Booster Gold #26

Writer: Dan Jurgens. Art: Dan Jurgens and Mike Norton.

What Happened: This issue opens with a quick refresher of who Ted "Blue Beetle" Kord was before he was murdered by Maxwell Lord. After the refresher, Ted rises from his grave as a Black Lantern... Now THAT'S how you begin a comic! In Rip Hunter's lab, Rip and Skeets can't seem to find Booster Gold, and with all this Blackest Night craziness going on, they were hoping Booster would be able to lend a hand. So where is Booster you ask? Booster has transported himself to his past and is forcing himself to live through the funeral of his best friend, Ted Kord. While Booster is reliving his one of his darkest moments, Skeets goes to see if Jamie "Blue Beetle" Reyes has any idea as to Booster's whereabouts. Jamie doesn't know where Booster is, but offers to help Skeets find Booster. Skeets and Jamie head to the home of Daniel Carter, Booster's ancestor, to see if he knows where Booster may have gotten off to, but Daniel doesn't know anything. While the three are talking, BL Ted crashes his airplane into Daniel's house and tries to tear out Daniel's heart. Jamie makes the save, and ends up brawling with BL Ted on Daniel's front lawn. BL Ted tosses Jamie away and Daniel dons his Supernova costume and tries to attack BL Ted, only to get shot by BL Ted. By this point Booster has returned from his trip to the past and notices the smoke coming from the battle at Daniel's house. Booster flies over and is absolutely stunned to find BL Ted holding a bloodied Daniel against a wall. This issue ends with Booster standing slack-jawed at the sight of his best friend, apparently returned from the grave.

What I Thought: First things first, the fact that DC is STILL selling this book for $3.99 is completely and totally unacceptable! There wasn't even a second feature here! What a load of crap. OK, with that off my chest, on with the review. This was a really good comic! To be honest though, it would have been extremely difficult to mess this story up... I mean come on, it's the(sort of)return of Ted Kord, and in Booster Gold's comic to boot! This issue gave me pretty much everything I would have hoped to see, BL Ted tossing Jamie the pretender around like the trash he is, BL Ted busting out the awesome "Bwa-hahah" laugh, and BL Ted and Booster coming face to face. I definitely can't wait to get my hands on the next issue.

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.Even in death Ted Kord is 500% better then Jamie the pretender!