Written by: Tom King
Art by: Tony S Daniel
Published by: DC Comics
I don’t know where to begin with this one, mostly because the ending of the comic is the only good bit. You know what? Let’s start there. Consider this your SPOILER WARNING!
The end of Batman #14 is Booster Gold learning his lesson: that he’s an idiot who did something stupid with time travel and ruined the lives of people in alternate universes that maybe don’t matter. He’s sad, his robot is sad, Batman’s parents are dead, an alternate version of himself is dead, and an alternate version of Batman shot himself in the head. It’s a lot of sad. It’s also kind of amazing, in a strange, edgy sort of way. Watching Batman blow his own brains out is something else.
See though, Booster Gold learning his lesson isn’t that interesting. We knew going in that he was stupid. Hell, his robot knew he was stupid. Issue #46 was him being stupid for 20 some pages, and I feel no vindication here. I called this ending, in a roundabout, thematic sort of way.
What would be interesting is how he deals with this knowledge, because damn did what happen fuck him up. Like that’s serious, because this is a character who for three solid issues was incapable of feeling fucked up. Now he’s got PTSD from his own stupidity and has to live with the consequences of deaths that technically never happened because of time travel, yet were very real to him anyways. Batman and Catwoman also have to pass judgement.
That’s all in the last page, which ends with a “NEXT: WEDDING AND THE JOKER.” I don’t want that. I mean I do, but I want that another comic from now. We spent three issues with a character that was largely not interesting, relying on cheap jokes and failed attempts at being genre savvy, and just as something new happens to him, we cut away. Bam, that’s it. Show is over. The show shouldn’t be over, but it is, and there’s no vindication there either.
I gotta say, this one let me down. It’s better than the one before it–it has neat ideas and with the robot back to life, jokes that land–but this entire arc feels like filler. Though with a resolution that isn’t really a resolution, I guess I should change “feels” to “is.”
