Booster Gold #15
This month, Dan Jurgens is back on art chores for the first time since Booster Gold #12, and back on writing duties for the first time since Booster Gold #25, with the release today of Booster Gold #15 from DC Comics. A little confused? Let's travel back in time for a quick overview of what you need to know.
Booster Gold was the first superhero of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths era in the DC Universe. His original series, which ran from 1985-1987 and was written and drawn by Dan Jurgens (who had created the character). At that time, Jurgens was a young creator without the street cred that he has these days from having written and drawn Zero Hour and The Death of Superman. After the cancellation of Booster Gold, the character didn't have a monthly series again until about a year and a half ago, when it was being written by 52 co-scribe Geoff Johns and his friend and writing partner Jeff Katz. And the artist on the title? The devilishly-handsome Dan Jurgens. Jurgens continued to be the only artist who had ever drawn a Booster Gold monthly comic until Johns and Katz left. A two-issue arc by Chuck Dixon was penciled by Jurgens, followed by a two-issue guest arc by writer Rick Remender and artist Patrick Olliffe. Starting this week, though, Jurgens has returned not only as the artist but the writer on the title as well.
"I think the general tone that was established during the first 12 issues works well and is worth keeping," Jurgens said of the new issue. "Booster Gold will always have a bit of lightness to it, in a fun way, that will always be a part of the story."
He explained, "I've always felt that time travel stories, in general, are too often weighted down by the Enormous Circumstances inflicted on the characters. Adding a bit of levity is appropriate. Let's face it... traveling through time would be fraught with danger as well as fun."
...And the results were terrific. Jurgens' art has been in top form since the new monthly started, but this issue was just top-notch. A handful of beautiful splash pages combined with a lot of very busy, five-panel-or-more pages that allowed for a ton of storytelling to happen in the same short span as most monthly comics, increasingly "written for the trades," use for tights-clad navel-gazing. "I think it's much more a product of me wanting to get a lot of stuff on the menu so my diners would know what they're in for," Jurgens said of the decision. "When a book changes hands that way I've always felt the new writer should probably get a little more 'on stage' than typical. It helps readers get the feeling that new scribe has a handle on the characters as well as an idea of where he/she wants to take the book."
As the story begins, readers who had hoped we'd get a satisfactory resolution to the Chuck Dixon two-parter (which had been broken up by the Remender story, which was a stand-alone) will be a little disappointed. Booster and his sister Michelle (Goldstar) had taken a quick vacation to Renaissance Italy, where Michelle was unwittingly the model for The Mona Lisa. Torch-wielding villagers sit in for supervillains in taking after Booster. When the pair get back to the present day, though, something has gone horribly wrong and Rip Hunter's time lab is mysteriously gone. Asked whether this is a true anomaly or simply another of Rip's mysterious chronal "defense mechanisms," Jurgens explained, "We've probably played a bit too fast and loose with some of those concepts. You'll see some aspects of the time sphere and lab get clarified as we move forward. Rip's status will get a bit of the same treatment. Is he really a master of time or a scientist who's still exploring the nature of time?"
When they realize that the roots of the crisis go back to their pursuit of time-traveler Wiley Dalbert during the Dixon arc, they travel back to Silver Age Gotham City to repair the damage done to the timestream. Foiled in this attempt first by the intervention of Ralph Dibny and then by a mysterious villain who I guessed may or may not be the same one who's been creeping around the edges of the series ever since the first issue of the relaunch. Jurgens quickly poo-pooed that theory, though: "No. That was Booster's father. This, however, is the same shadowy intruder we saw in the museum at the end of Booster Gold #12, page 21."
[Note: For you trade readers, that would be the intruder in Ted Kord's "Beetlecave" at the end of Blue & Gold.]
As an interesting aside, a brief conversation between Booster and Skeets regarding the marketing potential for Booster Gold action figures-Goldstar, Skeets, numerous variations on Booster, Peter Platinum and more-hearkens back to the earliest adventures of the Corporate Crusader. "Remember that Booster had and will maintain the facade of a lightweight hero," Jurgens said. "While Batman will know otherwise, most heroes and the general public will think of him as a publicity-thinking hound who's interested in his own agenda. To them, Booster is an opportunist."
Seeing the Enlongated Man in action for the first time since Identity Crisis was a nice little diversion. Whether we'll see a good deal of follow-up on it or not, Dibny's altercation with Booster in 52 (retreaded in a flashback sequence written by Jurgens here) takes on an entirely new, sadder flavor after this issue. "The way I've always played Booster and Skeets is that they might know the general broadstrokes of history's major events. For example, they'd know of any World War, alien invasion or natural disaster that took numerous lives," Jurgens explaine. "Something like Sue Dibny's death would have been more vague to them. It was natural of Ralph to assume Booster might have known, but not necessarily accurate." Still, after this issue, an older Booster with his modern-day costume had appeared to Ralph early in his career and Ralph's anger about "not being told" could actually have a little more weight to it.
With three issues left to resolve issues, it's safe to guess that we'll see the dangling threads from the Dixon arc, as well as some other things, tied up by the time all's said and done...but don't get too caught up in the little things, Jurgens says. "I don't know if that's so much a predicament they were in as one final thing to take care of. I believe there was enough there to let us know that they were able to solve it on their own."
Russell Burlingame is a journalist and columnist living and working in New York City. In high school, Russell interviewed Elliot S. Maggin for a review of the Kingdom Come novelization, and since then has worked consistently in and around the comics industry. He interned for Wizard magazine, and has freelanced for Wizard and Newsarama, in addition to a number of non-comics publications, Russell is currently working on a graphic novel based on Cap'n Internet, the comic strip that ran in his college newspaper; and a graphic biography of folk singer Phil Ochs with artist Marion Vitus.
Currently, in addition to his freelance work and his comics projects, Russell writes a number of columns for ComicRelated, including Conscientious Sequentials, The Gold Exchange, What's Perhappenin', Closing Statements, Reflecting 'Pool and To See or Not To See. Russell also takes point on the Hot Shot of the Week feature.
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