Review:
Time travel tales are famously filled with paradoxes and convoluted complexities. And while the rebooted Booster Gold solo series from 2007 embraces those challenges, the seven issues collected here show the cracks of the writers wrestling with those paradoxes.
The first two chapters, issues #11 and 12 of the series, were written by Chuck Dixon with Dan Jurgens on pencils. The two-parter feels like it was intended to be a largely standalone tale as the series transitioned from the hands of Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz (issues 1-10) to those of Booster's original creator (and series artist) Dan Jurgens beginning with #15.
(An odd Starro tale in #13-14 was the second half of this transition and is collected elsewhere)
Dixon's tale is fun and frivolous, with Booster Gold and Goldstar (Michael' sister Michelle) fixing a timestream issue by impersonating key players. Initially Booster fills in for Killer Moth in a museum heist. When that fails to fix things, he seeks to impersonate the great Batman, with Goldstar playing Batgirl, on the other side of the caper.
Incapacitating those people in order to take their place, being seen by folks such as Alfred all lead to more time travel woes. Booster, in need of a new disguise, dresses as... Elvis Prestley to thwart the crime. It all amounts to a bizarre but entertaining if largely forgettable tale.
When Jurgens lands in the writer's chair with #15, his first story ignores the Starro interlude and revisits Dixon's story. It feels like the character creator reasserting control over the direction of his creation by cleaning up some of the loose threads left behind by other writers. Yet his vision was clearly set earlier. On re-reading the Dixon tale, the astute reader will notice visual clues that will tie in directly to the Jurgens continuation. Things like the Egyptian magical knife, forgotten under a table but in the foreground of the image, screaming "pay attention to me!"
The rest of this collection is centered on that knife. From ancient Egypt and the knife's surprising connection to Blue Beetle's alien scarab, to the end of time at Vanishing Point, the story hits so many times and places, travelling the timestream like a kayak on a current.
Jurgens even circles back on the series' own timeline, as Booster meets his not-that-much younger self from about a year earlier, at least in comics publication dates - who knows how long that is in story time? Rip would be horrified if he had been in any position to comment on the potential for chaos and the paradoxes. One also wonders if this isn't Dan Jurgens reasserting his creative control over not only Chuck Dixon's tale but also those of Johns and Katz?
Jurgens keeps our hero's humour and creativity intact, making these chapters fun to read. He also gives the narrative some good emotional rage, especially in the arc involving Michelle aka Goldstar. She discovers the truth about her death and Rip's intervention and must wrestle with its implications. In fact, the very final panel follows common artistic tropes that suggest her death. Having only recently been reintroduced to Goldstar, is she now gone again from Booster's life?
Also notable is older-Booster's annoyance at how naive his (not that much) younger self was. Has he really grown so much in maturity and experience in the intervening time, however long it was?
Jurgens not only writes two-thirds of the book, he is also the main penciller, with an assist on inks by Norm Rapmund. His visuals are an ongoing testament to his affection for these characters, especially Booster Gold. We get lots of the classic Jurgens full-page pinup poses and his love of having the characters fly directly at the reader. With ongoing amazing colouring work by Hi-Fi, these pages are beautiful to behold, with a fluidity to the flow bound together by a strong overall visual consistency.
With Dan Jurgens in full creative control, I look forward to the next issues. This should be fun!
Description:
Exploding from the pages of 52 - and exploring the timeline of the DC Universe - comes this monthly book featuring the greatest Super Hero history will never know: Booster Gold! Longtime BATMAN writer Chuck Dixon pens a story teaming up Booster and Batman when a time-traveling villain from Batman's past attempts to destroy Gotham City! And in a story written and drawn by original Booster Gold creator Dan Jurgens, Booster discovers that the timestream has been inexplicably altered, unleashing all types of anomalies only he can put back in order! Guest-starring Batgirl and Elongated Man!
Collects: Booster Gold #11, 12, 15-19
Authors: by Chuck Dixon, Dan Jurgens
Artists: Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Aug. 11, 2009
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN: 978-1401222499
Pages: 144 pages
No comments:
Post a Comment