Booster Gold: Blue and Gold


By Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1956-7

Following directly on from the first collected volume (Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up, ISBN: 978-1-84576-847-8) this hardcover compendium, reprinting issues #7-10 of the monthly comicbook and Booster Gold 1,000,000, details the catastrophic implications of the time-line guardian’s impetuous action in retrieving his best friend from death.

Booster Gold and Ted Kord (the second Blue Beetle) were the class clowns of Maxwell Lord’s Justice League International: a couple of charming frat-boys who could save the day but never get the girl or any respect. When Lord murdered Beetle, precipitating the Infinite Crisis, Booster was shattered but redefined himself as a true hero in the multiversal conflagrations of 52 and Countdown.

Defying his mentor Rip Hunter, Time Master, and aided by three other Blue Beetles plucked from their own timelines Booster altered the timeline to rescue Kord, but inevitably the world changed. In this new timeline Lord and his OMAC cyborgs have conquered the Earth, and only a few metahumans are still alive and free. Rallying the survivors Blue and Gold must lead one glorious Last Hurrah of the reformed JLI…

And in the background a shadowy cabal of super-villains calling itself the Time Stealers is manipulating events for their own sinister purposes…

This is a fans’ story for die-hard comics fans, with in-jokes and shared historical moments adding to the unbridled enthusiasm and exuberance of a classy time-busting tale, and that’s a great pity since this is also a very well crafted story that a wider audience would certainly appreciate if only they had sufficient back-grounding.

Gold’s heroism and Beetle’s sacrifice are the very bread-and-butter of superhero comics and even the eccentric post-script wherein our hero meets his ultimate legacy in the 1,000,0000 one-shot all add to a fabulously rounded cape-and –cowl experience.

I’m in touch with the continuity and still struggled occasionally but I’d love to be proved wrong and see if a total innocent could follow this nuanced little gem and get the buzz it gave me… Any volunteers?

© 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.