Booster Gold #21

This is one of those Second Feature books DC is putting out over the course of the next few months. The first part of this comic will feature Booster, while the second part looks at Blue Beetle. No, not Ted Cord, the annoying Beetle, Jaime Reyes. Personally, I don't understand what DC is thinking with this whole Second Feature junk. I have to pay an extra dollar to read about a character I don't even like in the first place??? What's up with that? I'd much rather pay the regular price of $2.99 and NOT get the extra Blue Beetle story! That's more than enough complaining for now. Before we get underway, allow me to state that this comic is written by Dan Jurgens.

-This comic opens with Rip Hunter sneaking around some fancy floating building, doing whatever sneaky stuff it is Rip Hunter does. Rip is discovered by some unseen enemy who tries to fry him, but is a split second too late. After Rip's escape, the unseen enemy makes vague threats to nobody in particular. God do I love cliched super-villain dialogue!

-While Rip is doing whatever it is he's doing, Booster Gold is saving a bunch of people trapped in a high-rise fire in Coast City. Unfortunately for Booster, thanks to the thick smoke, everybody thinks it was Green Lantern who made the save. HA! Poor Booster.

-After that, Booster is summoned by Rip, and Rip tells Booster that with Batman dead, Booster is going to have to steal the pictures Batman has of him at the scene of Barbara Gordon's paralysis at the hands of the Joker.

-Booster heads to the Batcave where he runs into the new Dick Grayson Batman, who doesn't take kindly to Booster's attempted theft. The two fight, and Booster comically figures out who's under the cowl in a matter of moments. Boy, if Booster could figure out it was Dick under the cowl, what happens when Dick runs into some of the smarter Bat-villains? Eventually, Booster manages to stop the fight by showing Dick some of the pictures Batman had.

-As Booster is trying to explain why he was at the scene of Bab's shooting, the Black Beetle attacks, trying to kill Dick, explaining that he doesn't want another Batman running around with Bruce dead. Booster foils the sneak attack, and the Beetle teleports away. Soon thereafter, Dick also vanishes and Booster realizes that the Black Beetle went back in time and killed Dick off at some earlier time to prevent him from taking up Batman's cowl. This issue ends with Booster promising to fix what the Black Beetle has wrought.

-After that was the Blue Beetle feature, which detailed Jaime fighting giant robots and stuff.

At first glance, I really liked this comic. However, after giving it some thought, I realized that nothing about this issue made a lick of sense! First off, why didn't the Black Beetle wait until Booster Gold had left the Batcave before making his move on Dick? That way, there would be no witnesses to the murder. Besides that, with the way things have been going in the Bat-Universe, would Dick's death really matter in the long run anyway? If Dick was to mysteriously die in the Batcave, wouldn't Tim of even(shudder)Damian just take up the mantle of the Bat? On top of that, why didn't the Black Beetle just kill Dick off while he was a baby, or cause him to suffer a fatal accident on the trapeze as a child, instead of confronting the adult Dick Grayson? See what I mean? Way too many holes.

Besides those obvious, glaring plot holes, there was one other big problem I had with this issue. That problem was the ease in which the Black Beetle was able to go back in time to kill off Dick Grayson. If it's that easy to alter the timestream, why the hell doesn't the Black Beetle just go back in time and kill off ALL of the heroes in the DCU? If the Beetle has access to secret identities and such(and he must if he knew where the Batcave was, as well as Dick's alter-egos)why not just kill off Batman's grandmother, Hal Jordan's great-grandfather or Booster Gold while he was still in diapers? This whole plot just seems too thrown together for me to fully enjoy it. With that said though, I'm still going to give this comic a score of 7 1/2 out of 10. Before I decided to dissect everything, I have to admit to really enjoying this comic. The moral to the story? Don't look too deeply into Booster Gold comic books!