Random Happenstance

I probably thought this was the last issue of the series when I grabbed it, but at least it's a good one: from 2011, Booster Gold #43, "Endgame" Written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, pencils by Chris Batista, inks by Rich Perrotta.

Suffering from "chronal leprosy" and fated to become the Time Trapper the Perforated Man in the far future, Booster is more than a little out of it, but Rip Hunter sends him to the 30th century for help. He immediately finds the Legion of Super-Heroes, in battle with Validus, as was typical for the time. Which in this case...late 70's Legion, I think? Saturn Girl had given up her swimsuit costume, but the team had Wildfire and Dawnstar, and Star Boy had his starfield costume. Despite feeling sick as a dog, Booster still leaps into action to try and save people from being crushed by Validus, and the Legion leaps into action to beat the tar out of him, thinking he was in cahoots with the big monster. This leads to a large chunk of the Legion's headquarters destroyed--well, it's not the old rocket-accident clubhouse; they did tend to wreck headquarters...

The captured Booster tells the future team he'll only talk to Brainiac 5, despite an amusing good cop/bad cop session with Chameleon Boy and Proty. Brainy wants to know where Booster got a flight ring and one of his force-field belts; Booster says it's because they're actually good friends. Brainy seems dubious, which might be because he's not especially friendly himself; he knows it. He takes Booster to the Chronal Institute for study, which looks a lot like experimenting on him; but he's eventually cured of the chronal leprosy, which might prevent the Perforated Man from ever happening. (Maybe it worked, I haven't read the issues with the Perforated Man! Although I feel like they could've just used the Time Trapper, why not?) Brainy even gives him back his stuff, since somehow, history said Booster Gold was still needed; but he also advises Booster that his aging had been slowed down as well. (Which could be either a rebuttal, or a bandaid, for stories where most of Booster's JLI teammates both recognized when they were speaking to future-Booster and claimed they could tell roughly when Booster was from in the timestream, by the size of his bald patch.)

Booster returns to the present, and Brainy then asks Rip Hunter if he had planned that whole thing for Booster. Rip doesn't say, just that Booster would be tested; but back in the past Rip plays dumb when even Booster thinks he manipulated him, saying only that he believed in Booster Gold. The issue ends with Booster grousing that the last few months of his life felt like one of those dumb licensed comics of him--hey!--and that the book had gone in the toilet since switching writers--hey! This was Giffen and DeMatteis's last issue here; as Booster's creator Dan Jurgens would return for his last four issues--getting sucked into crossover hell with Flashpoint.