Despite being published in the late 1980s, the two-issue story of Booster Gold versus the Rainbow Raider in Booster Gold #19 and #20 has the feel of a Bronze Age Superman comic where "realism" and "fantasy" share the same panels.

Superhero comics are inherently absurd, so sometimes it's best to lean in on the silliness. Take, for example, page 8, my favorite of Booster Gold #20:

Rainbows, beefcake, and a Don Herbert Mister Wizard reference. I love it!

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I very much enjoy Booster Gold #19 for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because the Rainbow Raider is such a delightfully silly concept for a comic book super villain that Booster Gold seems completely reasonable by comparison.

Which is no small part of why I choose page 6 as my favorite in this issue.

Notice that all the panels feature diagonal layouts (mostly Dutch angles), emphasizing the uneasiness our hero feels. When the floor isn't tilting, the people on it are! His world is literally spinning out from underneath him as his self-confidence deserts him in a very public moment.

But if I'm being completely honest, the biggest reason it's my favorite page in this issue is because of that bisecting panel with the wide-eyed, costumed Rainbow Raider yelling his own name to a crowd full of witnesses — in the middle of his theft!

You're certainly one of a kind, Roy G. Bivolo.

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As I said two weeks ago, the first volume of Booster Gold was in many ways a re-investigation of the heroic ideal of the DC Universe. But Dan Jurgens didn't draw the line at exploring what made a hero. He also took a hard look at what made a villain.

Jurgens tended to humanize Booster's villains, giving them reasonable backstories that were filled with the same short of hardships that Booster Gold was struggling to overcome. Sometimes that resulted in characters like Broderick or Dirk Davis, but it didn't always work. No matter how much you pathos you give to a color-blind man who dresses like a prism, he's still going to look like a clown.

Of course I asked Jurgens what his motive was for bringing the Rainbow Raider, one of the least successful of Flash's foes, to Metropolis. Why choose him, a villain with a lackluster Silver Age-style gimmick, to feature in a two-part story against a modern anti-hero like Booster Gold?

I though it'd be fun to play off the color angle. Plus, I liked the visual of him riding his rainbow.

Not my best day.

So not everything can be Shakespeare. It's important to remember that sometimes a funny-book is just a funny book.

Despite that Rainbow Raider story, we still thank you, Mr. Jurgens.

(Reminder: no post on Monday because of the Labor Day holiday. Blogging is hard work!)

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In 1962, the Chairman of the Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade was inspired to dye the Chicago River green after watching plumbers who used color-changing dye to detect leaks flowing into the river. At least, that's the official story.

Who's to say that the real story doesn't have anything to do with a time-displaced super villain obsessed with color? Certainly not the Greatest Hero You've Never Heard Of.

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Fanzing.com was an online fan site devoted to DC Comics between 1997 and 2003. Though Fanzing may not be publishing new content any longer, their archive is still online, and it includes a rare interview with Roy G. Bivolo, better known as the super villain Rainbow Raider. In this excerpt from the interview, Bivolo discusses his encounter with Booster Gold (as seen in Booster Gold, Volume 1, #19-20).

David R. Black: So the bitterness over Morris stealing your work also contributed to the genesis of your criminal career.

Roy G. Bivolo: Yeah. I finally tracked Morris down a few years later at his art gallery's opening in Metropolis. I busted up the place, ruined the opening, and took my artwork back. Booster Gold was there, and I beat the snot out of him and his robotic pal.

DB: Booster eventually helped you once he realized the truth.

RB: Yeah. He hooked me up with a good lawyer. We had the pigments in my work and Morris' work tested for age, and surprise, surprise, mine were older. The courts ordered Morris to pay me full restitution.

Not too many guys would've helped out an ex-con, but Booster did. He's a class act.

You can find the original interview, in which Bivolo discusses working with Geoff Johns to fake his own death in Flash, volume 2, #183 at the Fanzing archives.

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