Random Happenstance

I wonder if I would've been more or less pissed off reading this month-to-month: as it stands, it feels like I've been in this storyline for fifteen years now, but that probably isn't the case. Maybe. Also, all space cops may be bastards. From 2010, Booster Gold #36, "This Man...This Chipmunk!" Written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, art by Pat Olliffe, cover by Kevin Maguire.

The Maguire cover makes this one look like it's going to be deadly serious, as Booster was still trying to put together the pieces of Maxwell Lord's plan, which no one else believed was a thing. He had made multiple trips back to his Justice League-heyday, and this month while Blue Beetle gets some with an alien queen; Booster, Mr. Miracle, and Big Barda are getting the hassle from a pair of Darkstars, who don't believe they were trying to disarm a planet-destroying weapon. The Darkstars had previously impounded said weapon and put a failsafe in it, then are about to get violent after they get the records on their "perps" from Apokolips. Mr. Miracle boom tubes them back to earth, then realizes they forgot Beetle, but Barda has had enough of "future boy's" nonsense. (A running gag: past characters claim they recognize future-Booster by the thinning hair, which he vehemently denies.) Barda says they had agreed to help Booster get the Book of Destiny, and unless there was something he wasn't telling them--like Beetle's future death--he didn't need their help. Booster tries to play on Barda's heartstrings, which not only gets him no help, it also gets past-Booster punched through a wall.

Booster has to return to the present to check in with the rest of his anti-Max team, in Justice League: Generation Lost, a 24-issue series with 49 covers that I have managed to not read a single one of. That goes poorly, so it's back to the past to save Beetle...who has been turned into a chipmunk by the spurned queen! I don't know if the planet is named this issue, but Queen Artemis has magic powers and the eye-antenna things the Legion's White Witch had. She claims the transformation is permanent, worse, before Booster can talk her out of the Book of Destiny, the Darkstars show up again and zap him! Beetle, Booster, and the Book are taken into custody, classified as "illegal combatants" and shipped off to Starlag. That name should ring a bell...

Booster and Beetle are in "another fine mess" verbal sparring, when they meet Vril Dox, who is not super-impressed with them. Booster realizes it's from Invasion! and that he really shouldn't discuss it with Beetle since it hadn't happened for him yet. Still, Booster knows Skeets will come for them, and the brave little 'bot is--but the gold-skinned Estrogina is making her break first!

This issue was cover-dated November 2010, and Generation Lost ran until June 2011? Giffen and DeMatteis may have stayed on until around then with BG #43, but I don't think it stayed 'bwah-ha-ha' the whole time...but Booster might not have made a lotta progress against Max Lord, either. There is an issue in there where Booster finally has to accept Beetle's death; I still haven't.