1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Book, Day 4?

Hal Jordan, I am not. Unlike a true writer I sometimes fail to realize that even after work, I still have Work to do. I'm sorry. With any luck, there'll be no more hiatuses in the near future. One review a night, 5-6 nights a week.

Justice Society of America #22
Writer: Geoff Johns
"Story": Alex Ross
Artists: Dave Eaglesham and Alex Ross

Could the king of all left-field plot twists be tapped out?
Geoff Johns's promising, wholly unnecessary sequel to Alex Ross and Mark Waid's beautiful miniseries Kingdom Come finally came to a close last week after almost a year and a half of slowly building tension between the JSA's old guard and its over a dozen new recruits over the questionable righteousness of Gog, a hidden, seemingly benevolent "Old God," a predecessor of DC's trippy "New Gods" (for further information on them, read Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, in stores now, or just Google for "jack kirby" + "dc comics" + "mescaline").
Gog is... was... whatever, a thirty-foot-tall purple-and-gold vaguely-human (0ver-hyphenated) self-proclaimed god whom the Society accidentally awoke from his fifty-million-year nap. Once roused, he became determined to put an end to war, famine, disease and all the other things we humans employ to keep ourselves entertained. Some of the JSAers were all for this new proactive plan; some weren't. Those in the former category, though, were mostly in it because Gog did something for them first. Typical human nature. Gog healed Starman's schizophrenic mind and Damage's horribly scarred face. He gave Dr. Mid-Nite his sight back and brought another guy back to life (that guy didn't have a code-name, so... y'know, screw him). Hawkman just joined up because Gog was killing people who stood in his way. Hawkman is always in favor of the faction doing the most killing. I really don't know how Hawkman is a DC character and not a backup story for Spawn.

A big part of this story, though, centered around the older, jaded Superman from Kingdom Come being brought back to "our" time/dimension through some poorly-explained explosion and/or portal. So two Supermen is better than one, right? Uh, sure. Except that Superman-22 (he's from Earth-22... just... just don't ask) mostly stands around, fearing that whatever he does is going to be what turns this timeline into a replica of his, which, if you've read Kingdom Come, you know means a nuclear bomb wiping out the world's superhumans and making life a lot less colorful and interesting (and deadly, but whatevs)."I'm gonna touch yer privates!"

So you've got a Superman from another time who may or may not know this world's fate, an insanely unwieldy (25 members) superteam that's one poorly-timed "yo' mama" joke away from an internal fight the likes of which Guns 'n' Roses has never seen, and an alien god who wants to fix everything that's wrong with you or else he'll kill you. What the hell's the payoff for all that?

Oh, they fight each other, and then Gog, and they win and Superman goes back to his Earth.
Yeah. That's it.
No last minute saves. Maybe two or three hints at character development, which is usually one of Geoff Johns's strong suits, the others being wacky plot twists and third-string characters no one under 40 who's not a virgin has ever heard of (at least in a meaningful context). Nor were there any surprise guest appearances, except by Alex Ross, who decides to paint an expanded/re-edited epilogue to Superman's experiences at the end of Kingdom Come. Thanks, I always wanted to see Superman picking genetically-enhanced redwood corn and living to be an old and decrepit Kryptonian. Mr. Ross, you and I have our differences, but I'm begging you: don't continue this trend. Do not be the George Lucas of comics. In that context I am now racking my brain wondering who would be the Jon Waters of comics. I myself aspire to be the Aaron Sorkin of comics (minus the freebasing crack part).
I've gotten way off-topic here, but as there wasn't that much left to talk about concerning the actual comic book issue itself, I don't mind so much. Those three plot threads have been going on for so long I've forgotten what the hell else this comic could do. Hopefully we'll find out next month-- shit. I forgot. Johns is off the book after next month. Who's going to fill his shoes? Winston Churchill? Seriously, I don't always like what Johns does, but at least (present issue being the only exception I can think of) he has neat ideas. I will slit my own throat if it's Dwayne McDuffie. He's the guy writing Justice League right now. He's the guy who wrote up an alternate universe character who was a fat white guy who became a muscular black Captain Marvel by yelling "Black Power!" I'M NOT KIDDING. THIS GUY IS WRITING A FLAGSHIP TITLE. What are the editors at DC smoking? Because I don't want any. In fact, I want to salt the earth where that plant grows.
Rating: The overarching story gets Three Tom Collins, because it had its good moments. The single issue gets Two White Russians, because I could have written it while staying up all night in my old dorm and doing my laundry and drinking shitty warm sangria with my roommate. In fact, I think it would've turned out better if I'd been writing it that way.
Album: Iggy Pop- Lust for Life

Breaking News on CNN: Bendis to be nominated Secretary of WTF

DC.
MARVEL.
WHO SUCKS MORE?

Now that the election's over and America has decided to go for four years of surrender, baby-killing, Islamofascist appeasement, gay marriage, socialism and atheism, we can all relax. But during the election, did you ever feel like, if you just focused on McCain, or Obama, or even Hillary or Ron Paul or Bob Barr or Ralph Nader... if you focused on one of them, and read about them and all the things they want to do for the country, you'd get a good feeling about them. But when you looked at every side of each issue and try to weigh the pros and cons and you started really comparing the candidates and putting them under the microscope, you started to think something like "all of these people are assholes! If I were stuck on a bombed-out Pacific atoll with one of them, a canteen of water and a gun with two bullets, I'd shoot them in the head, shoot a hole in the canteen, lay down and die laughing."
Maybe that's just me.
The point I'm trying to make is, DC and Marvel have always been flawed, are horribly flawed now, and will always be some degree of flawed, even if my Satanic ritual works and I unify both publishers under my throne made from the flayed bones of Chris Claremont and Dan DiDio.
As it stands, Secret Invasion and Final Crisis have both been horribly mismanaged. What to do about it? Act like some asshole who thinks he could've done better, of course.

SECRET INVASION: An Eighteen-Month Prologue to Dark Reign or an Eighteen-Month Epilogue to Civil War?
So apparently since Norman Osborne scored the headshot on the Skrulls' Queen, he gets to be protector of the free world now and everyone else gets jack, or jacked. Or brought back to life. Whatever. Typical Bush-era cronyism. Tony Stark's a fugitive (guh?), there are now three groups of Avengers not including the Young Avengers, one of whom may or may not be just plain villains... Hawkeye and Mockingbird are both alive... okay, wait a second.
Bendis brought back Mockingbird because apparently the rationale was the Skrulls needed their hosts alive to take genetic material from them. WHY THE FUCK WAS THERE A PHOENIX SKRULL? OR A GALACTUS SKRULL, OR A CAPTAIN AMERICA SKRULL?
Who's dumber-- Bendis, Leinil Yu, or their editor? Does Bendis even have an editor? I'D HAVE NEVER FUCKING GUESSED, FROM READING HIS SHITTY, LACKLUSTER DIALOGUE!

Seriously. When Nick Fury and the Secret Warriors show up at the end of issue 2 or 3 to save the day, he says something to the effect of "Okay, Commandos! Time to turn this thing around!" Cool, right? Wrong. In any self-respecting action-oriented comic book, that dialogue would be a) IN ALL CAPS, because that indicates yelling instead of speaking softly, without exclamation points, b) red, to further emphasize that he's a war hero and he's shouting an order very loudly to his troops, and

c) TAKING UP HALF THE PAGE. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU SHOW THAT PEOPLE IN COMICS ARE YELLING.


So. Anyway. In addition to this. So now after the final fight, everybody's just back to normal except that Osborne, Doom, Namor and Emma Frost run the world? How do we know there aren't more Skrulls lurking somewhere? Did Reed Richards use his Skrull-identifying gun on everyone on the planet just to make sure? It seems convenient that every Skrull on Earth showed up at the final, fateful battle in NYC. Then again, convenience is the name of the game when it comes to plot threads in comics. We're lucky the Scarlet Witch didn't just show up and say "No More Skrulls" at the end. That may sound like a joke. It's not. We as comics fans should really and truly give thanks to whichever gods each of us worship that Bendis did not resort to that.
So now there's "Dark Reign." Osborne's dark version of the Marvel Illuminati (Osborne, Namor, Dr. Doom, the Hood, Emma Frost and Loki) are going to run things now. I'm a mean, cynical bastard, but it's just really hard to see the last pages of Secret Invasion #8 and think that Bendis saw this same work and thought, "there it is. Here's what I've worked towards for so long, finally realized. Yessir... after three long years, finally, superheroes are fighting supervillains again. Truly I have done something new and different in the medium of sequential art."
Great. To quote Wayne's World, thanks a lot there, Chet. I'm not even going to get into all the Secret Invasion miniseries and tie-ins we all had to decide to buy or not buy in the last eight months, because by now it's pretty much S.O.P. for "events" like this. I'm just hoping that after Dark Reign is over, maybe these people with the superpowers could maybe try to work on fighting actual crime maybe a little bit maybe.

FINAL CRISIS? Or Final Proof That All Reality is Subjective?
Poor Grant Morrison. Every time he has a good idea for an in-continuity story, someone makes him change it because it might actually change the status quo in some way, and everyone else at DC knows you can't do that unless you're Geoff Johns (excuse me, Geoff Fucking Johns, Sir, is how you actually pronounce it) and you're only changing things by creating more characters that Warner Bros. can eventually option for terrible movies.
In Final Crisis, it's yet another ultimate battle between superheroes and Evil Gods from another dimension, only this time their very existence is tearing the fabric of time and space to shreds. Pretty trippy, by which I mean, pretty standard for Grant Morrison. If all you've ever read from DC is stuff Morrison's written, you're fine. Otherwise you may be in trouble. Because except for the Final Crisis miniseries like Submit/Resist, Rogues' Revenge, Legion of 3 Worlds and Revelations, fuckin' nothin' is going on in the DCU that acknowledges what's going on at all. It's as if what Morrison writes is in its own little...
...oh my God.*
Marvel. They knew. They know!
WATSON, COME HERE, I NEED YOU!

*Hermes, Athena, Apollo or the Muses...whoever's listening out of those, really

G-L-C Ain’t Nothin’ ta F*** With!

"What do you mean, 'everyone'?"
"EVERYONE!"

from issue 1, volume 2

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War, Parts 1-13

Written by Geoff Johns & Dave Gibbons
Drawn by Ethan Van Sciver, Patrick Gleason & Ivan Reis

Hal Jordan is interesting. Guy Gardner is cool. John Stewart is useful. Sinestro is scary and Dave Gibbons can write worth a shit? Who has created this topsy-turvy Bizarro universe?
Oh, it’s just Geoff Johns. Right.

His first run on the old JSA drove me absolutely crazy with his ability to find long-buried, worthless Silver Age characters and make them cool. His work with the Flash and his whole “poof! No one knows your secret identity anymore!” scam, which has now been ripped off by JMS for the end of Spider-Man’s “One More Endless and Agonizing Day of Aunt May’s Life,” was bothersome. Infinite Crisis had holes in it that DC’s editorial staff could and did drive a truck through. But with the Sinestro Corps War, Geoff Johns claws his way to the bottom of my favorite comics writers list.

This is not Geoff Johns’ victory alone. Artist Ethan Van Sciver once again proves himself as one of the most amazing human artists in the world—this is an important distinction, as Frank Quitely is half-Scotsman and half-demon, Sam Keith is an urban legend and George Perez is an asshole. Joe Madureira… well… I’ll get to him later. Ivan Reis once again proves himself an impressive and dependable penciller—not quite on par with Van Sciver, but the trade-off is he knows how to meet a fucking deadline. Patrick Gleason, the artist on Green Lantern Corps, also does good work in a more angular, “animated series” style than Van Sciver, which at the very least helps you realize that the crossover is, in fact, spread out across two series. To wit, Dave Gibbons writes GLC. Yes, the Dave Gibbons. The man enshrined in golden beautiful infallibility because he was lucky enough to be selected for an intimate little project by the name of Watchmen. Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen: I’m a writer. I threw away any chance I’ll ever have in my life at getting a good job by majoring in Creative Writing because I love the English language and the myriad of horrible, wonderful things you can do with it, such as the lovingly crafted ‘zine you hold in your hands. Conversely, I DRAW WORSE THAN A SPASTIC TEN-YEAR-OLD WITH ONLY THREE FINGERS. My point? Many artists should not—nay, should never—be allowed to write. And Dave Gibbons proved my point with the disastrous Rann-Thanagar War miniseries that served as one of the four major lead-ins to the Infinite Crisis event. It’s some of the most lame, corny, hackneyed prose I’ve ever read that didn’t come from the first wave of Image Comics or any non-Luke Cage work of the 1970s. Fortunately, he half- redeems himself in GLC by stringing some words together that could easily be confused with any other serviceable second-string writer like Sean McKeever or whoever the hell they got to write Blue Beetle after Keith Giffen left. Obviously his story was very carefully nudged into line with Johns’s story by DC’s editorial mission control, but to give him credit, it could have been a lot worse.

But anyway! To the story. Everyone knows the basic idea behind the Green Lanterns: interstellar police force who keep the galaxy in line with their ultimate weapon: a ring that can turn willpower into anything made out of solid green energy. Used to be the ring’s only weakness was the color yellow, which was absolutely retarded and obviously an idea they came up with in the Sixties when no one over the age of twelve read comics and you could get away with any dumb idea you wanted. But now they make movies out of anything successful, or at least sell the movie rights, so Johns had to update it. Green is now the color of willpower. Green Lanterns are supposed to be fearless, able to retain their willpower under any and every possible stressful situation. Naturally, the color of fear is yellow, which is also the color of the ring that Sinestro, Hal Jordan’s old arch-enemy who bears a keen resemblance to a pink hydrocephalic Gary Oldman, has always worn. Sinestro started forcing the Weaponers of Qward, who made his yellow ring, to make a whole ton more, and now he has a Yellow Corps to rival the Greens.
Enter, a bunch of huge battles.

No problem, because for once in a comic the fights aren’t the most interesting thing (until the end). Here’s what is: Kyle’s struggle with the yellow living embodiment of Fear, Parallax. Hal’s struggle with the idea that his father, a test pilot like him, may have lived his last moments in fear. The passing of the Ion identity from Kyle Rayner to Sodam Yat—a Daxamite (Daxamites are like an entire planet of Supermen, only instead of Kryptonite or red sunlight, they can be poisoned by the mere presence of lead. Thanks again, 1960’s pseudoscience!). The final test of Natu, Sinestro’s replacement. Watching the smile evaporate from Amon Sur’s face as he discovers that the Guardians of Oa have approved lethal force. A GL by the name of Vath doing a shot for each of the four-hundred-odd Lanterns who died fighting the Sinestro Corps. The list of great moments just goes on and on.

But even Dave Gibbons’ spontaneous generation of writing talent is not as astonishing as the finale in Green Lantern #25. The much-hyped battles in New York and on Planet Mogo were mere foreplay to the showdown in Coast City (which burns and galls me to admit, because I hate all the stupid made-up cities that DC has their characters settle in. It’s California. Why not just say Hal is from San Diego or LA? It can’t be that terrible of a legal situation or New York would have sued Marvel generations ago! What gives?). Picture it: Superboy Prime, the Cyborg Superman and his Manhunter Robots, the entire Sinestro Corps, and oh yeah, THE FUCKING ANTI-MONITOR, versus the GL Corps and all the superheroes of Earth who Ivan Reis remembered to draw (the others off-panel are assumed to be asleep or at work and unable to answer their phones). And that’s certainly a beautiful window-dressing. But in the end it really comes down to one fight: Hal and Kyle versus Sinestro. Without rings. Just a big ol’ brawl. Nice. Oh yeah, and John Stewart, Guy, Kilowog and Salaak (the two leading non-human GLs that anyone gives a damn about) throw Mongul’s Warworld (think of it as kind of a Death Star Lite that the Sinestros were using as a portable yellow power battery… Lord knows how they took it from Mongul, but they did) into the Anti-Monitor. And it works. The big anti-matter fucktard gets blown up and then Superboy Prime throws his corpse into deep space (more on that a little later). Superboy Prime then gets his own just desserts—if you’re not familiar with SP’s history from Infinite Crisis, imagine a 14-year-old C student with a bad attitude and Superman’s powers and you’ve almost got it. Perfect… for the Guardians to disintegrate! Ha. Take that, you damn teenagers.

So, obviously, Sinestro and his Corps loses. Well, the Corps does, at least. So why is Sinestro smiling inside his jail cell on Oa? Throughout this whole storyline, no matter how much misfortune befalls the group of ultimate uber-bad-guys he puts together, Sinestro gets this same knowing look that Caesar gets on every episode of Rome (rent the HBO/BBC series sometime, Ciaran Hinds is an amazing Julius); that look that no one really knows what’s going on except him. See, Sinestro used to be the greatest Green Lantern. And what did he desire above all else? Order. An entire galaxy, an entire Universe, kept in line by the GL’s. So what does it matter to him if the yellow-ringed order is defeated and disbanded? Thanks to their threat to the galaxy and the Guardians’ dominion, the Lanterns have been granted the use of lethal force with their power rings, which they lacked before now. And who will stand in the way of Sinestro’s beloved Green Lantern Corps, now that they have power over all who fear death?
Damn. That is some cold-ass alien logic. Well done, alien Gary Oldman.
But Hal and Kyle still kick his ass and put him in alien jail. So whatever.

The other awesome thing about the finale is the revelation of the meaning behind the Guardians’ prophecy of “The Blackest Night,” which has nothing to do with any metal bands. So there’s the Green Lanterns. They’re fueled by willpower, not an emotion as much as a state of mind. Meanwhile, the Sinestro Corps use yellow energy, fueled by the ability to instill fear. And the Star Sapphires, an old Silver Age group of villainesses (I can’t believe that’s a word but Sinestro isn’t according to MS Word), use love to power their violet-energy powers. So—green, yellow, violet. Will, fear, love. Ganthet the Guardian predicts that in time there will be seven Corps—each responding to a specific emotion and using a different color. The prediction that these seven Corps will wage a seven-way free-for-all war against each other results in two of the busiest, most detailed, awesome comics pages ever not drawn by George Perez. The Indigo Lanterns try to inspire compassion in others. The Blue Lanterns use hope to try and stem the violence. The Red Lanterns are fucking horrifying, not only because they’re evil beings who are fueled by rage, but also because their energy-weapons seem to come out of their mouths instead of their rings. Ugh. But the ones that totally win forever are the Orange Lanterns. What emotional concept do they embody? Happiness? Guilt? Sadness? Lust? No. The Orange Lanterns use the power of avarice—that’s greed, for you unwashed and unlettered masses. That’s right; we already used up the color green on willpower, so greed and envy, traditionally associated with the color green, have been attached to orange. I can just imagine that meeting:

“Shit! The only major bad emotion left to put between rage and fear is envy! But envy is green!”

“Screw it. Kids don’t know that we’ve always associated greed with the color green. They’ll call it orange if we say it’s orange.”

“But…”

“But nothing. Print it!”

As awkward as it is to try and encapsulate the emotions of sentient beings within seven distinct colors, it’s still more thought-out than anyone has ever, and I do mean ever, put into why Green Lanterns aren’t the only guys out there using their brainpower to make weapons out of solid stage lights. And for completely overthinking and simplifying and rationalizing a poorly-imagined original premise, I give Geoff Johns props, as one member of the Irredeemable Total Fucking Dork Club to another.

And here’s something I may not have made clear before, which I’ll say in a very roundabout way: As horrifying a concept as this may be to some of you, I actually have read the Bible. And my favorite verse, out of the entire thing, is the last verse in the Gospel of John—John 21:25. “Now, there are many other things that Jesus did. If they were all written down one by one, I suppose that the whole world could not hold the books that would be written.” Basically, what I mean is the best way to end any story is with the promise of more stories. And once again, The Sinestro Corps War delivers with a 3-page spread that’s a lot like a movie trailer, right down to the “widescreen” panels— “ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, THE DEAD SHALL RISE! GREEN LANTERN: THE BLACKEST NIGHT— SUMMER 2009.” Wonderful. A promise worth keeping. Better than any actual movie trailer I’ve seen this year. Once the dust settles after this Final Crisis fiasco, we’ve got the Black Lantern saga to look forward to. I, for one, am excited. The X-Men were my first love in comics, and how did the writers of X-Men top a final confrontation with Magneto and the Brotherhood? Have the two opposing sides team up to beat back the threat of total annihilation posed by Apocalypse. Same concept here. The Green and Yellow Corps will have to work together, presumably after avoiding/defeating the five other, dumber color-corps, to protect the whole Universe from an early demise. By then, I might actually have the money to subscribe to Green Lantern myself. I’m excited.

Rating: Four Whiskey Sours.

What We Need More Of: Drunk Superheroes.

Booster Gold #1-4
Written by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz
Drawn by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund

This should be a buddy comedy starring Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell, and I mean that as a compliment. Billy West would still be the voice of Skeets the robot, because that was too good of a choice not to duplicate (see the Justice League Unlimited episode “The Greatest Story Never Told” to hear Billy West, a.k.a. Fry from Futurama and Stimpy from Ren and Stimpy [why do I keep almost writing “Stimply?”] as Skeets).
I never knew Geoff Johns could be so funny—not just a couple instances of clever word-play during a fight scene, but actually laugh-out-loud funny. Maybe it’s this Jeff Katz guy, whom I’ve never heard of before, punching up the script, but still… bravo, Mr. Johns.
Here’s the premise: back in the pages of 52, Booster Gold, an egotistical, glory-seeking hero from the 25th century who’s been a B-List superguy in our era since the ‘80s, tried to make a comeback while Superman was absent from Metropolis for a year. Through a series of boneheaded moves, he failed to take Big Blue’s place in the pantheon and appeared to die while saving the city from a nuclear accident. In truth, he was taken out of “our” timeline by a guy called Rip Hunter, the Time Master. It’s Rip’s job to keep the timeline from being messed with, and when the Universe split into 52 alternate timelines after Infinite Crisis, his job got a lot harder. There’s a lot more to the story than that, but a drunk guy is not the best candidate to explain fifty-two issues of plot concerning extensive time travel. Here’s what you need to know for this series: There’s someone out there trying to wipe out the greatest heroes of the DC Universe: Superman, Flash, Green Lantern and Batgirl are at the top of the hit list, and things are only going to get worse from there. Rip Hunter, a guy with a time-traveling giant goldfish bowl called the Time Sphere and a lot of fancy four-dimensional equipment, has tapped Booster Gold and his 25th century robot buddy (and portable external source of common sense) Skeets to help him keep the world’s heroes from getting bumped off before their time.
Why Booster? Well… because he’s kind of a jackass. In the 1980s League, he and his best friend Blue Beetle (imagine Hank Pym without the benefits of size-changing powers or the detriments of being a pill-head wifebeater; or better yet! Picture Nite Owl from Watchmen, seeing as how he was based on Blue Beetle) pulled a lot of stupid stunts trying to get rich quick and build names as big as Batman or Superman. Since that League split up, Booster’s been the kind of loser who only shows up during major battles because the artist was instructed to draw in everyone he could think of, and after Ted Kord, the old Blue Beetle, was killed, Booster didn’t have a friend in the world, or at least, in this century. After Superman got his powers back, Booster certainly didn’t have a chance at getting the spotlight back in Metropolis.
At the outset of the new series, Booster is attempting to join the new Justice League. Just as they decide to award him probationary status, Booster is convinced by Rip Hunter to turn down the League’s offer, thus once again making him look like a jerk in front of the first string heroes. That’s perfect, though—exactly what Rip has in mind. Booster can pass unmolested through the halls of history specifically because of his reputation as a total jerkoff loser, which makes him the best possible guy to bounce around the timestream fixing things without anyone taking notice.
Unfortunately, someone takes notice (duh). A moron called Rex Hunter (neither Rex nor Rip can let anyone know their real names or they can be tracked to the time when they were born or they could be killed by other time-travelers, so they use horrible fake names like Rex and Rip Hunter) thinks he’s going to become the world’s greatest hero by wiping every other hero from the timeline and saving everyone himself. To aid him, he’s got someone using the Supernova costume that Booster and Rip used during 52 to protect the Multiverse from (this is going to sound so dumb) the giant time-eating worm that evolved from the crappy old Captain Marvel villain Mister Mind.
First, they try to keep Hal Jordan from ever becoming Green Lantern, thus making Guy Gardner the greatest GL ever—which would be a terrible enough fate, except that without Hal Jordan as ring insurance, Guy would die young, leaving Earth vulnerable to an invasion from Sinestro. Booster and Skeets realize early on that they can’t fight the formidable Sinestro, who’s come to Earth to meet Guy Gardner in the past—instead of fighting him, Booster appeals to Sinestro’s horribly inflated ego. “I’ve been sent from the future,” he says, “to remind you that no one can replace the mighty Sinestro.” “A yellow ring? What Corps do you belong to in the future?” Sinestro asks. “Uh… the Sinestro Corps,” says Booster.
Oops. Looks like he maybe gave Sinestro the idea.
Oh well.
Next, Booster has to go back to the Wild West to save the doctor destined to save Jonathan Kent’s (Superman’s adopted father) great-grandfather from dying at birth. Doing that somehow has to involve Booster getting drunk with the famous disfigured gunslinger Jonah Hex. I don’t really care how, because it means the latter half of issue 3 consists of Booster telling Skeets “I’m not drunk!” and fighting Supernova off long enough to convince Doctor Westfield to move back to Smallville. Then, in an attempt to track Supernova to his next target, Booster takes control of the Time Sphere. Yes, that’s right—a superhero driving drunk. Through time! I love it. “C’mon!” says Booster. “What’re we going to hit out here?”
Crash! Oops again. Looks like they hit the Silver Age Flash. (Though I love the Flash, it would’ve been hilarious if he’d crippled the Flash in a drunk driving accident.)
In issue 4, Rip Hunter fights Rex Hunter, Booster fights Supernova, and Skeets fights Supernova’s own robot buddy, Maximillion, who’s basically the Xbox 360 to Skeets’s Pong(Not even the full Atari. Just Pong), all while the existence of the Flash hangs in the balance.
Rip beats the crap out of Rex, and Booster finds out who Supernova is, only to see his super-suit fritz out thanks to the same lightning storm that made Barry Allen the Flash. Supernova and Maximillion vanish as their time-circuitry picks a poor time to reboot. Rip brings up the good point that someone must have been pulling Rex’s strings, since no one with a haircut as bad as Rex’s could come up with such an ingenious plan by themselves. And so, our three tepid heroes move on to their next assignment—save Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl, from being crippled by the Joker.
Really?
I doubt they’ll succeed. Alan “better than Grant Morrison” Moore wrote The Killing Joke, where Babs Gordon is shot in the spine. Are they really going to rewrite twenty-odd years of history? I highly doubt that even Johns could do that.
What he does is write a really compelling story. Will Booster ever get the recognition he deserves? Is he going to cause the Final Crisis, or save us from it? Will we find out when Rip is really from? Who’s pulling Rex Hunter’s strings? For a comic that most people probably write off as a joke, there’s a lot at stake for any DC fan here. Whatever the outcome of Booster’s quest to save the timeline, and to maybe even bring Blue Beetle back to life, not to mention the upcoming Crisis, this comic will be remembered as more entertaining than a lot of the stuff the headliners were doing at the—well, actually, Johns is writing Action Comics, too—and Gail Simone just took over Wonder Woman—and Johns is also writing Green Lantern—and Grant is on Batman—okay. So, Booster Gold will be remembered five years from now as better than the Flash, Aquaman, Green Arrow and Black Canary.
Good enough, right?

Rating: Three Vodka Collins.