Booster Gold #24
Like every month, Dan Jurgens joined us here on CR to discuss the most recent issue of Booster Gold. This month’s issue, #24, featured the "rise of the Black Beetle," and saw resolution to the apparent premature deaths of the Teen Titans at the hands of Deathstroke and the original Ravager way back in Deathstroke’s first appearance.
Building toward the battle in the Batcave next month that will start to put things into motion implicating the man behind the Black Beetle mask (and scarabs), Booster Gold #24 was an action-packed issue filled with dramatic images and a few nice twists, including a great moment for Kyle Rayner fans.
Join us back here in three short weeks, as The Gold Exchange gets back on schedule!
Comic
Related: Is Booster just like everyone else, where in
all of these variant timelines there are variant Boosters? Or is our guy more
insulated from chronal change? I ask because often, everyone thinks he’s dead in
these situations and part of me wonders if maybe he is.
Dan Jurgens: I think it depends on the timeline. The closer the timeline to our own reality, the more likely it is to have its own version of Booster. We have seen other Boosters in various timelines. My general take on this particular timeline is that it developed without its own Booster Gold because he would have been gone from "the departure point."
CR: Did you have input into the red, infinity-signed narrative boxes used for Rip Hunter? Since he has no superhero logo, I just wonder how those came about.
DJ: Those showed up very early during our first year of publication!
CR: Given that Kyle had superhero girlfriends, a mysterious, super-spy father and about 30 total pages of "normal" life, what did you draw on for his characterization here?
DJ: I always thought of Kyle as being a bit rash. It’s worth noting that this Kyle had never become Green Lantern so his life experiences were wildly different from the one we’re more familiar with.
CR: And how’d he end up with Zatanna? Was it just like when Ganthet found him? The population dwindled and Zee goes, "You shall have to do?"
DJ: Without getting into specifics, I’d say it was something like that. I figured it would be a fun combination!
CR: Rip and Black Beetle have the same nose in their side-by-side panels; should we be worried about Booster’s son going bad? On that same token, it doesn’t seem like Rip, if he were Black Beetle, would need a dude in a lab coat to do his science-stuff for him.
DJ: True enough. Rip is quite capable of handling all that science stuff on his own.
CR: Black Beetle and LUTHOR are teamed up in this reality? Dude, Black Beetle needs to examine his intimacy issues. This guy just always has to be in a couple!
DJ: Black Beetle is more of a puppet master. For him there is no such thing as a team-up of equals– only lackeys who generally do what he needs to have done.
CR: Even more than Ollie always being a revolutionary in these alternate timelines, I love Luthor’s reaction to Queen in this issue–"No wonder the opposition was never totally crushed." What’s that say about Ollie’s rep in the DCU?
DJ: I’d say his reputation lives up to the various versions of Ollie Queen over the years.
CR: Another Black Beetle question (and observation): He looks like Dan Garrett for a panel when Rip blasts him. Is that just a trick of the eye...is it a hint...or is it maybe just the costume reverting to a "simpler" form for a minute under stress when the scarab takes a hit?
DJ: More of a special effect as a result of the blast.
CR: Is it safe to assume the red scarab won’t just evaporate next issue, when the series of elaborate changes to the timeline that created it are unraveled?
DJ: Keee-rect.
CR: Where’d the design for Kyle’s GL suit in this issue come from? It’s slightly different from any one I can think of.
DJ: Just something I dreamed up. Like all GL suits, it works off the general design of the costume while being a bit more individual.
CR:
Seeing Kyle and Zee about to battle Trigon for the
future of this doomed alternate timeline brings to mind the heroes and villains
who dove into walls of antimatter during Crisis on Infinite Earths and
Zero Hour. Is there something appealing about heroic sacrifice for a lost
cause in the superhero genre?
DJ: Appealing? I’m not sure. Defining? Yes. Those are the attributes the embody heroism.
CR: I love the whole football metaphor–up to an including fixing the game. Did that just come to you, or has that been waiting for an opportune time to come out of Booster’s mouth for a while?
DJ: I have SO been waiting to use that line. Like, for a year. I finally got the chance!
CR: Since the trend these days is to make Deathstroke pretty much godlike in combat, what went into the decision to have Booster beat him off-panel? Was it a storytelling or a space concern?
DJ: A
couple of points here:
One, I tried to make my portrayal of Deathstroke as accurate as possible with
regards to his original appearance. He was not so godlike then.
Two, Booster has power blasters and a force field. Given the level at which Deathstroke fought in those days, I think we were safe in having it occur off panel. The story wasn’t the fight but what happened after the fight.
CR: So...since Raven has seen the anomaly, did that reality actually manifest itself in the illusion she showed Ravager?
DJ: Yes. If I understand your question correctly, my answer would be that it all ties together and fits quite neatly into that issue of Teen Titans.
CR: And in other self-fulfilling prophecy questions–did Booster’s advice inadvertently resolve Dick’s "Who should be my Robin?" question years before it ever came up?
DJ: In issue #25 we make it quite clear that–oh! Wait! That isn’t out yet!
Ask me then!
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.
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