Review: Booster Gold #15

For want of a knife the kingdom was lost

Forget the time jumping, continuity screwing, reality messing tale that’s occurring in some of those other books.  If you really want your mind tweaked, readers need to check out the latest time jumping, continuity screwing, reality messing tale that’s happening in Booster Gold.  Unlike that other book that doesn’t explain anything, Booster Gold #15, kicks off a new story arc that not only doesn’t explain everything, but does it in a way that makes sense – providing you’ve read the previous 14 issues.

If you don’t know by now, Booster Gold has been hired by his son Rip Hunter to become a time travel who fixes errors throughout history.  Through his many adventures, Booster and Skeets have skewed timelines, been to alternate dimensions, met friends long since dead, saved Booster’s dead sister, lost his best friend again, and in what has to be the bendiest of all bendy tales – traveled back to the same point in time so many times that it looks like it could be one of those odd time points that tie the entire time stream together.

The problem with time travel as cooked up by Dan Jurgens and the rest of the writers in the entire world, is that one false move tends to trigger major, often cataclysmic, effects as if the idea of the Butterfly Effect were actually a proof instead of a theory.  Something as simple as a misplaced knife, for example, could very easily cause civilization to crumble in a few short years.  Even worse, the idea that no one should know too much about their own future tends to cause ripples that might have changed the outcome of Identity Crisis, which would have then caused Infinite Crisis, and the now timeline skewed Final Crisis to turn out quite differently.   Of course that would never have happened, but one can dream, right.  (Can I get a Bwa-ha-ha for old time sake?)

As Skeets, Michelle, and Michael check out the museum for the 50th time, Booster is attacked by Ralph Dibny – the Elongated Man.  Hot on the trail of who broke into the museum, Ralph mistakes Booster for the robber, and it takes a well placed tasing and a brief explanation of the future.  Yeah, Booster does refrain from the “You’ve got to listen to me Ralph!  There’s something wrong with your wife.  You have to come with me – Back to the Future!”   There is however, an interesting tid-bit where Jurbens writes about a scene from 52 where a distraught Ralph attacks Booster blaming him for his wife’s death, and it is just enough of a tease, that I really need to go back and see if that event actually happened, or if Dan is just messing with us.

In any case, the duo travel back in time to the moment the knife (which also happens to be a chronal device) falls into the hands of a mysterious time traveler.  One thing leads to another, and in order to collapse a chronal opening to who knows where, Booster fires off another energy burst from his uniform – it’s just too bad he did it while inside the time hole – for when he recovers, he’s lost in time.

I have no doubt Dan Jurgens has a definite idea as to where his story is going.  After all, he set up the missing knife gimmick many issues ago in a single panel, and it’s playing out here.  A solid story timeline of what events need to happen to tell the grander story is imperative in this kind of book, where flaws in continuity can have serious repercussions with not only the DC timeline, but also with rabid fanboys.

Jurgens also pulled double duty on art, and since I like his story, the art is pretty okay in my book too.

The Good

• Booster and Michelle having a good brother, sister argument
• Leonardo Da Vinci and the origin of the Mona Lisa
• Seeing a live Ralph Dibny
• Ralph pulling a Plastic Man like disguise

The Bad

• Italians speak English apparently, but luckily Jurgens didn’t turn them into Matthew impersonating Rodrigo
• The Butterfly Effect is overstaying its welcome in this series
• Does everything have to be about the end of everything as we know it?

Booster Gold could be a really great comic book.  In fact, it could be the best comic book ever written, if the writers borrowed a bit from Doctor Who.  That time traveler happens to be present at many moments in history, and while he may fix the problems, many of his adventures have no impact on the timeline.  It would be nice to see Booster try something similar – simply having adventures in different time periods without the fate of everything hanging in the balance.  Of course it might also be interesting to see Booster Gold “borrow” from The Key to Time mega event and create a killer story.

I liked this issue, I really did.  I only wish the headache moments weren’t so much of a headache.  Time travel…why’d it have to be time travel.  Booster Gold #15 earns 4 out of 5 Stars.

67/67