Catch-up Review: Booster Gold #2

It's time for another exciting installment of Shut Up, Shut Up, My Opinions Totally Matter! Here we've got Booster Gold #2, featuring Booster vs. Sinestro. Exciting!

We start off where we left off, with Booster and Rip discussing the ultimatum that Booster gave Rip at the end of last issue. I absolutely love this conversation. The "No one's supposed to die--" "We all die, Booster." "Not like that." It's very telling of Booster's psyche. He does not care for how history has gone recently, so, by gum, he's going to change it and if Rip doesn't like it, he can find somebody else to play chump. Rip really did not pick the right guy to be his time cop.

Also, the look on Booster's face in that "Not like that." panel is scary in the best way. Booster's usually a compromiser to the sort of extreme that most other heroes wouldn't, but when Booster does stand his ground, then he does not move in it.

By "always," Booster of course means "never." The boy has practically defined the phrase "by the seat of his pants."

What interests me most about the alternate history shown here is that Rip says that Guy would die "decades before he should," because it suggests that Guy's going to be sticking around for a long, long time. Which is good. I like Guy.

Random page of Dan Garrett! There's a lot here that contradicts previous canon, but considering that said previous canon was a few time line rewrites ago, I think I can forgive it.

Fun fact: I live in Pasadena, so I am filled with glee by this.

I like Booster being mystified by Guy's behavior. Booster never met Guy until well after he was brain-damaged, so it makes perfect sense for him to be utterly confused by this non-aggressive and completely reasonable Guy.

I like how, after the initial tackle to get Sinestro's attention, Booster spends the entire rest of the fight dodging Sinestro's attack and trying to reason with him, because, well, he did ask for a little chat. It's nice that that was almost literal instead of just a euphemism for a fight.

Considering that Booster's first series ended with him teaming up with the Manhunters during the Millennium event and then backstabbing them later, any reference to the Manhunters in relation to Booster is inherently hilarious to me.

I've also independently thought up the relationship between Booster's costume and the yellow weakness, so that's also inherently hilarious to me, too.

The appearance of the Doctor Thirteen crew is great. The Other Time Sphere intrigues me. There has to be some sort of reason for the shape of those windows(?). Other than making The Other Time Sphere look like it's some sort of twisted love child between Unicron and Galactus.

Am I the only one reminded of Return of the Joker by the "He loves to hear himself... talk"? And as near as I can figure, Booster and Sinestro were doing roughly equal amounts of being chatty during the fight, but at least Sinestro was fighting, too. Also, it amuses me that Sinestro has apparently not bothered to wipe that blood from his brow.

I love this scene here with Booster lying through his teeth to Sinestro to pieces. It's part of that constantly compromising thing I mentioned earlier. This glorious display of ego-stroking a bad guy (even if he isn't entirely a bad guy yet) is the sort of thing that Booster has and would do unhesitatingly, but isn't really something a lot of other folks in the DCU would. They might go in that direction a little bit if they couldn't help it, but I don't think I could see many other heroes going as far as to claim to be a member of the Sinestro Corps. And Booster doesn't just lay it on, he lays it on thick. And Sinestro eats it up like it was the most delicious cake he's ever had. And it's so very nice to see Booster put all that charisma he has to work.

Sinestro twirling his mustache would probably look ridiculous in any other book.

Yet another thing I love (in case you hadn't caught on yet, I love this book with the burning fire of a thousand suns) is that Booster isn't just like, "Oh, I've chased off Sinestro, time to go jump back into the time stream, lah de dah." He's noticed that something's up with Guy and, by gum, he's going to find out what it is, because Guy is a friend of his (despite the fact that I'm inclined to say that they've fought more often than not), and, even though everybody and their mother (including Booster himself) may think Booster is, at his core, a selfish jerk, the fact of the matter is, Booster cares very, very deeply about his friends.

Enough to accidentally hit on them. Whoopsie! (As an aside, I'd like to note that Booster looks very, very good in civvies and could we please have more of this?)

And then we actually get Booster talking about his family. Even mentioning Michelle out loud to someone, which is something I've seen him do maybe twice since his first series ended. And you'll notice that he says, "I never even told Ted this....", which should further emphasize to you how very much Booster does not talk about his family. So, yeah, this is Important-with-a-capital-I stuff here. This is also the first time I've ever seen it implied that Booster had any sort of contact with his old man after said old man walked out on his family when Booster and Michelle were 4. And it's interesting that Booster sought acceptance from him (It's called "being your own man," Booster. Have you heard of it?), considering that Booster's dad was not what anybody would call much of a great guy, cf. the earlier leaving a single mother with 4-year-old twins thing. You don't need me to tell you that the woobie's strong here, of course. I'm just ruminating on what it all means.

I can only wonder what Booster did with that ticket. Doesn't seem to have stayed and watched the game himself. And I wouldn't put scalping it past him, of course.

Supernova has given poor Rip an amazingly thorough beating here. I'm not sure I've seen that much strategic clothes ripping since the last time I watched DragonBallZ. Interesting how everything on his left arm seems to have been left intact though. I wonder if that was done on purpose.

Camouflage capabilities for the Supernova suit seems to be a new one. That's not something we've seen used in 52, and Booster didn't mention it when he listed its capabilities in the first issue.

And next we get Jonah Hex, so that's definitely pretty exciting!