Letters to Justice League #54

I love a good time travel story. Normally, I veer toward the dystopian future, one where the characters existing within it have to travel back and solve whatever crisis caused it to occur in the first place. In fact, during my Wonder Woman run, I wrote a special issue set entirely in a horrific future, then later on, DC2 Nemesis was the event that would have caused that future to come about, if not for something the characters helped do in that latter story. And man, I forgot that my final WW arc was actually titled "Dystopia", because nothing beats bashing your readers around the head with your themes!

So anyway, I love a good time travel story. The one that unfolds in Justice League #54 ties into two events in recent history on the title. Firstly, #50, where Blue Beetle found Booster Gold's skeletal remains in a graveyard containing the bodies of great time travelling heroes, and then an even earlier issue, #44, ten months ago, where Booster said he wasn't interested in being part of the team. But what if? What if he had agreed to stay on, and what if he was part of all the adventures since? What would the world look like? What does a competent, trusted-- albeit with a side-eye-- Booster Gold look like? This is an issue where Michael Jon Carter gets everything he wanted. Adventures with Rip. Adventures with his best friend. Adventures with the Justice League. But when he "gets the brand out there", and a time-travelling villain realises that he's the one sabotaging his machinations through time, how long before it all falls down?

This was Booster Gold's last shining moment in the spotlight before he has to make a sacrifice... and with it, the loop closes. This was fun for me, because there was no bending over backwards to make the narrative work, just a sad ending for a guy who does so much and doesn't get recognised for it. Sure, he gets a friend back, but there's also something sinister under the surface... Blue Beetle doesn't remember Booster Gold travels through time, but across their adventures on the DC2, they've travelled the multiverse together! They've gone up and down the time stream as the ol' Blue & Gold. Rip reveals why... Michael did something bad. They wiped his memories (a favour owed by a Blue Martian, of all people) and now Beetle is none the wiser.

Surely this can't bite anybody in the arse, can it?