It’s pretty safe to say that creator Dan Jurgens is responsible for some of the most popular characters and events in the last 20 years of DC Comics.

After striking gold in the mid-‘80s with his work on the original Booster Gold series, featuring the solo adventures of a character he created, Jurgens continued his streak through the ‘90s with his seminal work on the "Death Of Superman" story. It was in this project that he created two of Superman’s most popular villains, Doomsday and Cyborg Superman. No stranger to major, universe-spanning events, Jurgens penciled both Armageddon 2001 and Zero Hour, the latter of which he also wrote. In the late ‘90s he created the Tangent Universe for DC and currently writes the ongoing DC series Tangent Comics: Superman’s Reign.

Last year, Jurgens returned to the character he created, continuing as artist on DC’s ongoing Booster Gold series, but stepping aside as writer. The new series teamed him with superstar scribes Geoff Johns and movie executive Jeff Katz. Issue #9 hits stores this week, and continues the current “Blue & Gold” story arc. This arc recently saw the return of fan-favorite character Ted Kord, The Blue Beetle. And if Jurgens’ cover to this week’s issue is any indication, fans of the Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis series Justice League International won’t be disappointed.

I spoke to Jurgens about his work on Booster Gold, Tangent Comics: Superman’s Reign and his career at DC comics.

COMICMIX: To start with, let’s talk about Booster Gold. What’s it like working with writers Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz on a character that you created so many years ago?

DAN JURGENS: There are times I just sit back and look at it and kind of have one of those “wow” moments. Just because it’s something that I probably didn’t anticipate doing.

CMix: Did you ever imagine when you were creating the character that he would last this long?

DJ: No. If you go back to those days, I hadn’t been in the business for that long. So any concept of what I might be doing, if anything 20-some years later, well it just was not anything that you stopped to consider. Whether it was Booster Gold, Superman or Spider-Man, or anything else. It just isn’t part of your thought process. At least it wasn’t part of mine.

CMix: How has the character changed since you first created him?

DJ: I don’t know that the character has changed a lot. If you go back to Booster’s first appearance, he was always supposed to be a fun, a joking sort of character, and he’ s still essentially that. I think his character’s become better defined. I think that his relationship with Blue Beetle is a really important element of who he is now, and of course that didn’t exist at the beginning. Like I said, I don’t know if his character has changed – and I think that’s part of the success. I think his character has been added to, amended and flushed out some but I think part of the reason we are succeeding is because his character has not changed.

CMix: How much are you involved in creating the story? Do they run ideas by you or are you completely surprised when you read a script for the first time?

DJ: Well, they write the script, send it and I take it from there. But we do talk reasonably often. We talk about ideas that we’d like to do and what we’d not like to do. So we certainly have, I think, a bit of give and take about the book and who Booster is. But that’s not to take anything away from them at all. The stories that are happening right now, certainly Booster’s journey through time, is absolutely due to Mr. Katz and Mr. Johns. (more…)

The hub-bub over the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV is finally starting to die down, but of all the stories popping up around the InterWebs about the controversial videogame, one really caught my eye.

Slate recently posted an analysis of the real-world dynamics of life on the wrong side of the law – and those who are forced to live and work with that dynamic every day – as echoed in GTA IV. While the landscape of the videogame is based on the New York City Metro area, the author contends that the true real-world equivalent of life in the GTA IV universe can be found in Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods.

The last time I visited Chicago, I stopped by 59th Street, near Washington Park (and only a few short blocks from the picturesque University of Chicago). Two of the local gangs were fighting each other in full view for control of a prime sales spot, a hotel. For a monthly fee, the proprietor had promised to allow one gang to turn the place into a bordello—drugs, prostitution, stolen merchandise. For the gangs, winning meant more than simply getting rid of their enemy. Neither controlled the area surrounding the hotel. Anyone bringing drugs (or women, or guns, etc.) to the hotel would have to run the gantlet formed by other enemy gangs, who would be at the ready to shoot down the transporter.

Author Sudhir Venkatesh goes on to compare the decisions GTA IV’s protagonist must make over the course of the game, and compares those choices to many of those made by residents of South Side streets where the criminal element provides the only semblance of structure.

Read the full article on Slate.com.

Lemire is in the middle of an impressive thematically-related trilogy of stories about a rural bit of Ontario, Canada – the first book was Tales from the Farm, in early 2007, and the third, [[[The Country Nurse]]], will be along in October of this year. [[[Ghost Stories]]] is the middle book, but it’s a completely independent story – you don’t need to know anything about Tales to read it.

Ghost Stories: Essex County, Vol. 2
By Jeff Lemire
Top Shelf, September 2007, $14.95

Lou Lebeuf is an old, alcoholic, deaf man, living alone on the farm that was his younger brother’s and their father’s before him. He’s also either going senile or just doesn’t care about his current life – and who would? there’s not much to it – so he ignores his new home-care nurse and instead wanders through the memories of his younger days. At first he remembers growing up on that farm, playing hockey with his younger, bigger brother Vince, but he soon moves into the main plot of Ghost Stories.

Lou came up to Toronto to play semi-pro hockey for the Grizzlies around 1950, and Vince followed him up in 1951 — Lou was a solid, smart player, but Vince was a giant bull of a man, dominating the ice once he got angry enough. But, unfortunately for both of them, accompanying Vince on that trip in 1951 was his fiancee, Beth Morgan. Lou was strongly attracted to Beth, and, once — the night after the Grizzlies made the playoffs that March — Lou and Beth had quick, secret sex on a rooftop.

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