Booster Gold #17

Booster Gold #17
"Dream of Terror"
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Arne Starr (Inks)/Bob Lappan (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Barbara Randall (Editor)

Summary

At US Biotech, Cheshire goes looking for the secret formula, only to find that it and its creator, a Dr. Babich, have disappeared. Still, she’s able to find a lead by…tracing the imprint of notepad the man wrote on, and then fights her way past the guards to escape.

The next day, Booster gets involved, as he’s just bought out US Biotech, and isn’t happy that his new acquisition is getting looted. Cheshire, playing down to the level of competition, has had her image captured by the security cams, and Skeets uses his database to identify her. They figure out that she was after Babich’s project, and leaves Soo to handle the investigation there as Booster flies off to take a more direct role.

Booster goes to meet with Babich’s wife, who reveals that the good Dr. Babich has been acting oddly lately, and recently teamed up with Hawk to go down to Mexico for some unknown reason likely not related to spring break. Booster decides to follow.

In Mexico City, Babich is showing Hank the slums, and explaining how the Earth has become overpopulated and, even worse, inferior because nature’s ability to weed out the weak has been diminished thanks to man’s technological advances in medicine and the like. He plans to release a bacteria that will dramatically lower the birth rate, ensuring that only the strongest are born.  Hawk is totally willing to sign on to that plan because he is all about Social Darwinism and eugenics!

Babich then thinks to himself about how he’s lied to Hawk, in that his bacteria will solve overpopulation, but will do so by killing millions around the world instantly.

Booster and Skeets arrive to Mexico City and think about how different it will be in their home era of 2462. Really? Because everything else in that time seemed almost exactly the same. He then meets with the local chief of police, who is wearing a white sports coat and a Hawaiian shirt because…uh…Mexico? The chief explains that he has no idea where Babich is because “Mexico City is like a very large and dangerous beast…where the head sometimes has trouble finding its tail.”

Back at Biotech, Soo finds a floppy disk taped to the bottom of Babich’s desk, and finds out the specifics of Babich’s plan, which he then relays to Booster. It turns out that Babich has arranged it so that by the time the wind patterns brought the bacteria to America, they would all be inert.

Oh, and the Dirk/Trixie romance subplot advances one step as they decide to go out on a quasi-date situation.

At a remote location in the desert called “Devil’s Eye”, Hawk is strapped to a hang-glider, ready to release the bacteria that will kill billions. You know, a hang glider really undercuts the drama inherent in attempted genocide. Hawk thinks about how the other bleeding-heart super-heroes would have never had the balls to do something like this. Before he can release the bacteria, though, he gets ambushed by Cheshire, who drops down from a helicopter, and scratches him with her nails, which are covered in a lethal poison. She then escapes back to the chopper, which is piloted by her Soviet contact.

Booster arrives on the scene just in time to shoot down Cheshire’s helicopter, which has the side-effect of releasing the bacteria, which starts to spread, killing Babich.  Hawk laments that Cheshire’s poison is going to kill him, and also, upon learning from Booster about Babich’s true plan, that he’s killed billions. Booster is able to contain the bacteria cloud, which is glowing yellow for some reason, and threatens to throw Cheshire into it unless she gives Hawk the anti-dote to her poison. She agrees on the condition that she get to walk away from this mess without getting arrested. Booster agrees and Hawk is cured, though he’s not happy about it. The Soviet agent offers to pay Booster a fortune if he hands over the bacteria, but Booster is all about capitalism, and so destroys the bacteria and punches out the commie instead. And then, because he hates all of these guys, he flies off, leaving Hawk, Cheshire and the Soviet agent stuck in the middle of the desert. The end!

 


Continuity!

-House Ads for an Infinity Inc./Outsiders crossover event that took place when both books were on their legs, and the J.M. DeMatteis Dr. Fate which I'll probably get to reviewing one of these days. 

Review

I just realized that Booster never actually fights Cheshire this issue. He just shows up at the end and effortlessly defeats her by threatening to expose her to the bacteria, and she backs down almost instantly. Hell, Booster barely interacts with the guest stars in the title, and seems to only demand that Cheshire heal Hawk out of some perfunctory need to tie up loose plots than anything else.

Even the villain's scheme is kind of rote. You've got a mad scientist who intends to unleash some catastrophe on mankind to cure what he perceives to be one of society's ills. Granted, it's a bit unusual to see a scientist dedicated to Malthusian principles in the 1980s, but it does feel a bit like a stock plot.

Also, I have the feeling that US Biotech isn't exactly running a tight ship seeing as one of their scientists apparently created some sort of super-death bacteria without anybody knowing about it, although as that sort of corporate negligence is a staple of super-hero comics, I guess I can't really get too angry about it.

Like most issues of Booster Gold, this isn't bad, just underwhelming. I mean, with Booster buying US Biotech at the beginning of the issue, it seems like the comic is going to take advantage of Booster's unique characteristics, but that's about the only plot point that requires the main character to be Booster Gold, and that's disappointing.