Echinoderms. Why’d it have to be echinoderms?
You gotta love time travel. Not only do you get to warp the universe around you to make all the bad things go away, you also get to warp the universe around you to make the good things happen. Such is the case with the greatest hero no one has ever heard of and his Time Lord Chrononaught Time Master son. What? That’s a spoiler that was revealed like… three issues ago! Oh Geez, gimme a break! Here, put this starfish on your face, and the bad spoiler man will go away.
Whew! Glad we got rid of those milksops who can’t handle a little spoiler here and there. Starfish do indeed play a big role in this installment of the adventures of Booster Gold, as Booster and his sister Michelle arrive in the time lab only to discover Rip has been taken over by the conqueror from the stars. Yes, that mind controlling super villain who can only be taken down by ice and quicklime (and presumably the incessant droning of Snapper Carr) – Starro the Conqueror!
Not only has one of Starro’s spores entered the lab (thanks a lot Daniel), the mind controlling creature escaped its mayonnaise jar (thanks again Daniel), travelled back in time and taken over the entire world retroactively (that’s no real fault of Daniel). Fortunately, Michael and Michelle are able to use a back up Time Sphere to travel back and stop Starro’s mad plot to enslave humanity, thus resetting the natural order of things and returning everything to its regularly scheduled programming.
Funny thing about time travel. While most of the fantasy and sci-fi stories feature time travelers visiting the past, the far more interesting stories are those where the time traveler decides to check out the future just to make sure Marty’s kids turn out A-Okay. Time moves both ways, and Starro is able to skip over this timeline, thus marrying Marty’s mother, er… wait… Starro is able to travel to the distant future, take over the world there (then?), and travel back to the present in an attempt to defeat Booster Gold, the last of the Time Masters.
Things go from bad to worse as Booster ends up in the future, and gets thrown into a pool of Starro spores.  Yeah, Back to the Future ain’t got nothin’ on Booster Gold and his time traveling adventures.
This is the first Booster Gold story written by Rick Remender, and even though he is only on for two issues, I really got to hand it to the guy; he can write a creepy, yet effective time travel story that causes both head pain and joy at the same time. As many readers have pointed out, time travel stories can be messy, and this issue has a lot of potential time travel plot holes, yet Remender is able to weave a story that is like aspirin, even with all the headache inducing time travel your head doesn’t throb at the end. It also appears Remender isn’t afraid to take the title to over the all-ages line and feature a scene where someone gets their face ripped off. Yes, you read that correctly, a face is ripped off.
This two-issue arc also gets a new artist in the form of Patrick Olliffe. While Olliffe doesn’t deviate too drastically in his style, he does draw the characters a bit more thin, which makes you notice something isn’t the same with this issue. It isn’t bad at all, and for some reason, some of his panels remind me of how characters were drawn during Booster Gold’s first series back in the 1980s.
Even though Booster Gold’s attempts to fix the timeline have him dealing with events and characters from the DC Universe, I think a television show based on the premise of the series would fly for today’s television viewers. After all it has been nearly 15 years since Sam and Al made it work in Quantum Leap. If DC and the CW are hell bent on changing stories to fit with today’s youth, Booster Gold could do it easily without getting fans all up in arms. DJ? Really? That’s the best you can do?
We’ve already seen Per Degaton try to manipulate the time stream to his advantage, but bringing in a world conqueror like Starro, takes the tired plot somewhere we haven’t been before. As a filler arc until Dan Jurgens returns, I don’t dislike what I’m reading and seeing. The story seems well paced, there are the requisite number of Uh-Oh twists, and the art works in the tale. I am curious how Booster is going to save his gold backside in the next issue, and that’s the mark of a good story. While not a perfect Booster Gold issue, I’m giving Booster Gold #13 3 out of 5 Stars.
Oh hey, go get some quicklime and get that starfish off your friends face. If he asks, pretend you don’t know who is Rip’s father.
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2 Comments
Starro is great!
Man, I _hate_ Starro, but not as a villain…. I have since I was a kid. He SERIOUSLY ruined “starfish” for me. I can’t look at one without getting grossed out and unrealistically fearing that it will jump up and attack my face. It’s all due to seeing Starro in the Zoo Crew books when I was but a lad I can’t, however, miss an ish of Boostah, so I just had to read this one while my eyes darted towards anything that wasn’t starfishy. :D I’m such a wuss.