Review: Showcase Presents: Booster Gold paperback (DC Comics)

The compulsions of the father are visited on the son, at least in Booster Gold's original iteration. In the twenty-five issues of the character's original series collected in Showcase Presents: Booster Gold, writer and creator Dan Jurgens never comes out and says so, but that Booster has inherited his father's gambling addiction is implicit in the beginning, and in the end. Over the course of the book, Booster would seem to gain some insight into the pitfalls of his relentless pursuit of fortune, but not enough for him to mend the error of his ways; he is wiser, but not necessarily changed.

[Contains spoilers]

When Michael Jon "Booster" Carter's origin finally comes out, seven chapters into the book, the reader learns that Booster is a fugitive from the future, a disgraced athlete who lost his scholarship for betting on games. Faced with failure, Booster begins what will become a pattern in the book, running away from his problems under the guise of reinventing himself. Booster's actions would seem redemptive on their face -- traveling to the past to become a hero -- but in fact what he's done is to abandon the consequences of his crime, starting anew without taking responsibility for what he did before.

Jurgens has Booster "run away to get ahead" twice more in the book, almost exactly in the middle and then again at the end. At the end of the series's first year, Booster's profit-driven stardom and ubiquity has led to the kidnapping of his friends, the destruction of his skyscraper, and his being labeled a menace by the city of Metropolis; Booster re-brands his Goldstar company as Booster Gold, Incorporated, and moves to a well-guarded mansion outside of town. Booster is upbeat, but the reader can't help but see this as a kind of defeat for the outgoing Booster, running away instead of redeeming his reputation. Indeed Booster puts so little energy into his second business venture, replacing the first, that his fortune is stolen and his company is bankrupt by the end of the book's second year and conclusion.

It is in that conclusion, after Booster's sister dies and he's branded a traitor to the Justice League, that Booster tries to escape again, this time back to the future. It's Skeets, Booster's robot companion from the beginning, who's able to predict that the League will find Booster trying to steal a time machine to return to the future, so well does Skeets understand Booster's patterns. Booster's teammate Blue Beetle, early in their nascent friendship, calls Booster out (rather harshly, I might add), accusing Booster of running away because "life isn't all a party." Beetle has named Booster's affliction exactly, and Booster's recognition of his own action seems enough, this time, to get him to remain in his own timeframe at least.

It is not enough, however, to really change the core of who Booster is. On his way out of town, Booster visits the apartment of his secretary and friend Trixie Collins; from the first pages, Trixie has been the voice of sincerity in contrast to Booster and his agent Dirk Davis's profiteering. Here, as is fitting, Booster acknowledges Trixie has been the "one good thing" in his life since he came to the past, and the two share a kiss -- but despite this, Booster's realization only goes so far.

Booster's not going to give up his superhero life, he tells Trixie, because to do so would acknowledge that the death of his sister and other events defeated him; instead, he's leaving Metropolis to find "a place I want to be" and "make a few million bucks there." Booster both understands the point and misses it simultaneously -- he is not reinventing himself to the extent of traveling through time, but neither does he stay in Metropolis with Trixie.  He knows the value of Trixie's honesty and indeed some of it has rubbed off on him along the way, but he still sets off in pursuit of another get-rich-quick scheme.

Jurgens means for the reader to understand that Booster can't help himself. In a coda to the book, Jurgens writes a Secret Origin story where Booster tells his origin to Beetle in the midst of a get rich scheme. It's all news to Beetle, and the surprise on Beetle's face when he understands Booster is a "crook" -- albeit a heroic one -- is striking. Here, Booster states directly what's been hinted before -- both that Booster's father abandoned his family as a result of his gambling addiction, and also that Booster kept betting on his own games even after he'd raised enough money for his ailing mother's surgery. Booster can't make the connection himself -- that he shares his father's own compulsions -- but this wrap-up goes a long way to explain Booster's decisions throughout these pages; even when Booster intends to better for himself, he can't help but be pulled back into his established patterns for doing things.

All of this is presented in startlingly brilliant fashion by Jurgens, but that's no slight to the longtime writer/artist, whose work I enjoyed on the Superman titles well before "Death of Superman." Rather, Booster's proximity to the "bwah-ha-ha" days of Justice League International, and the black-and-white newsprint presentation of the Showcase Presents books, give the impression that the material within will be slight, like the simpler 1960s Batman or Justice League stories presented in other Showcase volumes, when it fact its remarkably complicated.

Jurgens intricately structures the twenty-five issues of Booster Gold, long before the prevalence of trade paperbacks, into two distinct twelve-issue "seasons" that are themselves split into six-issue arcs, and Booster's growth is clear through each of them. Astoundingly, Jurgens shows Booster's face sans mask just briefly in the first issue, and then not again I believe until issue five; we don't learn the origin of the title character of the comic until issue six! The two-part story in issues eight and nine, just after the origin, smartly use the time travel trope to show us Booster's first days in our time period from the perspective of the future Legion of Super-Heroes, and Jurgens reveals information both about Booster and about Booster's initial nemesis, the Director, leading into the first year's climax. From there, Booster and company jaunt back to the future at the beginning of the second year, with the introduction of Booster's sister Michelle and more revelations about Booster's home life; Michelle's death at the end of issue #22 largely informs the end of the series.

To the extent that Booster's origins and motivations are at times a mystery, especially in the beginning, Jurgens places strong emphasis on Booster's supporting cast. Trixie is the series's ever-present conscience, notably in issue four considering events from outside a fishbowl, literally and figuratively. Trixie has for a while a romantic relationship with Dirk, who seems as materialistic as Booster until Jurgens reveals that Dirk has a daughter endangered by the Director.  Though Dirk proves an unexpected villain in the end, there's a length of the book in which Dirk appears to be what Booster is not, a man materialistic but also with heart.

Two other notable characters that appear in Booster Gold's second year are the behemoth Animal, and the twenty-fifth century policeman Broderick. Animal is a seemingly mindless enforcer for the future police, but he sacrifices himself early on to repay Michelle for saving his life; the moment is largely Michelle's, but just afterward Booster makes an uncharacteristic anonymous donation to a homeless shelter. In the story that follows, Booster refuses an insurance company's money for finding stolen paintings; Jurgens has Booster make a distinction here between profiteering from his fame, which he'll do, and being a hired hero, which he won't. The Animal was the police's hired muscle, and it's not coincidental that Booster begins to stand up for himself so soon after the adventure in the future.

Booster brings back an unintentional companion from that trip to the future, the twenty-fifth century policeman Broderick, and their face-off in issue #18 is the best story of the book. Broderick's origins parallel Booster's own -- right down to Broderick, too, having a proclivity for gambling -- and Broderick's fixation on Booster borders on the obsessive, determined to see Booster dead for his time-travel "crimes." Perhaps because Broderick is so crazed, Booster emerges unusually calm in the eighteenth issue, dealing with Broderick and armed robbers all without his super-suit. Booster, running around in a tuxedo, is surprisingly debonair, and exudes confidence that's brave rather than arrogant as he stares down Broderick's gun and lectures the officer on "his responsibility to protect innocent lives." This is Booster's finest moment, demonstrating here -- when no one can see him -- the hero he has the potential to be.

Jurgens's Booster Gold reflects the materialism of the 1980s, and the certain innocence that went with it. Booster arrives in 1986 with a flashy costume and an expectation to make money, and it never occurs to him that achieving such might not be so simple. Though Booster performs feats of strength, little of what he achieves is actually his doing, but rather that of Dirk and other handlers. As is the case throughout the book, here too Booster is gambling -- on his own potential for success -- possibly without even knowing that he's doing so. It's no coincidence that in the story, President Reagan is one of Booster's biggest supporters, as the government encouragement of consumer spending at the time would no doubt pass muster with Booster. I would not go so far as to say that Jurgens specifically compares Reaganomics to gambling here, but we do see Booster lose his fortune twice shortly before the stock-market crash of the late 1980s.

What causes Booster Gold to succeed, especially despite an unfamiliar and largely unapproachable protagonist in the book's first issues, is the care with which Dan Jurgens presents Booster. Booster is largely the buffoon in his own story, and it would be easy to make him laughable; in part why I never latched on to Keith Giffen's Justice League International was that they seemed to be foolish characters doing foolish things, rather than striving toward some goal. Jurgens is quick to have Skeets point out to Superman at the same time as we learn Booster's origin that Booster is meant to be in the past, that his role as a hero is important and fore-destined; this is a note of respect that serves the character well. In the end, the reader also learns that Booster is part of a fabled "Chosen" who are destined to help humanity; again, if we ever doubt, the book reminds us that Booster is greater than the individual stories might lead us to believe.

I've been reading about the Booster Gold character for almost twenty years, but I'd never read these initial issues that encompass Booster's first appearances. I can say they'll probably have me looking at Booster a little differently, and looking at the Showcase Presents format with new respect, too. Showcase Presents: Booster Gold is a deceptively deep collection of twenty-five issues worth of material, enough to really feel you're inhabiting the characters; I give this a high recommendation.

New reviews next week!

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Review: Booster Gold: Past Imperfect trade paperback (DC Comics)

On one hand, if you like Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis's Justice League, then Booster Gold: Past Imperfect captures with remarkable accuracy the comedy and writing of that earlier time, even more so than the writers' previous League reunion series Formerly Known As and I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League. On the other hand, though billed as a companion to Justice League: Generation Lost, to which Giffen contributes, Past Imperfect's connections are thin-to-nonexistant, and its relevance to the ongoing DC Universe is essentially nil beyond being a funny Booster Gold story.

Depending on your preference, you might want to skip this book entirely in favor of more Flashpoint-related or DC Comics Relaunch Booster Gold fare, or this might be exactly the book for you.

[Contains spoilers]

Keith Giffen mostly left the DC Comics spotlight after Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes, returning to prominence around DC's 52 series. The fact of Giffen's ongoing work at DC, and that he's able to write such titles as Booster Gold, suggests there is neither a concentrated effort by DC to undercut Giffen's Justice League work (killing Elongated Man's wife Sue Dibny, Blue Beetle Ted Kord, and Rocket Red Dmitri Pushkin) nor (too) hard feelings toward DC on Giffen's part.

Readers will have to take Giffen and DeMatteis's words with a grain of salt here, however, because they lay it on thick (as they're wont to do) -- Booster shouts at new Justice Leaguer Cyborg "We were not a joke! We mattered!" right at the beginning of the second chapter, and later they note tongue in cheek how hard it was for DeMatteis to write that Maxwell Lord killed Blue Beetle. This is aside from their book-wide send-up of the post-52 Booster Gold concept of Booster as the "greatest hero you've never heard of" -- a tagline Booster claims to hate but also repeats to everyone he meets. The writers' ridicule, I have no doubt, is directed toward the general absurdity of comics in general, and not a smack at Geoff Johns and Dan Jurgens's Booster Gold.

Still, the book does seem to obsess over Booster trying to understand how Max could have been his friend before and his enemy now, with no clear solution. Max only appears onscreen once in this book, when Booster has time-traveled to the past, in a mild two-page scene where he first scolds and later praises Booster. The encounter leaves Booster even more confused, and the reader, too. Of course we know the "Max good/bad" debate doesn't have an answer -- it's retroactive continuity, pure and simple, to serve a pre-Infinite Crisis plotline -- but there's a sense in which Booster, Giffen, and DeMattis are searching for something deeper here, an imponderable "why" as to the nature of innocence and what brought we, the comics community as a whole, to Blue Beetle's death, that ultimately they're unable to resolve.

Those weightier issues, however, are almost entirely overwhelmed by Giffen and DeMatteis releasing years of pent up absurdity. I, for one, do like Judd Winick's Generation Lost better than Giffen and DeMatteis's Booster Gold, because at times the silliness gets so thick it eclipses any sense of an actual story, especially when Blue Beetle Ted Kord shows up, and the actual story's pretty silly in its own right. Giffen and DeMatteis are writing their own Mel Brooks movie here between ridiculous on-the-nose villains like Estrogina, witless underlings with Yiddish-derrived names (P'upik, anyone?), and ongoing gags about future-Booster's hair-loss. It's all more bizarre than funny, and only if that's your thing is this the thing for you.

Standard disclaimers apply that yes, not every comic must be completely tied in to DC Comics's latest mega-event, but when Past Imperfect's back cover shows Booster ruminating over an image of Max, you'd think Generation Lost would matter more here. Instead, Imperfect takes place loosely between the pages of Lost and is more about Booster and Beetle in the past hunting a lost artifact (and getting into goofy trouble) than Booster and Max's conflict. Amusingly, Giffen has Booster revisit many of Giffen's own greatest DC hits here -- The Great Darkness Saga, Invasion!, and Giffen and DeMatteis's General Glory; this is a funny use of a time-travel story and I smiled at the in-jokes, but it's not exactly what the solicitations promised.

[Includes original covers]

I said in my previous review that Judd Winick's Generation Lost is not Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League proper, but rather that Justice League filtered through Winick. Booster Gold: Past Imperfect is completely unfiltered, in many senses of that word, and as such serves as a better reunion to the 1980s Justice League than the actual reunion comics do. Whether that's a good thing, I'm not sure -- I believe it upholds my claim that 1980s comics weren't perhaps quite as cool as we'd like to think now that they were -- but again, if it's your kind of thing, then it'll be the kind of thing for you.

In what should be an interesting comparison, up next we have a review of Power Girl: Bomb Squad, which also crosses over with Generation Lost, this time by Winick. See you then!

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Review: Time Masters: Vanishing Point trade paperback (DC Comics)

Dan Jurgens's Time Masters: Vanishing Point, in contrast to the original Time Masters miniseries, offers a rather touching portrayal of Rip Hunter as a young boy whose childhood is built on time travel, and then again as an adult doing his best to preserve the family business. Constant readers know one of my comics soft spots is Dan Jurgens drawing the time-traveling heroes he popularized in Superman and elsewhere, so this is a book I'm predisposed to enjoy even if just for the art.

Aside from the Rip Hunter vignettes, however, Time Masters: Vanishing Point is somewhat thin. Though billed with connections to Return of Bruce Wayne and Flashpoint, it offers significant exploration of neither. There's a good amount of story that, though drawn well and tied to esoteric DC Comics continuity, ultimately doesn't affect much and seems only there to pad out the pages. And while Jurgens has written Booster Gold well in his own series, there's a certain stiffness to some of the other characters that's surprising.

[Contains spoilers]

Vanishing Point is essentially a continuation of Dan Jurgens's Booster Gold run, told from Rip Hunter's point of view; it probably would have made a lovely Time Masters one-shot. Rip, as revealed in Booster Gold, is Booster's son, and the elder Booster still lives and fights his own battles through time even as Rip works to guide his young father to greatness. Each chapter of Vanishing Point opens with scenes of Rip's childhood, how being the son of a time traveler exposed him to wonders of greatness but also left him without a home and often in constant danger.

What comes through is the adult Rip's love of his father and his dedication to his cause of preserving the time stream. Rip is neither Superman nor Batman -- neither a stranger to his own birthright nor acting from a sense of tragedy or guilt; rather Rip likes his parents, makes them proud, and does his job because he was taught it was right. This is refreshing and fascinating, and the times that Jurgens pulls back the curtain to show the emotional sides of Rip that the DC heroes don't get to see are the best parts of this book.

Unfortunately, those Rip Hunter scenes only account for about two pages per issue. Most of the rest of the book offers a convoluted wild goose chase in which Rip, Booster, Skeets, Superman, and Green Lantern Hal Jordan purportedly set out in search of the time-lost Bruce Wayne, but are instead almost immediately side-tracked. The team encounters Claw the Unconquered and DC Comics's "sword and sorcery" Starfire, both late of the 1970s Star Hunters series, and with them fight a pair of wizards up to no good.

This takes up pretty much most of the series, and then ultimately Claw and Starfire have no bearing on the end of the story. Maybe Jurgens intends to use them again later, but for now their only role seems to be to give the heroes something to do before they start off again after Bruce Wayne at the book's end.

Far more interesting -- but ultimately not much more relevant -- is "Time Stealers" Black Beetle, Despero, Per Degaton, and Ultra-Humanite's jaunt through time. It's not entirely clear what the latter villains are doing here -- they last appeared in Geoff Johns's Booster Gold and Justice League stories -- as even Black Beetle, when asked, can't quite explain why he needs them. They make nice window dressing, however, while Black Beetle frees the imprisoned original Linear Men Matt Ryder and Liri Lee, and tricks them into helping him steal the corpse of Armageddon 2001's Waverider.

Again, as a fan of Jurgens's Armageddon, Zero Hour, and Superman, seeing Jurgens draw Ryder and Lee again is pure delight. They too, however, leave just before the book's conclusion, and neither seem to bear on the Bruce Wayne aspect of the book nor the Flashpoint. I don't get the sense looking at what DC's producing going forward that these characters will be popping up anywhere else soon, either, so I have to qualify these appearances as for fans of the characters only, and not for anyone hoping for anything substantial.

The disconnect between this book and the events it's supposed to connect is clearest in the "blink and you'll miss it" appearance by Professor Zoom, who proceeds to soundly beat up our heroes, notes that they "aren't what [he] was looking for anyway," and then leaves. Zoom is on only about four or five pages (two of them splash pages); yet the cover of the fifth issue announces Zoom's presence when he doesn't show up until the last page. I can't fault Jurgens directly for this, though; obviously DC wanted a miniseries to spin off from Return of Bruce Wayne and to tease Flashpoint. This book misses no opportunity touting those connections, at least superficially, but there's nothing here to concretely tie to any of the other events -- as we also saw, frankly, in some of the lead up to Final Crisis and in some of the Blackest Night tie-in books.

Jurgens portrays Rip and Booster's loneliness as time travelers well. Throughout the book, Superman and Green Lantern ask all the difficult questions -- Superman wonders at Rip's origins, how he came to be a time traveler and where he got his equipment, while Green Lantern insults Booster relentlessly over Booster's apparent fame-seeking. I felt the characters came off a little stiff here; Superman and Green Lantern argue with Rip about saving a disease-stricken man in the past (not even someone being specifically attacked) in a way that seemed naive for two experienced heroes. Often the characters act as sounding boards to narrate what's going on in the scene, and Superman and Green Lantern serve mainly to ask Rip questions so he can explain the time travel pseudo-science. I haven't felt that Jurgens's recent Booster Gold stories suffered from the same problems, so my hope is that this is isolated to this series and not something we'll also see in Jurgens's DC Relaunch Justice League International.

[Contains original and variant covers]

If you like time travel in the DC Universe, and you like Dan Jurgens, Time Masters: Vanishing Point is an enjoyable, attractive book. Certainly fans of the current iteration of Rip Hunter will recognize the main character here far more readily than in his original post-Crisis on Infinite Earths portrayal. But Vanishing Point is also an example of the kind of thing I wish DC just wouldn't do any more -- a miniseries without any real purpose or point to make, published mainly for the purpose of capitalizing on better books and adding some money to the coffers. This kind of thing, I continue to believe, only serves to foster mis-trust between DC and fans, and makes fans less likely to take a chance on new series, and that's not good for anyone. I'd like to believe that with the DC Relaunch, editorial's attitude toward this kind of thing will change, though I admit I'm not greatly optimistic.

... But hey, dig Jurgens drawing the Linear Men again!

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Review: Time Masters (1990) trade paperback (DC Comics)

We know from the current Booster Gold series that Rip Hunter is kind of a jerk. Ordinarily the chip on Rip's shoulder, however, has to do with Booster's hijinks, and the weight of keeping all of the timestream safe. In future-DC Comics Senior VP Bob Wayne and Lewis Shiner's Time Masters miniseries, however, Rip is more than preoccupied -- he's downright obsessive, singularly focused on his nascent time travel research and a history-spanning villain built from the best of conspiracy theories.

Wayne and Shiner's miniseries is a dark re-creation of the Rip Hunter and Time Masters characters just after DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, far removed from the colorful "Booster meets the Teen Titans" adventures we've seen the Rip Hunter character involved in of late. Moreover Time Masters is a send-up of some previously established superhero tropes, in a way that must have seemed vitally important in that early post-Crisis era.

[Contains spoilers]

With the upcoming DC post-Flashpoint relaunch, I find myself looking a little more closely at how DC and their creators handled the landscape just after their last big reboot. As Geoff Johns points out in his introduction to Time Masters, the larger Superman (Man of Steel) and Wonder Woman relaunches post-Crisis were followed by a number of smaller and sometimes subversive relaunches, including Grant Morrison's Animal Man and Time Masters. The writers can't help but nod to times past, as when former "Forgotten Heroes" Rip and Animal Man encounter one another in this book and Rip is sure they must have met before. At the same time, Rip meets here for the first time former Time Masters Bonnie and Corky Baxter, teaming with fourth Time Master Jeff Smith.

As Wayne and Shiner re-introduce the four established characters, they inject some unexpected reality too the mix. Shiner notes in his afterword how the makeup of the original Time Masters followed the pattern set by the Fantastic Four and others -- a team made up of two men, a woman, and a child. In the new Time Masters, however, there's no platonic friendship between the adults; Rip and Jeff both vie for Bonnie's affections -- ardently and incongruously, since both only met her days previous. Bonnie herself spends much of the book flitting from man to man -- kissing Rip but sleeping with Jeff, and before them having a scandalous relationship with her professor, Cave Carson. Young Corky is hardly the group's mascot; he can't time travel at all due to an early accident, so he mainly makes bitter comments in the background up to the point where, in the end, he hangs himself.

To be clear, picture this in Fantastic Four terms -- Time Masters is essentially a story where Mr. Fantastic and the Thing fight for eight issues over the love of Sue Storm, and then Sue picks the Thing; meanwhile, the Human Torch bides his time awhile before committing suicide.

Even the threat that the Time Masters face, in its own way, deconstructs the Time Masters concept. When a rogue employee blows up Rip Hunter's lab, Rip follows incidental clues to reveal the presence of the Illuminati, a secret organization lead by Vandal Savage that Rip believes, among other things, murdered George Washington and replaced him with their own double. Rip's clues are so vague, however, and the Illuminati's supposed crimes so conspiratorial, that a number of characters suggest over the course of the series that Rip might just be making the whole thing up.

This is the edge of time travel, something that might have been interesting to see explored in the Booster Gold series, where the fact that secret events took place in the past or the future make it hard to prove that they ever happened at all. Further, at the end of Time Masters, Bonnie finds the Illuminati working for good in the future, such that she convinces Rip to cease trying to stop them in the past. Rip's efforts against the Illuminati come to naught, with the strong suggestion that the past can't be changed anyway; as a "first look" at time travel in the post-Crisis DC Universe, the book makes time travel seem near impossible, if not useless, a wonderfully challenging idea at the time even if nowadays DC characters travel through time like walking to the restroom.

Considered in this way, Time Masters is a dark book; fighting for a cause is a thankless prospect, and time travel seems an overly desperate prospect. Rip appears to understand in the end that people can't change time, just themselves -- illustrated in the two bachelors Cave Carson and Jeff Smith adjusting to life alone, Bonnie finally defining herself in the future away from the men, the character Tony giving up her life on the street, and Rip letting go of his obsession with the Illuminati when he's stranded in the past. None of the characters achieve what they tried to through time travel; instead, they all learn to accept what they have. Shiner suggests in his afterword that an intended sequel never manifested, which might, I'm guessing, have at least resurrected Corky, if not shed a more positive light on time travel in the DC Universe.

Fans of the current incarnation of Rip Hunter won't find Time Masters essential reading. At the same time, I found fascinating how this book attempts to put to lie any of a number of comic book conceits, not in the least how blithely characters like Booster Gold travel between eras (and that these Time Masters barely get along with one another, if at all). Time Masters is a decidedly different take on time travel in the DC Universe -- probably best that it wasn't a lasting take -- and an interesting slice of post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Comics history, if not a terribly flattering one.

[Contains original covers with logos, introduction by Geoff Johns, afterword by Lewis Shiner]

More time travel action coming up, when Flashpoint and The Return of Bruce Wayne collide in our review of Time Masters: Vanishing Point, coming up next.

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Review: Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory trade paperback (DC Comics)

The fifth Booster Gold volume, Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory, is another in a series of books highlighting Dan Jurgens's greatest hits, if you like that sort of thing. As a Jurgens enthusiast, I don't mind another trip down memory lane; less ardent fans, however, may find Tomorrow Memory somewhat repetitive. Jurgens admirably gives Booster a distinct personality, but doesn't seem completely sure what to do with the character.

Given that Booster Gold used to be the "Bwah-ha-ha" comic relief of the Justice League, it's astounding just how depressed Jurgens presents him in this book, even moreso than the previous volumes. Booster is neither the Superman-esque archtypical superhero, nor the Batman dark hero; Booster is a third kind, the sad hero. The book still derives its humor through witty banter between the characters, but Jurgens recounts (almost too much) everything Booster has to be sad about -- no family, dead friends, and no one in which he can confide. It gives the book a distinct tone that I think is worthy of recognition, but someone expecting the Booster Gold of old might be significantly surprised.

The four-part "Tomorrow Memory" story presented second in this book offers an interesting conflict, in that Booster -- angry that Rip Hunter won't let him change time -- has to convince an even more reckless time traveler of the same. Set against the backdrop of Reign of the Supermen's destruction of Coast City, it's easy to follow Booster's growth in the story, and the arguments that Booster and the time-traveler Sonia Crane make for and against saving a mass-murderer to preserve future heroics is the kind of goodness you want from a time-travel comic.

The story also gives Dan Jurgens a chance to draw again Coast City, Mongul, and the Cyborg Superman, all right in the thick of some of Jurgens's best Reign of the Supermen work. Jurgens remembers the fine details of that story as well as we fans do, and the references to the Cyborg Superman meeting the president and Mongul creating "Engine City" evoke the nostalgia in full. If you still love that scene where Lois meets the original Cyborg Superman in the rain, you'll love this book -- and that's on top of Jurgens depicting the long-awaited origin of Vanishing Point, the home of the Time Masters set just before the end of all existence.

Unfortunately, however, the broad strokes of "Tomorrow Memory" repeat almost exactly a couple of stories from earlier in this Booster Gold series. Booster argues with Rip Hunter about being unable to change time; Booster goes to the past to try to change time, and ultimately fails; Booster and Rip reconcile, but Rip is compelled enough by Booster's argument that he changes a bit of the past as a boon to Booster. This is, to an extent, both what happened to Booster in 52 Pickup when he tried to save Barbara Gordon, and in Blue and Gold when he tried to save Ted Kord; at the end of the latter, Rip returned to life Booster's sister Michelle. As such, for long-time Booster Gold readers, this story will seem predictable, all the more reason why the real draw here is Jurgens nostalgia and not the story itself.

The two-part Blackest Night crossover "Dead Ted" that begins Tomorrow Memory doesn't offer much more. Jurgens's peek at Blue Beetle's superhero funeral is wonderfully emotional, but Booster's fight with the resurrected Black Lantern Blue Beetle is surprisingly flat. Given that Ted Kord's death remains the core of the Booster GOld series, one would expect much more nuance from Booster and "Dead Ted"'s meeting, but Booster understands far too quickly that the Black Lantern is not his dead friend. The conflict becomes simply between Booster and a generic bad guy (as have been many of the Blackest Night crossovers), and it's almost surprising how little it contributes to the ongoing Booster Gold story, let alone to Blackest Night itself.

Still, I'm a sucker for a good crossover, and Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory's final saving grace is that it sets up, in vague fleeting moments, ties to Time Masters: Vanishing Point, The Return of Bruce Wayne, and Flashpoint. I'm reminded of the lead-in to Final Crisis, for instance, where Brave and the Bold: Lords of Luck opined that a Great Disaster was coming -- equally vague and ultimately without any real connection to Final Crisis, but still enough in the early days to send chills down the reader's spine. I'm being pandered to, I know, and it's all in the service of DC getting me to put down my hard-earned change on Flashpoint and all its tie-ins -- but I love this kind of thing nonetheless. Tomorrow Memory ends with a Time Masters teaser, and as Dan Jurgens leaves this title for that one, I'll happily follow along as well.

[Contains full covers]

This Booster Gold trade hints at Flashpoint while the next volume ties in to Brightest Day and Justice League: Generation Lost. Yes, there may be Blackest Night tie-in issues here, but it seems the days of the next crossover are already upon us. Love them or hate them, thanks for reading Collected Editions.

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Review: Booster Gold: Day of Death trade paperback (DC Comics)

Dan Jurgens has been one of my favorite artists for a long time -- Death of Superman has nothing on how long I've enjoyed Jurgens' work. To borrow a phrase, I could likely read Jurgens illustrating the phone book, and to that end I'm likely to be more forgiving of a book by Jurgens just for the enjoyment of his art. Indeed, Booster Gold: Day of Death, Jurgens' second volume both writing and drawing the series, is a great sampling of his work, and delves back in an enjoyable way to DC Comics history. But at the same time, Day of Death mines ground already well-trod by the Booster Gold series, and it suggests a need for the creative team change that's already on its way in a few volumes.

The story Jurgens tells in Day of Death is essentially "Batman Reborn" by way of Booster Gold; that is, Batman was the only one who knew Booster's real time-travelling mission, Batman is dead, and now Booster has to deal with it. This is a great conceit that ties well into Booster's own loneliness and frustration over his reputation as a buffoon; before, he could only talk to Batman, and now he can't talk to anyone. Jurgens' stories, especially this volume, suggest a more serious tension between Booster and Rip Hunter that wasn't in Geoff Johns' earlier run, and I'm curious to see where Jurgens goes with that (meanwhile, Booster's ancestor Daniel Carter, introduced in 52, has all but disappeared from the series).

Enter new Batman Dick Grayson, himself struggling with the loneliness that Batman's cowl brings. The machinations of the evil Black Beetle force Booster into Dick's past -- specifically, the Teen Titans' classic first battle with the demon Trigon -- and in the resolution of the resulting conflict, both Booster and Dick have a better understanding of one another and a new ally. It's simple, perhaps, but the Booster's-loss-of-Batman story needed to be told, and Jurgens' story hits the right notes. The scenes set right between the pages of Marv Wolfman and George Perez's New Teen Titans #2 are especially fun.

My qualm is that Jurgens extends the story by sending Booster, Rip Hunter, and the Titans' Raven into an apocalyptic alternate future where Trigon rules -- a future not remarkably different from the apocalyptic future where Max Lord ruled into which Geoff Johns sent Booster and friends in Booster Gold: Blue and Gold. In fact, Jurgens even makes the mistake of positing Green Arrow as the future's underground rebel leader, just like Johns did.

There are cute moments here in Jurgens' use of Kyle Rayner and his romance with Zatanna, but the future doesn't have the same pop as when Johns used Pantha and Wild Dog. The story yawns a bit, and it seems to have something of a quandary -- Booster Gold is a time-traveller, yes, but how many times can he fight for his life in an alternate future or a revised past before it begins to run together? The book begs to be treated to a Quantum Leap-like approach: Booster fixes time anomalies, sure, but other times he's just in time, taking an identity alongside the JSA one week and crossing over with Legion of Super-Heroes the next.

Day of Death starts with two one-issue stories, a Brave and the Bold issue with Magog and "1952 Pickup" by upcoming Booster writer Keith Giffen, and both are interesting in their own way. The Brave and the Bold team-up ends very suddenly without the expected understanding between Booster and Magog; instead, Magog comes off rather violent and unlikeable, and it's hard to imagine the character supporting his own title (which, it was recently announced, he no longer will -- Magog is cancelled, but the final story suggests some time travel aspect and as such, maybe an additional tie to Booster). Giffen's "1952 Pickup" is a detailed story written in chapters, much like a 1950s comic, that teams Booster with the original Task Force X "Suicide Squad" -- it's this kind of story with which I think Booster Gold could do well, and Giffen makes an effective contribution here.

[Contains full covers]

The next volume of Booster Gold promises a conclusion to the Black Beetle storyline, almost as old as this title itself, and that, combined with the Blackest Night crossover and presumably Dan Jurgens' getting to draw a wider swath of the DC Universe, makes this a sure thing for me; and I liked Giffen's one-shot enough that I should be here for his debut, too. If I thought that Jurgens was leaving the DC Universe altogether after Booster Gold, I'd be the loudest advocating his staying, but Jurgens moving to Time Masters and Giffen coming on this title seems exactly the right solution; maybe sometimes things work out after all.

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Review: Booster Gold: Reality Lost trade paperback (DC Comics)

Booster Gold: Reality Lost with art by Dan Jurgens and writing by Dan Jurgens and Chuck Dixon, goes firmly in the "more fun comics" pile; not very much happens here right up until the very end, but having Dan Jurgens write and very solidly draw again the character he created -- especially in a rollicking tale of time paradoxes -- is worth the price of admission all on its own.

[Contains spoilers for Booster Gold: Reality Lost]

Jurgens and Dixon enlist a healthy dose of time-travel conceits in Reality Lost, and each serves to remind us why time travel stories are so much fun. To prevent a time anomaly, Booster must prevent the past Batman, Robin, and Batgirl from foiling a robbery by Killer Moth; the resulting chaos results in a scene where time-separated versions of Booster play almost every different character's role in the same scene, like something out of the Three Stooges.

Subsequently, Booster finds himself in such far-flung locations as ancient Egypt and World War I; he even intersects with his own previous adventures and teams up with himself. This isn't the first time Jurgens has drawn time-travel (see one of my favorites, Superman: Time and Time Again), and this story is highly reminiscent of that one. The cameo by Enemy Ace, for instance, is largely gratuitous, but there's a certain thrill in seeing modern heroes cast into war-torn Europe that you can only find in stories such as these.

One central idea examined in Reality Lost is how Booster and his compatriots are routinely manipulated -- by Time Master Rip Hunter, by the duties they've undertaken, even by time itself. The story takes a while to come around to this (not in the least because Jurgens picks up and alters the story Dixon starts), but we see it most strongly in Booster's being flung through time by a trio of chronally-charged knives, and in Booster's sister Goldstar's near-breakdown at realizing she's been resurrected from the dead.

I'm not familiar with Goldstar from Booster's original series, so I haven't been quite sure what to make of her bubbly, almost air-headed portrayal in Booster Gold: Blue and Gold and then her falling apart this time around. The quick change from happy to sad suggests an air of mania which, if this is Jurgens goal, he achieves aptly. Only, I hope Goldstar's disappearance at the end of this story doesn't signal the character's departure from the series (which would make her re-entrance last time something of a waste), but rather an indication that Jurgens has further tricks up his sleeve.

I also enjoyed the look at how Booster has matured, illustrated by the interaction Booster has with his own past self. While there's perhaps a bit too much shoulder-patting in this volume (if I have to hear Booster decry how he's the greatest hero the world will never know one more time, I'll scream), as we reach the twelfth issue (the end of the first full year), it's interesting to see how much more driven and darkened Booster is than when the series began.

Granted, there's only one volume between the beginning and this story, but obviously losing Blue Beetle -- a second time -- has taken its toll. It's in this way that I can appreciate Reality Lost as a sort of "checking in" on the Booster Gold series; nothing really happens other than Goldstar's departure, but in essence Jurgen takes stock of where the characters are after two volumes of the book and deals with the more subtle implications of Blue and Gold. As the new (returning) writer of Booster Gold after Geoff Johns, I can spot Jurgens one book of treading water before the title finds a direction again (and solicitations suggest it has indeed).

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, in the days of title delays and rotating artists and inkers, that it's a sheer joy to read a collection of seven issues all drawn by Dan Jurgens with inks by Norm Rapmund. As someone who remembers fondly the days of Jurgens and inker Brett Breeding (and less fondly Jurgens with inks by Joe Rubinstein), I'd say Jurgens is at his best in this Booster Gold volume. I'm struck by how his art has grown more "widescreen" since the days of panels that didn't bleed off the page, and at the same time preserves Jurgens' trademark full and muscular figures . Having consistent art -- and good art, to boot -- in a collection makes a difference, and it's another reason why I rate this volume so highly.

Booster Gold: Reality Lost isn't a staggering, moving collection, but it's a quality comics tale, and hopefully we'll find it makes a nice bridge between the great previous volume and good things to come.

[Contains full covers, "Origins & Omens" tale]

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Review: Booster Gold: Blue and Gold collected hardcover (DC Comics)

[Contains spoilers for Booster Gold: Blue and Gold]

Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz combine all the expected fun and suspense (and quite a few unexpected surprises) into Booster Gold: Blue and Gold, but the real joy here is seeing artist and Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens return not only to Booster, but the Jurgens-era Justice League and a couple other 1990s Jurgens creations. Dan has been one of my favorite artists since back in his pre-Death of Superman days, and this second volume of Booster Gold is a nostalgia fan's gold mine.

If you ask a crowd to name their favorite Justice Leagues, you'll get a variety of responses: the Satellite era Justice League, for instance, or Keith Giffen's Justice League International; maybe the current Meltzer lineup, or Grant Morrison's Big Seven. One or two fans might even single out the Detroit League. My favorite League, however, spun out of the end of Justice League International, the post-Breakdowns, pre-Death of Superman and/or Zero Hour Justice League. That's right, I'm talking about Superman, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, Maxima, and Bloodwynd, as written and drawn by Dan Jurgens.

To be a fan of this League, you likely had to be an ardent Superman reader at that time. Superman's leading the Justice League (for, in that continuity, the first time) was a natural offshoot of storylines like Superman: Panic in the Sky, which transitioned Superman from a relative loner and reluctant leader to the frontmost character he is today. Superman's discomfort with Ice's attraction to him (when Lois and Clark's engagement was brand new), his attempts to manage Guy Gardner, and his work to put Maxima on a straight-and-narrow path all overlaid well the Superman stories of the time, culminating of course in the Justice League's involvement in The Death of Superman.

The rest of that League, in my mind, encompassed the best of Justice League International. Fire, Ice, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and Guy Gardner -- sure, Mister Miracle and Captain Marvel had their moments, but these five always seemed to me the core of the JLI, the ones the stories couldn't have been told without. Jurgens's run put these characters in more superheroic situations than the previous Justice League International, but still kept more humor than the later Morrison or Meltzer runs. Witness this League up against Starbreaker in issue #65 (where I think Blue Beetle defeats Starbreaker despite being "powerless") and their sacrifices against Doomsday; this is an oft-forgotten League, but for me it doesn't get much better.

I digress. The point is that Booster Gold: Blue and Gold gives Jurgens a chance to once again draw that League, and in the more than ten years since, Jurgens hasn't lost a step -- his Ice, emerging from her homeland in her 1990s costume, is especially effective (as is, separately, the running gag where Blue Beetle thinks everyone else had been declared dead). Jurgens also draws the Vanishing Point that he used for a long time with the Linear Men (though there's no appearance, unfortunately, by Waverider) and the Zero Hour-era Parallax and Extant. Whether Johns and Katz tailored this story specifically with Jurgens to include all these Jurgens highlights, or whether just happy coincidence, if Dan Jurgens was your favorite before then Booster Gold: Blue and Gold will be a happy reminder now.

Not to be left out, Johns and Katz provide a Booster Gold story that, if not quite everything I might want out of a posthumous Blue Beetle/Booster Gold team-up, still delivered some fantastic surprises. I agreed whole-heartedly with the characters about half-way through that Booster's father, even dressed as Supernova, was something of a poor foe for Booster, so I was delighted when Supernova was revealed as Mr. Mind (and I was still taken entirely by surprise despite the preview in Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up). Also great was the writers' resurrection of Goldstar in the end; having not read the original Booster Gold series, I have no real connection to the character, but given the overall theme of loss in this story, it was lovely to see Booster win in the end. The writers also pull off a great Back to the Future moment in suggesting that Batman's been holding photographs of Booster Gold ever since Barbara Gordon was shot, waiting for all the pieces to fall together.

Booster Gold: Blue and Gold moves rather swiftly toward it's inevitable end, and it's unfortunate, as I think we all knew going in, that the story couldn't end with a living, time-lost Blue Beetle (or could it?). But to read Blue and Gold is to read a story that touches Zero Hour and DC One Million, Justice League International and Infinite Crisis -- in short, a filled with more unbridled DC Comics joy than perhaps one hardcover can handle. If you like that kind of thing, then this book's for you.

[Contains full covers, origin of Booster Gold from 52]

Switching gears now to Birds of Prey, and we're going to run through a whole bunch of new trade paperbacks from there. Stay tuned!

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Review: Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up collected hardcover (DC Comics)

That Booster Gold has another series after all this time is a shock in-and-of-itself. That Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up is good is nothing short of astounding. I guess it's true that there's indeed no such thing as a bad character, just bad concepts; taking Booster from Justice League cut-up to guardian of time (and still a cut-up) is a great concept, indeed.

That Booster Gold works, however, shouldn't be such a surprise, given that the elements within are the same tried-and-true methods that brought writer Geoff Johns (with Jeff Katz) success in Flash and Green Lantern. As far out as the stories get here, they all in some way relate back to Booster's character (much as Johns paralleled the Flash and his Rogues, or Hal Jordan and the rebuilding of Coast City). The writers write one of their best stories early on, where Booster meets a young Guy Gardner and finds they have more similarities than differences; Guy's problems with his family offer the reader insight into Booster's own.

In fact, Johns and Katz work to redeem Booster so far, I felt at times he became too likable. As artist (and Booster Gold creator) Dan Jurgens notes in his introduction, Booster was created to reflect the greedy ethos of the 1980s; even as he worked toward redemption, it still remained that Booster came from slimy beginnings. In the new version, Johns adds a slight retcon that Booster bet on future football games not for his own gains, but to pay off his father's gambling debts; this adds a note of nobility to Booster's origins that I'm not convinced it needed.

I don't spoil too much, given that the next Booster Gold trade is called Blue and Gold, to say that Blue Beetle Ted Kord makes an appearance here. Hearing this alone, and knowing the strong time travel elements to Booster Gold, my expectation is that Ted won't be allowed to remain alive in the time stream for fear of affecting some other events.

But, the last line of the trade, suggesting that both Booster and Beetle might be the greatest heroes nobody ever knew, living anonymously in the timestream, sounds really, really cool, and makes me very hopeful that Blue Beetle sticks around. Heck, couldn't they change the title to Booster Gold/Blue Beetle, and let both heroes share the spotlight? I imagine this would cause a bunch of messes in other titles, especially if other writers couldn't help but reintroduce Ted to their characters, letting alone that it might cheapen the impact of The OMAC Project -- but wouldn't it be really, really cool? I sense I'm destined to be disappointed in the next volume, but my excitement is a reflection of the power of the writing and the strength of the characters here.

I also appreciate that Booster Gold is a title where the writers are paying attention to the details. Rip Hunter's chalkboards are bar none one of the best things about this title, and I was thrilled to see not one, but two of them in this trade; the rips in time, showing everything from Anthro to Young Justice, are also a hoot. Dan Jurgens, whose art looks as good as ever, should also get a lot of credit -- he does a perfect Brian Bolland imitation when this book coincides with The Killing Joke, and the pointed look Batman gives Booster when Booster refuses Justice League membership in the beginning is spot on. (And who knows better than Batman about having a secret identity that pretends to be an idiot?)

Booster Gold is a fantastic superhero comic, beautifully drawn, with time travel used as a great metaphor for success and mourning. I'm gushing, I know, but it's exciting to find a comic book this good. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

[Contains full covers, introduction by Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens.]

We're going to wade hip deep into The Sinestro Corps War now, and then on perhaps to some Hawkgirl. See you there!

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