Booster Gold: Future’s End #1
Written by Dan Jurgens
Art by Moritat (Gaslight), Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund (Other Booster), Will Conrad (JLI Annual), Steve Lightle (Legion), Stephen Thompson and Mark Irwin (Earth 4), Ron Frenz and Scott Hanna (Great Disaster), Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund (Goldstar)
Colors by John Kalisz
The short of it:
In the gritty night time of a gas lit world, a pair of criminals walk through the streets before stumbling upon a man sleeping in a pile of trash. They go to rob him, but that doesn’t work out as Booster Gold emerges from the pile and tries to figure out when he is. The last thing he remembers is being in the Justice League HQ, and as he flies off to try and recall his mission, a Batman takes out the thugs. Booster flies into some invisible wall, but then gets timeshifted out. Elsewhere, some robots with Brainiac logos are trying to interrogate Booster in a different outfit, and aren’t doing so great at it. Speaking of, the Tale of Two Boosters, we wind up back in the JLI Annual where both of them went missing, and then both get yanked, and we’ll stay in touch with the older Booster as he winds up in the 31st century as the Legion takes on a few members of the Fatal Five.
Next stop: Earth-4! An old school Captain Atom is fighting a Dr. Spectro, assumes Booster is another bad guy, and blasts him away. Booster tries to fly back in, but he’s pulled to the next world…right as a Ted Kord Blue Beetle shows up. The next stop is the Great Disaster, where Booster has to fight off some Tigermen who were on the hunt for ‘the Cub’, and as Booster vanishes from there they find him…Kamandi. Back to Brainiac land, as the different Booster is revealed to be New 52 Booster, and Brainiac has something jammed into his neck as they continue trying to interrogate him.
But if that’s New 52 Booster, then who is the one in the ARGUS logo that appears in a Metropolis that has blasters atop the Daily Planet building? He doesn’t care long, his sister is there! She acknowledge he looks different, and the he seems older, but he mentions having finally gotten home from a long journey. She mentions Metropolis being cut off, that everyone was powerless until just moments ago, but then they’re both shifted out of there…and into the other Booster’s cell. That’s when the older Booster realizes that they aren’t the same guy, that they’re from different Earth’s (and that Michelle is his sister, not New 52’s), but Brainiac cuts off the talk and restrains Boost and Michelle. He wants to know where Vanishing Point in, and Michelle will die if one of them doesn’t tell him.
- Booster! By Dan and Norm!
- Ron Frenz did an awesome job channeling his inner Jack Kirby for the Kamandi pages.
- Michelle!
- Booster just missing Beetle on Earth-4 was a fun little moment; it got us a Blue Beetle cameo without shoehorning Ted into the story.
- Brainiac as a multiversal threat is so much cooler than him just trying to take out one planet.
- For as much as I loved having different artists for all the different timelines, I wish the issue had been longer so we could have had more pages by Dan and Norm. They are Booster Gold.
- There is no second issue.
THIS IS OUR BOOSTER! The real deal! The one who discovered the multiverse with Rip Hunter, the one whose sister was saved from her demise by Rip, and the one who sets up shop in Vanishing Point where he’s a Time Master! It’s the Booster that spun out of 52 and was last seen getting memory issues after Flashpoint. I am so damn happy!
I mean, I still want to know why he’s got the ARGUS logo, and where he was before appearing in the JLI headquarters, but if he isn’t our Booster, then he’s damn close.
There’s a nice fakeout in this issue, at least for me. My first thought when I saw Booster wired into the machines was that the time travel adventures were just in his brain as his captor tried to find the best ways to extract the necessary information. I totally didn’t realize it was a Tale of Two Boosters.
Every single one of these timelines he visits is inside of a Brainiac Dome. It’s never openly stated, but there are telltale signs. Like Booster flying directly into an invisible wall, or people being powerless in every timeline he visits.
There’s also the sign that I totally wouldn’t have picked up on if I wasn’t a former DC Universe Online addict. Brainiac puts up security inside of the domes to keep the people under control, same reason powers find their way turned off. So seeing a Daily Planet building with big ass turrets? It just furthers my belief that the city is inside of a dome.
New 52 Booster caved too quick.
Brainiac at Vanishing Point would be the scariest thing in the history of scary things.
Alright, DC, you’ve made big things happen in this issue. Now it’s time to do what’s right.
Booster Gold ongoing series. Announce it.
