DCU Comic Book Reviews

BOOSTER GOLD #18

Reality Lost, Part IV of IV

May 2009

Written by Dan Jurgens

Layouts by Dan Jurgens

Inks by Norm Rapmund

Cover by Dan Jurgens And Norm Rapmund

Synopsis

Booster Gold asks a past version of himself to help fix time by finding a dagger that contains chronal energy.  While one Booster Gold goes back to Egyptian times to find the dagger, the other Booster Gold goes into the timestream to find the one who has been collecting the daggers.  Meanwhile, that person has taken GoldStar to the Vanishing Point, the end of time.  There, he places the daggers he has collected into a door that will unlock monitors that allow anyone to observe any era of time.  In Ancient Egypt, Booster finds the dagger which is being used as part a spell to restore a pharaoh to life.  The other part is the Blue Beetle scarab.  Booster steals both items.  At the Vanishing Point, the other Booster Gold and Skeets arrive to help GoldStar.  Skeets then reveals the time traveler is Rex Hunter, former Time Master rejected by Rip Hunter.  Meanwhile, Rex notices that Booster saves the scarab.  Rex attacks Booster to prevent the scarab from ever being found.  Booster fights back, using the dagger on Rex.  The chronal energy in the dagger transforms Rex and he disappears.  Afterwards, the two Boosters put everything back where it belongs.  At the Vanishing Point, GoldStar watches her death in the monitor and realizes that she shouldn’t be alive.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I have stated (I think) in various reviews since Geoff Johns left the book as the writer, that the main draw of this series is centered on two basic concepts:  the humor and the type of time traveling.  Neither of which is presented very well in this issue.  While I wouldn’t classify it as completely humorless, I did find myself enjoying this issue less and less.  Add to the fact that Booster traveling back in time to save the Blue Beetle scarab lacks any kind of punch and this issue just fell very flat.  I think this issue would’ve benefited from an appearance by say Hawkman or Black Adam, especially with the Egyptian theme.  Anyway, this issue wasn’t bad (and Jurgens’ art is good as always), but it didn’t really grab me the way some of the earlier issues had done. 

The ending also annoyed me, although I don’t think there was any way around it.  I specifically talking about the blink-and-you-will miss it moment where older Booster tells younger booster they will have to erase his memories.  This needed to be done in order to erase any type of internal inconsistencies in terms of what Booster is supposed to remember.  However, this is the second time Jurgens has done this (the first was earlier in this story with Elongated Man).  Essentially what this does is it allows Jurgens to do whatever he wants without messing around continuity (because the characters won’t remember it).  It annoys me.  I’m not really sure why, but it did. 

I do have to give Jurgens credit, he is taking everything that has happened in this book, not only from Johns’ run, but also Dixon’s brief stint, and weaving into the events now.  Almost everything in the “Reality Lost” storyarc is connected in some way to something in previous issues, beginning with the loss of the dagger to Rex Hunter’s return, Blue Beetle (I think the scarab scenes are a set-up to a future Black Beetle storyline), and now GoldStar’s realization what happened to her.  I liked the ending, with GoldStar realizing she should be dead and I am curious to see how this plays out. 

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