Booster Gold has rapidly become one of The Revolution’s favorite titles. Johns and Katz rock it with each and every issue. Booster Gold is a nicely balanced title that gives the reader action, adventure, drama and character work all while delving deeply into the DCU’s storied history. This issue of Booster Gold is the Zero Hour issue that is only a bit over a decade late. It should be a fun read. Let’s go ahead and hit this review for Booster Gold #0.
Creative Team
Writers: Geoff Johns & Jeff Katz
Artists: Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund
Art Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: We begin with a brief re-cap of last issue’s daring rescue of Ted Kord. Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Jamie, the original Blue Beetle and the future Blue Beetle are all in the Time Sphere whizzing through the time stream. We see them zip past Extant talking with Parallax (Hal Jordan flavor). Parallax immediately binds up the time sphere in green energy chains. Parallax claims that the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold were two of the idiots who ruined the JLA. Parallax’s chains begin to crack and crush the time sphere.
Ted stays in the time sphere while Booster Gold and the other Blue Beetles zip out of the sphere. Dan Garrett works on breaking the chains while Jamie and the future Blue Beetle take on Parallax. Booster Gold locks horns with Extant. Booster asks Extant why he is getting mixed up in all of this. Extant claims that he lost someone special to him and Parallax promised to bring him back.
Our heroes manage to break Parallax’s chains and they all hop back in the Time Sphere and attempt to make a quick getaway. However, Extant could feel the 25th century on Booster and sends our heroes to the 25th century where Extant’s rift of draining entropy will annihilate the 25th century soon enough. (And the TMK Legion with it. Thank the comic book gods.)
We see our heroes crash land in Gotham City in the 25th century. Booster realizes that today is the day that he threw the big game between his school Gotham University and Ohio State. Booster’s father, a chronic gambler, urges Booster to throw the game so he can pay some of his gambling debts. Booster, starved for his father’s love agrees to do so.
That day Booster’s sister came to visit him to beg him not to throw the game for a father that will never love him. Booster threw the game, lost any future as a pro football player and ended up being the night watchman at the Space Museum. Booster’s sister ended up following Booster back into the past and became Goldstar and ended up getting killed.
Booster thinks that if he goes and talks himself out of throwing the game then he will never become Booster and his sister won’t die. Ted counters with the fact that all the good that Booster has done will also never happen. Booster then decides that they can save his sister from dying just like he saved Ted from dying.
Our heroes’ Time Sphere is damaged from the fight with Parallax and Extant. However, Booster knows where they can get another Time Sphere. Booster leads our heroes to the Space Museum to steal the same Time Sphere that Booster used to come to the present to start his career as Booster Gold. Booster says that once they get back home, Rip can follow them back here with Rip’s Time Sphere so they can drop it back off at the museum.
Suddenly, the security alarms go off and Skeets and the other security robots enter the room and attack our heroes. Our heroes pile into the Time Sphere and take off. The future Blue Beetle states that the Time Stream has re-adjusted to acknowledge Ted’s escape. That things are starting to settle back into place. The future Blue Beetle then says that Dan and Jamie cannot remember that they saved Ted’s life. Ted thanks Dan for his help and Dan returns to his own time. Ted then tells Jamie that he is honored to call Jamie the Blue Beetle and with that Jamie is returned to his own time.
The future Blue Beetle then tells Booster and Ted that their friendship is unique and special. That he wishes the both of them the very best of luck in the days ahead. That he can guarantee that their adventure is only just beginning. And with that the future Blue Beetle teleports back to his own time.
Booster and Ted then arrive back at Rip’s lab. They notice that the place looks like it has been ransacked. They step outside of the lab and see that the lab is surrounded by hundreds of OMACs. End of story.
Comments
The Good: Booster Gold #0 was a technically sound issue. Johns and Katz serve up plenty of excellent dialogue. The banter between Ted and Booster was spot on. Johns and Katz also crank out more quality character work in this issue. And this has been one of the strong points of this title since the beginning. Johns and Katz continue to delve deep into Booster’s character and keep on fleshing out his personality. With each issue, Booster simply gets more developed and complex.
I enjoyed the scene with our heroes stumbling across Parallax and Extant. It was cool to see Parallax and Extant once again. Parallax’s reaction to seeing Booster and Blue Beetle was classic. No matter what Booster and Ted ever achieve, they will always be dogged by their reputations as the losers who helped make the JLA a joke back in the days of the Maxwell Lord run League.
What was particularly intriguing about this scene was the little exchange between Extant and Booster. Extant explains that he turned from hero to villain and agreed to work with Parallax because Parallax promised to bring back from the dead someone very dear to Extant. This was a nice subtle parallel to Booster Gold working with the future Blue Beetle due to the promise that the future Blue Beetle could save Ted Kord. This could certainly be some ominous foreshadowing that the future Blue Beetle may not be the hero that Booster thinks he is and that Booster is going to pay a high price for saving Ted’s life.
Johns and Katz end Booster Gold #0 with a fantastic hook ending. Rip Hunter is missing. Rip’s Time Lab is completely ransacked. And to top it all off, there is a huge army of OMACs outside the lab ready to take down Team Blue and Gold. That is certainly an exciting ending to a somewhat dull issue. It definitely got me pumped up for the next issue. Clearly, saving Ted Kord’s life has set off a dramatic chain of events that the future Blue Beetle neglected to warn our heroes about.
Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund provide plenty of nice looking artwork. Jurgens’ clean style of artwork is a wonderful match for this title. I have to admit that Jurgens’ work on this title has really impressed me and gotten me to appreciate his work much more than I did before.
The Bad: Booster Gold #0 was without doubt the weakest issue so far on this young title. This was a slow and somewhat boring issue that read like pure filler. This certainly came across as Johns and Katz simply taking a breather with this issue as they set the stage for the next major story arc. Of course, I’m not too sure with only six issues into the title that we already needed a filler issue for the writers to take a break and recalibrate the story.
Booster Gold #0 was part re-cap issue and part origin issue. Johns and Katz burn 5 pages re-capping the prior issue and then burn through another five pages re-telling Booster’s origin. I suppose that this was a necessary evil considering that they had not re-told Booster’s origin yet on this new title. Re-telling Booster’s origin was a wise move for newer readers who are unfamiliar with Booster’s character. However, it made this issue a dull read for long time readers.
Now, the idea to waste so many pages re-capping the prior issue seemed totally unnecessary. Again, DC should seriously consider doing what Marvel does with a re-cap page that kicks off the beginning of each issue. I would much rather have that done instead of having to waste five pages of the issue re-telling the previous issue.
Overall: I firmly believe that Booster Gold #0 is simply a momentary hiccup. I fully expect that this title will return back to form with the next issue. Booster Gold #0 definitely serves as a fantastic issue for new readers to hop aboard this title. This issue will give enough background information on the current storyline as well as Booster’s history that a reader completely unfamiliar with Booster can pick up this book and immediately learn more than enough to enjoy the upcoming story arc on this title.
If you still have not given Booster Gold a try then I definitely urge you to pick up Booster Gold #0 and get aboard this train. If you dig classic super hero adventure stories and have a love for the DCU’s history and continuity then you should enjoy this title.
5 thoughts on “Comic Book Review: Booster Gold #0”
Comments are closed.
I suspect the reason for the recap (and, for that matter, the recap in
last week’s JSA) was the fact that #0 is presumably the first issue of
what will be the second trade.
The obvious ending to this story arc is to have Ted go back and die to save reality, but since they’ve already revealed this with several issues to go, one would hope they have a different course in mind, or the ending will have been really obvious from the start (not to mention being a rather malicious tease to fans of the character, although it’s at least a more heroic end if that’s what happens).
A lot hinges on whatever the real motivations of that 27th century Beetle really are.
I don’t know, I felt like the recap was needed because we don’t know much about Booster and his father. (Still wondering if this is the backstabbing he meant in issue 5.) Also it brings up Michelle who most readers knew nothing about until this series started. As a Booster fan I enjoyed seeing more of his family and seeing how much his love ones affect him.
BTW Booster wasn’t a janitor, he was the night watchman with skeets. 52 messed that up twice but other than that he was never called that in comics before. (Sorry Booster geek.)
I saw in a recent interview with Johns that he only intends on staying with this title through #11 or 12, basically, 1 more arc, then he’s handing it off to another team. This makes me both sad, and scared for the future of this title.
While I think there are a few other writers at DC capable of handling this title properly besides Johns, i don’t see any of them making room in their schedules to fit it in.
And I have nightmares of what would happen if Winnick got hold of it.
Johns is handing it off to Katz, who has been helping this wonderful series along, so I’m confident the quality will remain high, if not quite Countdown-esque
one of the things that really stood out to me was the portrayal of Hal/Parallax. If memory serves me correctly, he was originally just about the reshaping of the universe. but in this, he expreses the desire to spread fear. i thought that updating Zero hour with the new version of parallax was a great idea.