Booster Gold # 0

Booster Gold and the four Blue Beetles battle Parallax and Extant as they travel through time, back to ZERO HOUR.

This issue is a nice nod to the old-timers who may recall the ZERO HOUR miniseries of over a decade ago. It doesn't really change anything although it is nice to see the Blue Beetles of various eras actually working together. If anything, it is disappointing to see the rest of the Beetles largely written out of the series in the middle of this issue. It would have been a treat to see Dan Garrett strust his stuff one last time, so we wouldn't think of him as just being a throwaway character.

There is a flashback to Booster's past, to the pivotal event that resulted in his becoming a superhero. It seems a little forced, as though they were trying too hard to make the character sympathetic. Isn't Booster suppose to be less than perfect? In any case, this trip down memory lane doesn't last too long as Booster and Blue Beetle soon return to the present-- but a present now horribly altered.

The art is again very inconsistent. Some scenes are very well done. The Blue Beetles of all eras all look good throughout the story. Yet the flashback scenes featuring young Booster are scratchy and look underdone. In some panels, Booster is muscular and well-defined. But in a few, he almost looks skinny. This is rather odd since the artist of this book, Jurgens, actually created Booster Gold so if anyone should know how to draw him, it would be Jurgens.

This issue gets only three stars out of five. With just a little more effort, it could have gotten four stars.