On this day in 1995, Booster Gold and Skeets were reunited in Extreme Justice #4.

I'd love to tell you it was a touching reunion between two old friends, but I'd be lying. Skeets appears in exactly three panels. The Blue Beetle's new Bug gets more attention. Heck, Mister Miracle's sidekick Oberon gets a bigger part, and Mister Miracle isn't even in this issue.

As you know, Extreme Justice has something of a reputation as the bad seed among the Justice League International-era titles. Honestly, this book won't do much to disabuse anyone of that opinion.

The story is little more than standard, soap-opera style melodramatics. Extreme Justice plots are typically like Hollywood action movies: big, loud, and dumb. Ironically, writer Dan Vado's strength isn't the action but the character development through interpersonal relationships. You might think that would make this reunion issue a success. You'd be wrong.

This is not Vado's best work. The action crowds out significant character development. Captain Atom is callous, Maxima is insane, and Firestorm, a former member of the "Satellite Era" Justice League, is a spoiled child. Amazing Man is shoehorned into a role best filled by Captain Atom, as though Vado was struggling to find a niche for his own character to fill.

If Vado's character development is typically the strongest part of Extreme Justice, the art is always its biggest weakness. This issue is no different, as guest artist Mozart Cuoto and inker Ken Branch combine to create panels with wildly inconsistent characters and hard-to-follow action. Unsatisfying is probably not a strong enough word.

So, as I said. Extreme Justice #4 features the reunion between Skeets and Booster Gold after several months apart. While we are still hoping to see Booster Gold and Skeets reunited in the New 52, we have to hope that it will be better than this.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: dan vado extreme justice history ken branch mozart cuoto reviews skeets

For all the problems I'm having around here, at least the poll voting is working.

Realistically, how many people who visit a website devoted to a character whose title was cancelled for the New 52 are going to be satisfied by whatever replaced it? Looks like the answer is about 27%.

Last week's poll question: Other than how it relates to Booster Gold, are you happy with the New 52 so far? (47 votes)

I've only gotten a few complaints about the server problems here at Boosterrific.com, but I strongly suspect that for each complaint I get, there must be a dozen others who are silently disgruntled. I need to know how much trouble this is so that I can allocate the appropriate resources to eradicating it. Now's your opportunity to speak up anonymously and tell me if the slow response is damaging your satisfaction with the site, too.

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You may have noticed that Boosterrific.com has been taking its own sweet time loading in recent weeks. I have the data to prove that this sluggishness has been affecting the site traffic. Hopefully, I'm only scaring away bots, and not Booster loyalists.

Since January 1, server response time has been frequently slow, with the homepage taking anywhere between 3 (good) and 20 seconds (very bad) or longer (very, very bad) to load.

To combat the problem, I've re-written the code rendering the pages and re-indexed the database. The server host has updated both the processing engine and the database server. By every internal benchmark, Boosterrific.com should be running faster than ever.

All our work has uncovered a new problem with the server that may or may not be faulty RAM. (I've checked, and it's certainly not the alluvial dampers.) So once again, I'm asking you to be patient with me and the site while we continue to investigate.

I'm still chronicling the problem, so I implore you, if you notice the site acting unusually sluggishly or erratically, please let me know. Either in the Boosterrific Forum (assuming that it is responding) or via email at webmaster at boosterrific dot com.

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Last week, in regards to sales of Justice League of America, I said, "I suspect that since DC isn't crowing about how great [sales] have been, they can't find anything to crow about." Looks like I was very, very wrong.

According to Comichron.com, Justice League of America and its 53 covers was the best selling book for the month of February... since 1996!

Comichron goes on to note that this book even outsold Superman: The Wedding Album (November 1996), the previous best-seller since DC signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Diamond Comics Distributors in 1995. That's great news for Booster Gold fans, who saw their hero get his first in-continuity reference in months.

(Aside: For years, a good friend of mine who has owned a comic book store since the early 1990s had several unopened cartons of "white-bagged" Superman: The Wedding Album in his basement. It took him the better part of two decades to unload the unwanted issues that the hype following Death of Superman had lured him into over-ordering. I still tease him about that overly-ambitious order. Needless to say, his order for Justice League of America was much more conservative.)

While Justice League of America sold better than all comics in recent memory, there is ample evidence to suggest that fans were buying for the "53 covers!" gimmick, not the concept itself. Over at ComicBook.com, Russ Burlingame points out that Katana and Vibe, the tie-in series to JLoS, sold comparatively poorly at #80 and #78 respectively for the month. This a surprise, especially considering their pedigrees. Burlingame notes:

It's been a long time since [writer Geoff] Johns launched a title that debuted out of the top 50; back in 2007, Booster Gold came in at #58....

As we know, Booster Gold was cancelled after 4 years, but mainly because of Flashpoint. (Yes, sales were falling, but the title would indisputably have reached #50 if not for the Great Random Reboot of 2011.) What are the odds that Johns' latest series, Vibe, makes it even half that long?

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: comicbook.com comichron.com geoff johns justice league russ burlingame sales vibe

To start the week, I'm going to tell you to go away. Specifically, I recommend that you follow this link to FirestormFan.com, where The Irredeemable Shag! has assembled a pretty interesting demonstration of how the art for a page of Extreme Justice #12 was pieced together, from inks to overlays, to color. Even if Extreme Justice isn't your bag, I think you'll be entertained.

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