• Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:

    1. The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
    2. Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration

    Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.

HEAVEN OR HELL! DC Comics win/loss tracker.

Adrenaline sees Jeff Goldblum at a Starbucks, makes the “I’m watching you” gesture at him.

Jeff understands immediately.
 
Didn’t DC do a 1000th issue anthology book for Detective Comics last year? Not that I’m complaining they’re doing another one since I liked the previous one. And yes, I’m aware this one is celebrating 1000 issues since Batman’s first appearance.
 
[SCENE: WAYNE MANOR INT.]

BRUCE: Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot. I must find a way to strike fear into their hearts.

[A TYRANNOSAUR CRASHES THROUGH THE WINDOW]

BRUCE: That's it!
 
44.
Booster Gold
images

43 Points, 2 Lists, #6 Johnny Unusual ​
Source: DC Comics
Traveler-Type: Opportunist
Method of Transport: Time Sphere

OK, now we got someone with superhero-ing experience on the team. Michael Jon Carter was once a football star in the 24th century until he was disgraced in a gambling scandal. Soon he takes a job as a security guard for a museum when he is struck by an idea; stealing some of the old superhero artefacts (a Legion Flight Ring, Brainiac 5’s force field generator, Rip Hunter’s Time Sphere), travel back to the age of superheroes and reinvent himself as a hero. Taking with him security bot Skeets, Carter introduces himself as Booster Gold, looking to acquire the fame, respect and money that he feels a hero deserves. Soon, his self-serving nature irritates the other heroes but despite this over time he proves himself a hero, even earning a place on the Justice League where he becomes close friends with the Blue Beetle, both of whom often get into wacky schemes together. After the Blue Beetle’s death on the precipice of the Infinite Crisis, Booster falls back into a self-promotion mindset but eventually saves the universe from Mr. Mind and proves he doesn’t need publicity to be a hero. Soon he is recruited by Rip Hunter who asks him to maintain his smug, self-serving persona in public with a secret second life of protector of the timestream.

b442f858-a28a-4733-bd70-aa1ae825ab47.jpg


Booster might have been from the future but in many ways, he was very much the hero of the era he was created, the 1980s. The “greed is good” era spawned a lot of characters like this in superhero fiction; parodies of the era where the “heroes” were more self-serving. But Booster as a character was a big hit from the start and remains a fan favourite for a lot of reasons. Mostly, because he gets to change over time. Sure, he is still working some angles but his journey is interesting, learning what real heroism is rather than simply finding it in material wealth and adulation from the masses. In fact, as time goes on, his greatest acts of heroism are often unnoticed and that push and pull between the character’s weaknesses and his growing moral compass have given the character such popularity that there’s even a Booster Gold TV series in the works.

It also helps that he also gets some great comedy beats. His relationship with Ted Kord as a buddy duo on the Justice League paid off well, comedically with them getting into hi-jinks one minute and facing off harrowing threats the next (Keith Giffen’s run on the book was great at mixing the comedic and the dramatic and even horrific). I also think his story arc on the 52 mini-series (a really cool experiment in weekly storytelling from top industry talent) was probably the strongest, taking the character to some dark places while still providing a fun story. I also think Skeets is a completely loveable sidekick that works to humanize Booster, even when he’s at his worst.


Man, Octo like things being unrestrained by the finite.
 
Last edited:
I've been reading old Golden Age comics with Captain Marvel (AKA Shazam), and while I was certainly aware that they'd contain a whole lot of WWII propaganda and racist stereotypes, I was still shocked by the ending one one particular comic, in which Captain Marvel defeats his Japanese nemesis "Nippo".
ShazamInternment.png

Yep, that's Captain Marvel and Billy Batson cheerfully sending their enemies to the "concentration camps", and hoping that soon all Japanese people will be there. I can see why DC might be reluctant to republish some of these comics.
 
Last edited:
I guess that while I was aware of the internment of Japanese Americans, I wasn't aware of how it was apparently celebrated as a good thing at the time.
 
I mean, I'd love to read The Monster Society of Evil some day but apparently there's just some shit that's too racist and if that's the case I don't blame them for leaving that one on the shelf.

On the other hand, I am bummed that they cancelled Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol run reprints. That was a series written by what I assume must have been DC's first trans author to work on a relatively mainstream book (I mean, its a big two superhero book, even if it was a Vertigo book) and for that reason alone I'm very interested in reading it.
 
Fredde said:
I guess that while I was aware of the internment of Japanese Americans, I wasn't aware of how it was apparently celebrated as a good thing at the time.
Click to expand...
Oh buddy, there's just so much more to all of it. We were demonized so much, this kind of thing became common place and acceptable:

140922-japense-skull-1944.jpg


This is a page of TIME magazine, btw
 
Yeah, I did see the skull picture recently, so I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised.

Johnny Unusual said:
I mean, I'd love to read The Monster Society of Evil some day but apparently there's just some shit that's too racist and if that's the case I don't blame them for leaving that one on the shelf.
Click to expand...

If you want to read it, you might be interested in the fact that all of the Shazam comics prior to DC buying Fawcet are apparently considered public domain, so they can be downloaded legally for free from various places on the internet. I managed to find a complete digital collection of the Monster Society of Evil storyline somewhere, though I unfortunately don't remember exactly where. And yeah, there's plenty of racism in it (including that odd kind where Japanese people are portrayed as bucktoothed monsters, but Chinese look like regular people), but it also has a whole lot of well drawn, genuinely entertaining and funny superhero adventuring. Which makes it really frustrating, since I'd like to be able to recommend it without the huge disclaimer.

bf784c6e6002adfae0d5c8fa76a9084f.jpg
 
Last edited:
Goodness, the Batman: Three Jokers finale is such an asspull. There's no real spoilers ahead.

For those who don't know, years ago and about three DC editorial changes ago, Batman got to sit in the Mobius Chair, the repository of all knowledge in the DCU. First he asked it a question he already knew the answer to, who killed his parents, to test it because Batman is paranoid and doesn't trust anything. Then he asked it the Big Question. What is the Joker's real name? The Chair then tells him there's three Jokers. This shocks Batman because he didn't know there was three.

Now TJ reveals at the end that he's always known the Joker's real name. So why did he ask the chair? He already knew the answer, he already validated the accuracy of the chair.

So why?!
 
Why, though? Not why this exists - $$$ and Geoff Johns hasn't met a piece of DC continuity he wouldn't like to unravel and mess up to leave his permanent mark on it - but why are there 3 jokers? Is there a in-universe explanation?
 
I guess it’s damning praise that I’m still more interested in reading Three Jokers in the future over City of Bane, Joker War, or Death Metal because it sounds like a self contained, smaller scale story from what I’ve heard. I’m not sure why we need a big mega epic Batman arc every six months...
 
Wikipedia sez that the 2005+ editions of the V for Vendetta trade have "improved printing and coloring."

Does anyone know if this is really just a benign improvement to the process or an outright recolor of the old edition?

While I think DC is much better than Marvel in this particular regard, I'm not usually a fan of most modern computer re/coloring (they recolored Swamp Thing! Can you even believe it?!). I even shelled out for the Eclipse Miracleman trades over the ugly Marvel recolors...
 
I'm sure my printing was made after that and it has the watercolor-style coloring that I assume matches the original. It's not a modern flashy recoloring.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top