Booster Gold

Cover Description: Booster Gold shields Goldstar from the explosion of Coast City. This cover is intentionally reminiscent of the cover to Superman, Volume 2, #80, also drawn by Dan Jurgens.

Brief Synopsis: Booster Gold works behind the scenes to ensure that history is not damaged by the rash actions of... Booster Gold.

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

Costume Worn: MARK I.v2 power-suit

This story has been reprinted in:
Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory (2010)

Page 12, panel 2
A PAIR OF DOCS?: Booster Gold intervenes in his own previous attack against Cyborg Superman with an eyebeam that seems to duplicate the redirectional ability of Darkseid's Omega Beam. (Booster's beam also looks suspiciously like the eye beam fired by Cyclops of Marvel Comic's X-Men.) Prior to this point, Booster had concerned himself with trying to lure Michelle Carter out of Coast City before its destruction (see the previous two issues for details). Booster's comments indicate that he believes that he knows where younger Booster is intended to be, but events have transpired to require his intervention to ensure that younger Booster is in the right place at the right time. This, of course, begs the question of whether older Booster Gold was required to redirect younger Booster Gold following some change to the timestream, or whether both Booster Golds are trapped in a causality loop, forced to re-enact these events to ensure their own existence. And that is a question the answer to which the world may never know. (For more on the theories of time travel at work in the DC Universe, visit here.)

Page 16, panel 2
POWER UP: Again Booster uses the powerful eye blast to push the younger Booster Gold into the field generated by Rip Hunter's Time Platform. This action simultaneously displaced Michelle Carter's friend Drew, leaving him behind to die in the explosion that destroys Coast City. In his role as a policeman of time, has Booster Gold committed murder by leaving Drew to die as history intended? Or in serving a higher good (the maintenance of the status quo, generally the highest ideal of heroes in the DC Universe), is Booster innocent against the accusation that his willful actions resulted in the death of another man? This is an unusually gray moral area even for a hero as ethically challenged as Booster Gold.

Page 21, panel 1
Father and son finally come face-to-face at Vanishing Point: in a nifty bit of role reversal, the elder Booster Gold enjoys a moment with his son, Rip Hunter, as the two lament the difficulties of their early relationship.

Page 21, panel 5
For the first time it is clear that Booster Gold is not just a policeman of the timeline of the 52-verse, but also of Hypertime.