Justice League: Generation Lost
“Old Friends”
Volume 1, Issue 18, Late March 2011
Released January 26, 2011
Cover Price: $2.99
Estimated Issue Sales: 30,457
Writer: Judd Winick
Penciller: Aaron Lopresti
Inker: Matt Ryan
Colorist: Hi-Fi Designs
Letterer: John J. Hill
Editors: Brian Cunningham, Rex Ogle
Heroes: Booster Gold, Captain Atom, Fire, Ice, Power Girl, Rocket Red 07
Supporting: Skeets II
Setting: Tokyo, Japan, 21st-century
Cover Description: There are two covers to this issue, neither of which features Booster Gold. (Standard edition: Captain Atom poses before his logo. Variant 1:10 edition: Rocket Red looks at a butterfly.)
Brief Synopsis: The Justice League International battles Power Girl.
Booster Gold's role in this story:
Featured (Booster Gold plays a prominent role)
Costume Worn: MARK I.v2 power-suit
Issue Notes: Tie-in to Brightest Day. The cover of this issue is part of a company-wide theme for January 2011, featuring characters and their logos in place of standard cover art and mastheads.
This story has been reprinted in:
Justice League: Generation Lost Volume 2 (2011)
Page 4, panel 1
Power Girl, possessed by the power of Max Lord, calls Captain Atom "Clark," and Atom realizes that she mistakenly believes him to be Superman. Prior to this, Captain Atom has never expressed any awareness of Superman's secret identity as Clark Kent. Superman has revealed his secret identity to the Justice League, but not to Captain Atom explicitly.
Page 5, panel 2
Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Rocket Red, and Skeets notice Captain Atom's signal from somewhere in Tokyo. Having shredded her costume in Justice League: Generation Lost #13, Ice is wearing a new costume. (Ice's costume was visible from only the neck up in the Justice League: Generation Lost #17.) This new costume is heavily influenced by the costume worn by Ice in the Justice League Unlimited cartoons.
Page 8, panel 3
Arriving to aid Captain Atom, Booster Gold is mistaken by Power Girl for Batman. Since Fire is unlikely mistaken for Supergirl and Rocket Red for Green Lantern, this appears to be a simple substitution based on gender with very little regard for any actual comparison between Booster Gold and Batman.
Page 10, panel 5
Over the course of two panels, Maxwell Lord explains the ability and scope of his mind control powers in the context of this series. Given that the description comes from Lord himself, this power description may be another intentionally misleading revelation.
Page 14, panel 1
POWER UP: On consecutive pages, Booster's force field is able to protect him from both Power Girl's heat vision and her punch. In the case of the strike from heat vision, Power Girl believes that she has missed. It is unclear what Power Girl thought she was punching. If she was swinging her fist at Batman, Booster's reaction indicates that she was punching hard enough to kill Batman. Power Girl is equal in strength to her relative, Superman.
Page 16, panel 3
Booster explains that Captain Atom cannot fight Power Girl for fear of irradiating Tokyo. If what Booster says is true, this is a new development in Captain Atom's powers. Captain Atom is essentially a being of sentient quantum energy contained inside a near-indestructible alien metal called Dilustel. Atom is capable of transmuting energy between states, and according to Booster, a by-product of this ability is a radiation leakage in proportion to the amount of energy used. This change in Captain Atom's powers can be traced back to issues of Formerly Known as the Justice League. If radiation leakage is truly a side-effect of Atom's powers, he should never have come anywhere near Japan, the only country to experience firsthand the devastation of the detonation of nuclear devices on its population with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II in 1945.
Boosterrific Review: This issue is a perfect representation of the series as a whole: I found the art and heart of this issue very satisfying. There were several small things that, like sand in a swimsuit, were just aggravating enough to be distracting.
Boosterrific Rating: Worth Its Weight In Gold.
Average Fan Rating: (2 votes)
Rockem' sockem' superhero-on-hero violence plus Booster using his smarts to win the day.... what's not to love!
More tweaking with Captain Atoms' powers and humanity. While I didn't really mind this I do have to wonder how safe his teammates are with him around. The sudden shift to Power Girl knowing she's going to fight the JLI in her own series to her thinking she's acting Superman/the JLA is a little odd. It makes sense that she wouldn't hold back but the trasition isn't a perfect fit. Otherwise a great fight with the team giving it everything they got. Great character moments for nearly everyone.
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