Booster Gold #38

Overall: This issue begins with Booster simply stealing the Almost Book of Destiny and giving it back to the Blue Beetle of the past, thus ending a storyline that has lasted several issues in a SINGLE page... Hmmm... From there, Booster returns to Rip Hunter's headquarters and discovers that Rani(the little girl Booster took in for some reason)had stolen a Time Sphere and headed to WWII ravaged Italy. Upon hearing this, Booster follows her to 1943 and begins to track her down. While there however, he runs into General Glory, who seems to be a brain-addled version of Captain America. Booster keeps trying to ditch Glory, and eventually succeeds when Glory charges headlong into a den of Nazis. After locking onto Rani's location, Booster jumps forward 48 hours, walks over to her jail cell, goes back in time 48 hours and breaks her out. We learn that Rani had headed into the past to find Maxwell Lord's mother in order to tell her that her not-yet-born son was a bad boy... Yeah... Booster takes Rani back to Rip's lab and after some more really unfunny misadventures involving Booster, Glory, a crazy Nazi scientist and Rani's lost Time Sphere, this issue mercifully ends.

In a word, I hated this issue. The story was boring, General Glory was just insulting to read about, Rani's motivations for going into the past sucked, and the very fact that Rip was careless enough to allow a little girl to steal one of his Time Sphere's was just mind-boggling! Add to all of that the fact that in ONE page Booster was able to finish off several issues worth of storyline with the Book of Destiny and the Blue Beetle, and this was definitely an issue to forget. Even more than that though is the fact that so far the Giffen/DeMatteis run on this series has been abysmal. Maybe these guys could tell a good, funny story like 25 years ago, but whatever they might have had going for them back in the day seems to be LONG gone now. I'm going to give this series ONE more issue. If it doesn't drastically pick up, then I'll be cutting out until some new writer(s) take over.

Score: 4 out of 10.Does anybody really think General Glory is a good idea?