Review:
This book marked what must surely have been Peak-Visibility for Booster Gold. With the release of this limited series, fans were spoiled with three concurrent books, totaling four issues per month, featuring Booster Gold. They included his own monthly solo series, of course, plus the bi-weekly series Justice League: Generation Lost (review coming soon) in which Booster emerges as the team's leader, plus this new six-issue series.
Rip Hunter is the central character in this series; he has been going by the label Time Master since his very first appearance in 1959. Here, he is joined by Booster Gold, Hal Jordan Green Lantern and Superman. The stories overlap very lightly with the Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne series focused on his adventures lost in the time stream. That book's review is here _____.
The team of time travelers spends shockingly little time actually looking for Batman. They are far too busy being scattered and reunited through time themselves, not to mention battling threats both primitive and advanced. Writer and Artist Dan Jurgens weaves in many nods to both Rip Hunter's past and to the ongoing plotlines in the Booster Gold series. Claw, Serhattu, Black Beetle, the Linear Men, Waverider and more characters old and new have a role to play here.
These references and characters are smoothly enough integrated into the plot overall, although appearances by Goldstar and Supernova may be more jarring to those not avidly following Booster's other books.
Less well integrated are their central quest (finding Batman) and any growth or changes of heart or character. This is especially the case with Hal Jordan - he remains deeply scornful of Booster Gold's abilities and motives throughout. It's a huge miss, given the evolution of Booster in the Justice League: Generation Lost series and in the vignettes that lead each of the chapters in this series.
Th narrative also ends so abruptly in the trade paperback that one hopes the original comics had an additional page or two, or at least editorial blurbs of where the reader should look next.
What Jurgens does nail, of course, are the scenes with older Booster Gold and childhood Rip Hunter. These vignettes are sweet, thrilling, loads of fun and tease so much more backstory still to be told. We Booster Gold and Rip Hunter fans want more!
Jurgens teams with Norm Rapmund for the art finishes, picking up a partnership formed in the Booster Gold series a couple years earlier. The result is fun and at time dramatic. Jurgens is a master of the well-timed powerful full-page splash spread, and we get loads of those throughout. They also mix in appearances by sexy, leggy female characters in the sword-and-magic sections, perhaps another nod to Rip Hunter's earliest adventures, or to the well-worn tropes of the genre.
Overall, this collection is loads of fun. It could be even stronger with more overlap of the Batman story and a smoother conclusion.
Description:
With Batman lost in time, DC’s top heroes must search throughout history to find him - and keep time from tearing itself apart!
Vanishing Point - the place where time itself comes to an end - is tearing itself apart, and one of the keys to keeping reality from being torn asunder is finding exactly where Bruce Wayne is in the time stream! Rip Hunter puts together a high-powered band of Time Masters to travel throughout history in search of the World’s Greatest Detective, but can even the combined might and skill of Superman, Green Lantern and Booster Gold help the Time Master pinpoint where Batman went at the end of FINAL CRISIS?
Collects: TIME MASTERS: VANISHING POINT #1-6
Authors: Dan Jurgens
Artists: Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: April 12, 2011
Parental Rating: PG-13
ISBN: 9781401230470
Pages: 144 pages
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