Rip Hunter, Booster Gold, and the other heroes from Vanishing Point take on Skartaris! Will this issue explain what the time travelers are doing in the main Convergence book?
CONVERGENCE: BOOSTER GOLD #1
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Artist: Alvaro Martinez Bueno
Inker: Raul Fernandez
Colorist: Chris Sotomayor
Editor: Marie Javins
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Previously in Vanishing Point: Lying outside the normal space/time continuum, Vanishing Point exists at the last moment of the universe before it ends. Seems like a fitting place for Convergence to take place… or not.
HAVE YOU READ ENDGAME? BECAUSE IT IS KIND OF IMPORTANT
This is the tale of two Booster Golds. One has been around since before Flashpoint, who discovered and saved the multiverse, and who is now its protector. Then there is the New 52 Booster. Deimos (as we’ve discovered in the pages of Convergence) has been collecting time travelers from across time and space. Rip Hunter is looking for his dad, but finds New 52 Booster Gold instead. It’s then revealed that New 52 Booster told Deimos all about Vanishing Point, but we are no closer to finding out what is going on with Telos or Deimos’s plans.
Convergence: Booster Gold isn’t a terrible book. It has a few moments that seem odd and out of place, but the story overall isn’t a bad one. In fact, for those who have read Endgame, and saw what played out with the Booster Gold of old, and the current incarnation in those pages, a lot of this book makes perfect sense. It’s an epilogue of sorts, and one that should have been played up as such in the previous event. This story also takes place well before Telos decides to bring the characters from Earth-2 into the whole Convergence event.
And that is what makes this book so darn problematic. Convergence: Booster Gold is an epilogue for one event and a prequel to the Convergence event. To make matters worse, this book came out four weeks after Convergence kicked off. This would have been a great zero issue to get more people interested in what was going on, but considering Convergence should be attracting new readers, having to be told “Oh by the way everyone, you did read Endgame, right?” is a bit of a turn off.
SNUG FITTING ART
Like the writing of the issue, the art in this book is well done. Had this been a non-superhero book, then the art, inks, and colors would be fantastic. Unfortunately, there are times when the idea that all superhero costumes must be extremely form fitting to the point that the fabric conforms to each and every fold and nook in Booster Gold’s ear is baffling. I understand that comic book super heroes need to wear skin tight closes, but there is a point where fantasy and reality collide to something that is goofy as hell. As far as time travelers go, Booster Gold and Rip Hunter are definitely in my top five. But even Marty McFly knew that a comfortable pair of pants was better than Rip’s skin tight jump suit. In my mind, Rip should be wearing something more along the lines of an aviator flight suit, with all sorts of pockets and folds. Just my two cents, of course, but it seems in a modern age of story telling we are still seeing an awful lot of painted naked people running around.
Still, seeing a nearly full page of time traveler’s locked in boxes is exciting, and I would be very interested to know if the capturing of those characters happened in Endgame, or if we are expecting a spin-off series to tell that tale.
BOTTOM LINE: WEEK ONE RELEASE
I can understand holding off on this book until after the heroes in the main book had a chance to see Deimos doing his evil deeds, but even in Convergence, we didn’t really understand what he was doing. Convergence: Booster Gold #1 should have been a week one book instead of something that wraps up the first month, but that leads to a whole Chicken or the Egg argument in storytelling. This book wasn’t terrible, it was actually quite interesting to see Rip realize the New 52 Booster wasn’t his father and the New 52 Booster realizing he’s not the greatest of all the Booster Golds out there. The art is really good, especially during the Lizard Men sequences. Overall, if you are okay with a major jump in storytelling, have read everything related to Endgame, and have travelled with the New 52 Booster in his adventures, then you’ll love this book. For the rest of you, you are probably confused by the appearance of Per Degaton, Wave Rider, Time Trapper, Monarch, David Clinton, and the rest.
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10 Comments
Wait. So this book can only make sense to those who are at least generally aware of Booster’s role in Flashpoint (nearly four years ago now) and specifically of the June 2011 cover-dated Booster Gold V2 #43 (which is not even a part of the New 52)?
At the same time, it also would work as a prequel for the current event if anyone only knew what it is all about and if it had come at least a month earlier?
No wonder comics can’t get new readers.
To think that pre-Crisis DCU was deemed too confusing for readers…
Yup. Take a listen to the two most recent Dueling Review podcast where I go off on a series that is alienating readers. We also touch on it last week’s Major Spoilers podcast.
Sorry, that’s incorrect.
None of this has to anything specifically to do with the New52. The point of convergence is that it covers/pits many different timelines against each other including pre-Crisis, Flashpoint, Hub City, pre-Zero hour, the Red Son timeline and other earths and timelines. This event (at least not the supplemental stories) are not meant as a “jumping on” point – they are for people who want to see Superman with lois in one more story, or Ted Kord in an Earth 4 story before the merge everything together.
Besides, instances like this, Wikipedia is your friend.
This was one confusing book if you have no idea of vanishing point or why there would be two Booster gold. This is a book that says go away to any new fans.
None of the Convergence books are meant as a jumping on point for new readers – the whole premise is that all past storylines will converge to leave us with a new, fresh one. That — from the looks of it — will be the good jumping off point.
The thing is I’ve read DC for 2 years (Batgirl mainly but Birds of prey when it was around and I will probably pick up Black Canary when it comes out)
My point is Convergence shouldn’t be saying to me, come back in two months when the titles you like return.
No. We had a glitch in the system that must have reverted to an older version of the review. It’s fixed now.
This story confirms for me that Convergence is a story by committee. DC editorial is either not paying enough attention to what they are trying to do, or they don’t have a strong enough voice or vision. Convergence just doesn’t feel like a fully baked idea, and it could have been pretty cool.
At one point I heard a rumor that they had a number of stories just lying around that they pulled out of the drawer for this event… rumor only, but…
I respectfully disagree. The great thing about convergence so far has been that it gives everyone a chance to have another story with a character not in the New52. Some stories like Blue Beetle, Action Comics and Green Lantern aren’t meant to push the main story along but give us another opportunity to see another story for those who missed Ted Kord, or Clark and Lois married. And it’s a great idea too since no one will be able to read every convergence issue so I’m glad there isn’t important information within every issue about the main story.