Review: Booster Gold # 2

Reviews

Booster Gold #2

Writer: Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz

Pencils: Dan Jurgens

Inker: Norm Rapmund

Well, you know Marvel’s Exiles? This is kind of like that, except with Booster Gold, which is a nice twist. The Exiles travel alternate Marvel worlds, putting them right when they were messed up by the butterfly effect changing continuity. Booster Gold does the same thing here in his own series except he seems to put everything right mostly by messing up.

In this issue, Booster stops Sinestro, still a Lantern here, from talking to Guy Gardner and thus causing Guy to be Earth’s Green Lantern instead of Hal Jordan while Sinestro takes over the Universe. Booster talks to Sinestro, convincing him to not harm Guy using Sinestro’s arrogance against him, but that doesn’t help much, since he might have implanted an immensely evil current event in Sinestro’s mind, as well as put Guy in a difficult spot.

The art is well done, and the comic is solid, despite a “play with continuity” premise. With Booster in a starring role, you’d expect more humor, but despite a light tone, this book just isn’t funny. If you like DC continuity and Booster, try it out, but without a taste for both, this doesn’t have a lot to offer.

Booster is supposedly a lovable oaf, with sometimes good intentions that he doesn’t see through properly. All of that comes through here save the lovability. If you are familiar with the character, that affinity is already present, but if Booster is knew to you, there is not a lot here to make the character likable. Plus, this being mired in continuity, even relatively reader friendly continuity, gets annoying unless you are well versed in the DCU. If you like Booster that much, you probably know the DCU fairly well, so it won’t be an issue, but this is not new reader friendly.

If you’re a DC fan and a Booster fan, then you don’t need my permission, by all means, run out and get this, it’s right up your alley. If you’re looking for a questionable hero, but have no affinity for this character or continuity, Robert Kirkman’s Ant Man series seems the way to go.

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.