters and artists I'm actually quite fond of. If "The Gift" is any indication of the kind of story that King likes to write, I'd prefer that he left Booster Gold on the sidelines instead.

FOOTNOTE 2018-05-18:

I'm guessing... lobotomy? (As I said above, "the excuse of immaturity can only be stretched so far.")

Comments (6) | Add a Comment | Tags: batman bleedingcool.com tom king twitter.com

Shawn posted on May. 18, 2018 at 11:03 AM
I've actually for the most part enjoyed Tom King's past work on Batman. And he had excellent character development on Grayson. So I'm hoping The Gift was an aberration. The story seemed rushed with really no point to it at all, with a dumb finish. Worst of all the misrepresentation of Booster, who's never acted more of an idiot. But, I'd like to King a very small benefit of doubt with his past work that he can redeem himself with a better story or at least make Booster seem competent again.

Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on May. 18, 2018 at 12:51 PM
In my LCS last week, two other people told me they loved King's Batman run "until this Booster Gold stuff." So maybe I'm only seeing King at his worst. I'm certainly willing to admit that it'd be hard to go downhill from here.

Richard posted on May. 18, 2018 at 5:18 PM
The Hal Jordan suicide (mentioned again above) was at least half-justified later when Booster, in an offhand comment, refers to him as Joker Hal. Given that other background elements indicate that Joker serum victims are painfully common in this timeline, that seems to be the explanation. Seems important that it be in the context, though -- or at least better represented in the artwork of the suicide.

Jackson posted on May. 18, 2018 at 5:49 PM
Thank you for saying everything I've been thinking about The Gift and King's tweet. You know, a few months ago I would've read a tweet like that and been SO excited, ready for Booster to finally come back to prominence and be taken seriously. Especially after his great appearance in Action Comics, in which he read more like pre-Flashpoint Michael than he has in years.

But now, this kind of news makes me super nervous, because if King messes this up then that's "goodbye Booster Gold" for another long while... and King already messed up The Gift big time.

How did we go from "BRING BACK BOOSTER!" to "let's just leave him alone for a while"? It's like we're in our own crappy alternate timeline.

ariel_justel posted on May. 18, 2018 at 6:26 PM
Another responsable for this nonsense is the editor. It is the editor's job to talk to the writer and artist and guide them to produce the best possible product. Evidently, the editor was not doing his job, was not up to the challenge or was as disrespectful as king was when destroying a character more than 30 years old.

I was so happy for this Booster resurgence... First in action then in Batman. I thought a new series may be coming or something special since the character was appearing in such flagship titles... But who would hace the desire to follow Booster anywhere after this arc?

In the other hand, I really don't know why King has so much praise. His Batman run is very very bad... I don't understand the hype... Really!

It is not only Booster who has a bad characterization... This is one of the worst i hace ever seen Batman... Hace anyone of you read I am suicide or i am Bane? The war of jokes and riddlers? Batman, Bane, Joker, riddler... All of them so out of character that makes you wanna puke. Why doesnt king create his own characters instead of destroying established ones?

Boosterrific [Official Comment] posted on May. 18, 2018 at 6:52 PM
@Richard, yeah, I got that Joker venom is the stated culprit for driving Hal Jordan mad. That's just another example of the lazy writing on display here.

On the finger of a master user, the Oan Power Ring would render Joker venom irrelevant. If the bearer has enough willpower -- and we are talking about Hal Jordan here; no regular user could will the ring to kill its owner -- the ring could prevent the damage or even cure an affected user.

King writes Hal to kill himself purely for shock value at the start of the story. His justification for doing so is that feeds back into establishing motivation for Dick Grayson to murder at will. (If Hal Jordan can be affected, Dick Grayson is justified in shooting first -- for the sake of humanity!) But to put this over, a reader has to ignore the power of the ring and the heroic willpower of Hal Jordan. (Sorry, Green Lantern fans. In King's universe, your hero sucks, too.)

That's the problem with this story in a nutshell. King has a story he wants to tell, and he's not going to let a little thing like characterization get in the way of his good time.

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Unwanted Gift

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