It’s time for your Booster shot in Convergence Booster Gold #1 written by Dan Jurgens, pencils by Alvaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez on inks, and color by Chris Sotomayor.
The issue starts with a bang showing the origin of an alternate Booster Gold as he meets Skeets (for a second time) and Rip Hunter, who is looking for (our?) Booster Gold, his father. Turns out they’re on Skarta
ris (dinos oh my). They’re trying to figure things out as it’s a bit…complicated. This Booster tells of Superman and Wonder Woman being a couple, something our Booster was bent to stop from happening before he up and vanished. Rip’s Michelle was apparently taken as collateral on Skartaris; along with a gaggle of other time travelers. Our Booster is found there as well. Rip frees both Michelle (HI MICHELLE!) and Booster. Booster, however is not doing so great; all of the time travel over the years and chronal energy is causing him to time hop and is killing him (whoops). Then Deimos attacks and they battle and escape to Vanishing Point. They then find domed cities and break in only to face off with Superboy and The Legion of Superheroes. They finally locate our Booster but he gets zapped out again; to one familiar Metropolis and one very much alive preboot Ted Kord.
POSITIVES
If there’s one thing about the Nu52 has done pretty well, the underlying and (extremely
longstanding) arc of Booster Gold is certainly an interesting if not low-key one. It’s been extremely long winded and tied to various events (this one references Future’s End) , the coupling of Superman and Wonder Woman (which is clear shouldn’t be; isn’t their future child a villain and pretty much Magog? Am I recalling correctly? My distaste for their pairing clouds everything ) and it’s curious to see it continue here. I wish more of the Nu52 had this intricacy and consistency to plot relevancy (cough Pandora cough) but I suppose it’s not surprising that the routinely undervalued/written off time traveler would have the biggest and most intricate arc. Actually poor Rip and Booster often have the most interesting or arcs that have been routinely sidelined or dropped by softboots, reboots; their cool mysterious chalkboard hints and narratives consistently just wiped away and it’s always really disappointing. To have their narrative play out even sort of behind the scenes of all these events is rather….unusual.
NEGATIVES
Art is decent and Young!Booster looks good, everyone looks good, the cities are pretty, but it’s still pretty ge
neral artwork. Just better than most. A minor quibble. This is actually very good overall.
VERDICT
This is fun, Skeets is a gold mine, the Booster dying thing is somewhat melodramatic, but ultimately a pretty rewarding read which handles the overlap of characters much better than some other issues. It just “feels” more complete. I’d say this is definitely one of the better Convergence issues due to it’s importance in a greater narrative outside of the event. We’re not sure what the future means for the rest of all of these different time plucked cities and heroes, in many cases it’s all rather hand waive-y, but this clues into something much larger and that’s interesting. While Shazam and Question are thus far is the best of all the Convergence issues due to their teams and art; Booster Gold is nothing to shrug off.
