Review by Win Wiacek
This third time-bending Booster Gold collection reveals further progress in the time-guardians’ never-ending battle to keep history on track and mankind in existence.
Continuing from Blue and Gold, the action opens with Dan Jurgens illustrating a sequence scripted by Chuck Dixon. ‘Vicious Cycle’ finds Rip Hunter, Booster and his freshly resurrected sister Michelle at a loss after a recent Gotham visit. After Batman, Robin and Batgirl rout B-list bad guy Killer Moth at Gotham Museum, a simultaneous robbery by meekly ineffectual Wiley Dalbert causes the dynamic trio to blink out of existence.
After experiencing the urban hell of Gotham without Batman, the team start trying to rectify the situation and learn Killer Moth’s score was planned by Dalbert as cover so that the little time traveller could swipe an ancient Egyptian knife. Popping back further to sneakily replace the Moth, Booster clandestinely carries out the fateful robbery and stops Wiley too… but that only makes the restored reality infinitely worse, and the time-team’s ultra-secret efforts have brought them to the attention of stretchable sleuth Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man.
The temporal turbulence resumes with ‘Reality Lost’ as having dragged Michelle from her surprise role as Da Vinci’s muse, Booster tries to return them to Rip’s secret lab only to find it no longer exists. Thanks to Skeets’ encyclopaedic history files and temporal processors, the stranded chrononauts discover the current crisis stems from unfinished business at the museum where they met Wiley Dalbert.
Booster sets his Wayback Machine for that apparently accursed night, and walks into a trap and is attacked by Dibny. A few years from then they would be best friends in Justice League International, but at that instant the blue and gold figure is nothing more than a bold bandit as far as the Ductile Detective is concerned.
Poignant pit-stops in World War I, ancient Egypt and Booster’s personal time-line result in deadly encounters with Enemy Ace Hans von Hammer, pre-lightning bolt Barry Allen, time-bandit Chronos, and even his own earlier, surlier, self-absorbed self. Through it all Booster learns the true price and value of his secret career. Preserving the way things are causes pain and humiliation, costs everything he ever cared about and promises nothing but frustration and early death.
After the triumph and tragedy, a potent vignette by Jurgens wraps things up with a recap of Booster’s ‘Origins and Omens’ of his immediate future: first seen as a teaser produced during the lead-up to twinned publishing events Blackest Night and Brightest Day.
Sadly, despite its dark and foreboding appeal, moments of sheer comedy gold and fast-paced action throughout, this engaging rollercoaster ride is ultimately aimed at fans intimate with DC’s continuity. That’s a great shame since it’s also a fabulously well-crafted story that a wider audience would certainly appreciate if only they had sufficient back-grounding.
Booster’s adventures continue in Day of Death.
