Justice League Quarterly

ARTISTS

Writer: Mark Waid
Penciller: Rod Whigham
Inker: Jose Marzan, Jr.
Colorist: Gene D'Angelo
Letterer: Bob Pinaha
Editor: Brian Augustyn
Cover Artists: D. Rodriguez, Mike Sellers

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CHARACTERS & SETTINGS

heroes: Blue Beetle II, Booster Gold, Fire, Guy Gardner, Ice
villaines: Berganza, Rubenico
supporting: Miss Rubenico

Setting: 20th-century New York, NY, USA

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ISSUE SUMMARY

Cover Description: Booster Gold poses with energy crackling around his fists. Repeated endlessly in the background is the word "execute."

Brief Synopsis: A run-in with a high-tech gambling operation causes Booster Gold to question his moral choices in life.

Costume Worn: MARK I power-suit

Story Notes: The events of this issue must take place prior to Justice League America #69.

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ISSUE ANNOTATIONS

Page 9, panel 2
Booster Gold, accompanied by Blue Beetle II, Fire, Guy Gardner, and Ice, confront the young man who has just broken into the JLA Headquarters. The intruder, Toby Kwimper, calls himself "Doctor Demosthenes." Demosthenes was an ancient Grecian orator and statesman born in 384 B.C. He is renowned for warning the Athenians against the Macedonians and Alexander the Great.

Page 11, panel 1
The Justice League is shown in a meeting with Doctor Demosthenes' friend, expert computer hacker Jack Marshall. Fire is shown wearing the costume that she donned briefly in Justice League America #63 through #66.

Page 12, panel 5
After hearing that a man named "Rubenico" is in charge of the syndicate stealing banking information from consumers using the B.O.O.K.I.E. automated gambling terminals in New York City, Booster Gold takes a new interest in the situation.

Page 13, panel 4
HIS STORY: Booster retells his origin. His flashback shows him wearing the number 10 on his jersey. Previous and future origin stories consistently show that Booster wore the number 13, making this retelling likely an erroneous aberration.

Page 14, panel 2
HIS STORY: Booster reveals that the Rubenico syndicate owned the gambling operation that he participated in during his college football days. His contact with the syndicate was a man known as Snake Eyes. "Snake Eyes" is a gambling term for rolling the number one on each of two dice.

Page 15, panel 4
In a fit of anger, Booster destroys the Justice League trophy case. Rather unexpectedly, this case contains actual metal trophies, not the souvenirs of past cases as often seen in the Batcave.

Page 16, panel 3
Booster flies out of the JLA Headquarters, headed to Rubenico's penthouse suit in Triumph Tower (based loosely, perhaps, on New York's Trump Tower) intending to attack Rubenico...

Page 19, panel 4
FIRST APPEARANCE: ...only to find himself confronting Rubenico's young daughter. She holds the book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, one of the best selling children's books in history.

Page 21, panel 3
Blue Beetle's attempt to explain Booster's state of mind to Fire includes the phrase "put right what once went wrong." This is an allusion to the opening narration for the television show Quantum Leap, which aired on NBC from 1989 to 1993. The show is based on the premise of a time-traveler who attempts to correct erroneous events in history.

Page 21, panel 4
Fire and Ice very briefly touch on the possibility that if Booster were to succeed in deterring Rubenico from establishing the gambling syndicate that ruined his life in the 25th century, then Booster would have never returned to the past to prevent the Rubenico Syndicate from forming. Its paradoxes like this that make sorting out time-travel stories so confusing.

Page 26, panel 1
FIRST APPEARANCE: Booster is attacked by Mr. Berganza, hired muscle for the Rubenico Syndicate. Berganza and his two associates wear very bulky high-tech suits of armor that inexplicably appear to be more than a match for Booster Gold's future technology.

Page 31, panel 1
Shortly before Booster bursts into young Miss Rubenico's bedroom, Mr. Rubenico is reading fairytales to his daughter. The dialogue in this panel is a veiled reference to future events, when the fallow Rubenico Syndicate will rise up to destroy the life of Michael Jon Carter, alluded to here as the "handsome, noble prince."

Page 34, panel 5
HIS STORY: By threatening and humiliating Rubenico, Booster has made an enemy of Rubenico's daughter. If this panel is any indication, in the future, the reason that the Rubenico Syndicate will target young Michael Jon Carter may be because Booster attacked the family in the past. Is Booster Gold responsible his own downfall?

For more annotations from this story which occur at different points in Booster Gold's chronology, click here or click here

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ISSUE REVIEW

Boosterrific Review: For the second consecutive issue in this series, Booster Gold appears in half of the stories in this anthology issue. Of the stories without Booster, Flash is featured in the exceptional "Half an Inch," and Fire and Ice team-up in the goofy and poorly paced "Contested Friendship." Booster is the motivator in "Time and Chance," the issue's lead story. While Mark Waid's story is primarily concerned with building on the gambling angle of Booster's back-story, it is clumsy in execution with particularly weak characterization and art. If "Time and Chance" is an ungainly disappointment, "When Titans Date" is a sublime character piece played for humor. Booster and friends spy on the love life of teammate Blue Beetle, and knee-slapping hilarity ensues. This issue may be a mixed bag, but of quality, but odds are that there is something for everyone to like in this comic.

Boosterrific Rating:

• Currently 2.0/5 Stars.

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