Generations Forged

Cover Description: This book has two covers with equal distribution (one by Liam Sharp; another by Rafael Albuquerque and Brad Anderson). Both feature Booster Gold.

Brief Synopsis: A team of heroes scattered across the multiverse come together to confront Dominus.

Booster Gold's role in this story:
Featured (Booster Gold plays a prominent role)

Page 1, panel 1
ALTERNATE REALITY: In his "Extracted Time" pocket universe, Dominus spies on the heroes he displaced to "remnants of old time." Dominus is capable of manipulating time to create his own reality, but he has so far proven unable to defeat Booster Gold!

Page 6, panel 5
Doctor Light, Kamandi, and Starfire are confronted by Superman's foe General Zod. This is Zod as he looked in his first Silver Age appearance, Adventure Comics #283 (1961). In that issue his uniform was green but was changed to gray within two years. (Side note: pairing Starfire and Doctor Light is a nod to the couple's first meeting in Doctor Light's debut, Crisis on Infinite-Earths #4 in 1985, which, ironically, is in this Doctor Light's past and Starfire's future. Time travel is complicated.)

Page 11, panel 1
Superboy shouldn't be powerless under Thanagar's red sun because Thanagar doesn't have a red sun, at least not in Superboy's pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity. As can be seen in DC Comics Presents #74 (1984), Thanagar's star is the yellow giant Polaris. Yellow stars can become red stars but not vice versa, so it's unlikely that this planet is "prehistoric Thanagar" (or at least it's Thanagar in an alternate reality).

Page 24, panel 1
In "the future," Green Lantern Sinestro disables a yellow flying car. The famous yellow impurity has since been removed from the ring, but during the period when Sinestro was a member of the Green Lantern Corps (in both the Silver and Modern Ages), the Oan power ring was unable to affect anything colored yellow. It seems unlikely that the issue writers would specify the car be yellow, so this is most like an oversight by the artist/colorist of these pages.

Page 26, panel 1
Hanging upside down (like a bat?), Booster Gold listens to an Electric City newscast. This future is the present for OMAC, as seen in the 1974 OMAC series by Jack Kirby. The stories in OMAC are set two generations before Kamandi's time, which means this future is the past for Booster Gold.

Page 26, panel 2
FASHION ALERT: Booster's costume has a solid star on the chest. As seen in the lead-in story in Generations Shattered (and in early issues of Booster Gold Volume 1), Booster's costume should feature a hollow star.

Page 27, panel 2
POWER UP: Booster Gold is sucker-punched by Dominus's agent, Major Force. Force is a product of the same U.S. government tests that produced Captain Atom and is strong enough to go toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe. It's a good thing Booster's force field is powerful enough to withstand even Superman's might.

Page 28, panel 1
Major Force knows who Booster Gold is, which is appropriate as Major Force debuted in Captain Atom #12 (1987), released two years after the era this Booster Gold is native to. It's less clear why Booster knows who Major Force is unless Booster had studied Force before traveling from the 25th century to the 20th. Time travel is complicated.

Page 30, panel 3
After looking through his telescope, Doctor Light uses her powers of light manipulation to illustrate recent events for Jor-El. Booster Gold is among those pictured. (In Superman #146 (1961), Jor-El intentionally sent his son to Earth which he had "discovered" with his telescope. According to this issue, Doctor Light was the one who gave him that idea.)

Page 34, panel 4
"I left enough of a trail...." Starfire has some of the most incredible powers of all the heroes in the DC Universe. A solar battery like Superman, she is incredibly strong and durable. She can generate bolts of stored energy, is telepathic, and can fly. And yes, she can manipulate the length of her "flaming hair." (It is not clear that conscious hair manipulation was among her original power set when she debuted in New Teen Titans #1 in 1983, but it's not clear that it wasn't, either. Her co-creator, George Perez, always drew her a "contrail" when flying, but whether that was a "power" or artistic license is debatable. In any case, it's definitely one of her powers now.)

Page 48, panel 1
Booster Gold arrives in time to save Batman from a damsel in distress that he recognizes to really be an android. This is reminiscent of the role Booster played (will play?) in saving Superman from an android in Booster Gold Volume 1, #23.

Page 49, panel 1
Booster Gold and Batman join Major Force, Sinestro, and Ultra-Humanite. Force is angry that he has been "conned" by Dominus, but as seen in the previous story, Dominus altered his perception of reality. So it was really more of a forced coercion than a confidence fraud. More on this later.

Page 49, panel 5
The Brother Eye satellite, like Electic City, first appeared in OMAC #1 (1974) and was responsible for the creation of the One Man Army Corps in pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity. The Brother Eye satellite created by Batman in Countdown to Infinite Earths #1 (2005) existed in post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, so the Brother Eye that Booster thinks he remembers is not this one. (Unless somehow it is. This entire story is about Dominus mucking with reality, so it *could* be, but then how would Booster know that? This isn't wise old man Booster, it't young rookie Booster who still has a hard time with 20th century slang.)

Page 50, panel 1
The identity of Kamandi's grandfather was established in Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #50 (1977), written by Denny O'Neil.

Page 50, panel 2
The Ultra-Humanite was a foe of the Golden Age Superman long before joining the Black Beetle's time-traveling Time Stealers in Booster Gold Volume 2. It's not entirely clear from which era Dominus recruited this Ultra-Humanite.

Page 51, panel 3
The phrase "artificial intelligence" was coined in a scientific paper in 1955.

Page 52, panel 3
Major Force provides power to the Brother Eye satellite, demonstrating that he must be more experienced than the young Booster Gold he assaulted earlier. When he first emerged from the Quantum Field with his new government-granted powers (in Captain Atom Annual #1 (1987), Major Force was only capable of generating matter. It would be several years into his career before he was capable of manipulating energy.

Page 54, panel 1
Booster Gold returns to Vanishing Point where he meets Steel, Superboy, Doctor Light, Knockout, Artemis, Starfire, O.M.A.C., and Kamandi. Once again, Kamandi is wearing Skeets as a gauntlet. (Kamandi had removed Skeets before Dominus sent him to Krypton, so he presumably put Skeets back on off-panel following his return to Vanishing Point.)

Page 54, panel 5
If O.M.A.C. knows that Booster Gold traveled from the future to the past, it's because O.M.A.C. knows who Booster Gold will become, not because Booster has told him at any point during this story, which is the first meeting between the two. Time travel is complicated.

Page 60, panel 1
Booster joins the other heroes in assaulting Dominus in his artificial realm of "extracted time" stolen from other timelines.

Page 63, panel 2
Future Skeets reactivates. It is not clear why he deactivated in Generations Shattered nor why he reactivated abruptly in the middle of battle here. Should we assume that the disruption was manufactured by Dominus, who is no longer able to maintain his concentration in the middle of the fight? This would imply that time is restoring itself off panel.

Page 63, panel 4
As Booster Gold explained earlier, O.M.A.C. is destined to become Kamandi's grandfather, so his death here, before Kamandi's birth, should be impossible. (Have I mentioned that time travel is complicated?)

Page 69, panel 6
In addition to inspiring Jor-El to send his son to Earth, Doctor Light gives Sinestro the idea of a "yellow lantern beam." (This is presumably the Sinestro of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Earth-One. Booster Gold and Sinestro will meet again in the post-52 New Earth as seen in Booster Gold Volume 2, #2, at which time Booster will introduce that era's Sinestro to the idea of a "Sinestro Corps.")

Page 71, panel 3
POWER UP: Booster Gold uses his force field and Legion Flight Ring to pull Batman, Steel, and Kamandi through the air in a similar way as Green Lantern earlier created a flying force bubble to carry the team into orbit to reach Brother Eye. Booster was first seen using his force field this way in Justice League International #19 (1988), though at that time he only hovered in the air.

Page 71, panel 6
Batman of 1939 kicks in a door revealing the soles of his boots are made of direct molded rubber. This technology was brand new in the 1930s and wouldn't be adopted for military use for several decades, proving that even from the beginning of his career, Batman's equipment was cutting edge.

Page 72, panel 1
The "painting" Booster points at shows Dominus and the cosmic entity Kismet. As revealed in Dominus's origin story (Action Comics #754, 1999), the pair were once Lords of Order and lovers before the woman who would become Kismet ascended to become the "illuminator of reality's pathways." Dominus was jealous of her power and has spent centuries trying to claim Kismet's power for himself. This portrait would indicated that Dominus still carries a torch for his old lover.

Page 74, panel 3
Though the art does not show this, Booster's brag implies that his force field was useful in surviving the reality-warping chronal energy released by the destruction of Dominus's engine.

Page 75, panel 2
A PAIR OF DOCS?: Booster and his fellow heroes reassemble with an older Booster Gold, Waverider, and the Linear Men at Vanishing Point where "time is once again whole." O.M.A.C., who was wounded by Dominus, has been restored to life. Ultra-Humanite had suffered a similar fate but is not seen.

Page 76, panel 3
Waverider explains that each hero has come from a unique universe where "time passes a bit differently"...

Page 76, panel 5
...yet Kamandi is from the same continuity as Superboy (and both Boosters are the same person). Waverider will call this universe the "Linearverse" and imply that the continuities of all eras are linked. If that's true, does this mean this entire story takes place in an alternate reality?

Page 78, panel 2
Booster Gold returns to 1985 where he reunites with Skeets and immediately hints to Superman that he knows his secret identity.