Saturday, January 17, 2009

Booster Gold #15

I'm a little late getting to Dan Jurgens' first solo issue (with Norm Rapmund on inks) of Booster Gold, but I finally got to it today. And man, I'm glad Dan's on now. This book has been floundering since Johns left months ago, and now for the first time, it feels like we have some kind of direction for the book. Booster and Goldstar have some nice banter in Renaissance Italy, then they jump back to a messed up present. An "altered future" rather than an "alternate future" which is an amusing distinction made by Skeets. The team determines that an ancient dagger was misplaced during Chuck Dixon's fill-in a few months ago and the group heads back to fix it. The problem is Elongated Man is waiting to stop any further robberies. So Booster ends up revealing some future happenings to EM, leaving out the upsetting stuff. I like how casual Booster is acting again, wondering about making action figures, not sweating the details but generally trying to do good. Jurgens has a better handle on the character than either of the two fill-in teams did, and it shows. This book reads like the fun, stand-alone comic I want it to be, instead of fill-ins.

Jurgens art is nothing if not consistent. He remains a great storyteller and you can tell Booster is his creation, he looks great. I wouldn't mind seeing the collar back though!

Good

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