Following after last month’s Booster Gold 00 issue, which was the last tie in to DC’s Zero Hour storyline of 1994, Booster Gold 07 picks up where it left off. Booster and his best friend, now returned from the dead, Blue Beetle, are being attacked by Max Lord’s OMACs.
However immediately you begin to get the sense that we’ve entered another of the 52 universes. Things are just not right, and we see more of this as the book continues.
Booster Gold #7
Written by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz
Art and Cover by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund
Of course, straight off, Rip Hunter is exclaiming to all those present – ie, Daniel Carter and Rose Levin – that the universe is definitely in trouble. Booster’s decision to go back and save Ted Kord, aka, The Blue Beetle, has put everything at risk.
Some quick thinking on Ted’s part a few pages later sees Ted and Booster extricated from trouble, but we soon see that the current DCU is in trouble. Dr. Mid-nite, Black Lightning, Lighting, Thunder, Cyborg, as well as four of the big guns – Kyle Rainer, Nightwing, Black Canary and Hawkgirl – are all dead.
Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz have really taken the liberties presented in a time-travelling book and gone nutso with them. The entire course of DC events over the past 15 years has been irrevocably changed, and now it looks as if only Booster and Ted can save the universe.
Of course, this is where that “heartbreak†I mentioned last month is going to come in to it. Ted Kord is too good of a man to let the universe crumble so that he could live. And no doubt it’s going to be written well, but still, we can see the self-sacrifice coming a mile away.
The end of the book presents us with the direct opposition that Booster and Beetle are going to have to face. Instead of the apparent simple reversing time that now lays in front of them, it looks as if they will be fighting the ‘Time Stealers.’ Or, because we’ve never heard of this group before; the Ultra Humanite, Per Degaton, Despero, Supernova – aka, Booster Gold’s father – and the Black Beetle.
The latter is, as far as I can tell, the extra Beetle that originally helped bring Ted Kord back from certain death. It would thus fit that this group of villains were the ones in league with Rex Hunter and Supernova, who in the series’ opening books were trying to alter history.
Dan Jurgens continues the beautiful artwork that I have enjoyed for the past few months. And that Jurgens got to revisit Ted Kord and the OMAC’s is apparent in the detail and care put in to those particular panels.
I can’t find anything specifically wrong with it, so it gets a 5 out of 5. If I had the opportunity to rate it out of 10 I would rate it 9, simply so that issues of Green Arrow and Black Canary can get 10 out of 10, but I’ll make do for now.
2 Comments
The Time Stealers, or at least Ultra Humanite, Per Degaton and “Classic” Despero, showed up during the Lightning Saga JLA/JSA crossover.
And wouldn’t saving Ted only alter the last 2/2.5 years of DC Universe history, not 15?
I still think Ted Kord can come out of this story alive and part of the “Time Masters.” Geoff Johns has used the bait and switch sacrifice with android Hourman taking golden age Hourman’s place in an arc of JSA. He’s also used the villain takes the heroes place switcheroo when he had Atom Smashed trade Extant for his mom in a plane crash.
In this vein, I could see Dan Garrett taking Ted’s place, or Rip switching Ted with the Black Beetle.
Well, here’s to hope.
See, the thing of it is, the secretive (and to me, sinister) nature of Black Beetle’s complacency in Booster’s plot was the nail in his villain coffin. I knew something was up with him, because he’s the ONLY character who didn’t voice any concerns about saving Ted from his fate.
That being said, I was pretty shocked when the reveal came. And, here’s a question for everyone: If Supernova is, essentially, a counter to Booster, and Black Beetle a counter to Blue, wouldn’t it stand to reason that Rip Hunter might have an ally or two of his own, to counter Despero’s psionic manipulations and Ultra-Humanite’s primate powers?
This looks like a job for…
ANGEL AND THE APE!!!