Superman

Cover Description: Superman and Booster Gold stand against the Dark Legion of Super-Heroes.

Brief Synopsis: Superman, Superboy-Prime, and the Dark Legion of Super-Heroes fight over Booster Gold.

Issue Summary: Following a brief flashback to Saturn Girl Omega's origin story, Superboy-Prime fights Superman at the behest of the Dark Legion of Super-Heroes. Superboy-Prime wins. Following a brief interlude in the life of Lex Luthor, who is now a martial arts master, the Dark Legion of Super-Heroes decides that Booster Gold has outlived his usefulness as a conduit for time travel and must be killed to summon "the final god." Superboy-Prime betrays the Legion, throws Booster Gold through a time portal, punches Superman through reality, and stands with the remnants of the Legion of Super-Heroes from across the Multiverse against the Dark Legion. Reveal Potential Spoilers

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

Costume Worn: MARK I.v2 power-suit

Issue Notes: Although Booster has only one panel with dialogue, he is prominent in the story as the McGuffin that motivates the fight between Superman, Superboy-Prime and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Page 4, panel 1
Picking up immediately where the previous issue left off, Booster Gold is powerless as Superboy-Prime joins the Dark Legion of Super-Heroes in attacking Superman.

Page 6, panel 2
Superboy-Prime threatens to rip off the arm of Lightning Lad Omega. This is a double comics fanboy reference: The original Lighting Lad lost his right arm to a giant space whale in Adventure Comics #332 (May 1965) before regaining it with the help of super science in Adventure Comics #368 (December 1966). And Superboy-Prime has indeed ripped arms off the Teen Titan Risk, the left arm in Infinite Crisis #4 (March 2006) and the right arm in Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superboy-Prime #1 (December 2007). And before you ask yourself why Superman would have ever agreed to team up with this villain, I remind you that it's because another villain (the Time Trapper) told him to in Superman #29.

Page 7, panel 1
FASHION ALERT: Colossal Boy Omega is clearly wearing a Dark Legion Flight Ring that looks like the ring Booster Gold was holding at the conclusion of DC All In Special. It remains unclear why Booster Gold ever had one, as 1) Dark Legion rings come from the Absolute Universe, 2) Booster Gold has never been there, and 3) the familiar Legion Flight Ring still exists in the current timeline (as evidenced by the fact that later in this issue Superman still has his original Superboy Flight Ring, first seen in Adventure Comics #333).

Page 7, panel 5
POWER UP: According to Saturn Girl Omega, "Booster Gold has absorbed chronal energy" which allowed the Legion to travel through time. Well, sure. Booster is literally riddled with chronal energy, as he learned in Booster Gold Volume 2 #42. But as Booster revealed in the aforementioned previous issue, DC All In Special sent him to a future in his own universe where the multiverse-traversing Dark Legion was already at war with other time-traveling Legions, who famously use a Time Bubble for time travel (as Booster Gold fans learned in Booster Gold Volume 1 #8). If the Dark Legion already had such easy access to Multiversal travel, why did they ever need Booster Gold? Obviously, that's not he kind of question that this story, where everything important happens off panel, is interested in answering.

Page 7, panel 6
POWER DOWN: And now we learn that Booster Gold is also full of Omega Energy, "the very essence of entropy," so he must be killed for Darkseid to "be whole." Since they are clearly ready to kill Booster, that can only mean that the Dark Legion is done traveling through time now. (Otherwise, this could only be a convenient plot device to hand wave why Booster Gold wasn't already killed off panel like the Legion of Super-Heroes.)

Page 12, panel 3
Ok, so now Saturn Girl says they need Booster Gold's blood to power Darkseid's Miracle Machine that can create a path "between time and space" for the Final God to "return." (For what it's worth, when Darkseid used his son Kalibak's blood— to power the machine in DC All In Special "Omega", he wished to bond with The Spectre. This Miracle Machine itself made its first appearance in yet another Legion of Super-Heroes story in Adventure Comics #357. ) Saturn Girls' comment is especially cryptic, since the machine is bound exclusively to Darkseid's will while her vision on page 2 panel 1 implies that the "final god" is the Superman of the Absolute Universe, who has never before been to Earth-0.

Page 13, panel 5
ALTERNATE REALITY: While preparing to kill Booster Gold (on Saturn Girl's order), Superboy-Prime jokes that "Dan Jurgens is going to be so pissed." Does Superboy-Prime think that all the other characters in this story are fictional? Or is he just admitting that the Dan Jurgens of his native Earth-Prime will be disappointed in his behavior? In any event, if Booster is paying any attention at all (and it's not clear that he is), he now knows the name of his own creator.

Page 15, panel 6
This panel contains Booster Gold's only dialogue in an entire issue about saving/killing Booster Gold. Booster hasn't had any agency in his own story for months; why should that change now?

Page 16, panel 2
SPOILER WARNING!: Superboy-Prime throws Booster Gold through the portal that Element Lad opened before Booster could be bled to create the Omega Energy signal for the "final god." So where in the Multiverse will this portal take him? (Superboy-Prime says the portal goes "back to Superman's home timeline," but aren't they in Superman's home timeline? And why would they have opened a portal back to the 21st century if the goal was to summon either Darkseid or Absolute Universe Superman?) Reveal

Page 18, panel 2
SPOILER WARNING!: Look, nothing in this issue makes any sense, so I probably shouldn't be surprised that two pages after admitting that he needed the Dark Legion to open a portal home, Superboy-Prime instead somehow punches Superman through reality. It goes without saying that this is not how Superboy-Prime has used his reality-destroying punch previously, and whatever is happening on this page doesn't begin to explain how Booster Gold and Superman will reunite in Smallville at the end of this issue. Whatever. Reveal

Page 22, panel 1
This full-page panel is duplicated on the final page of Justice League Unlimited #11 with the same setting, characters, and dialogue.