Booster Gold #21

Booster Gold #21
"Invasion from Dimension X"
Cover Date: October 1987
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Ty Templeton (Inks)/Steve Haynie (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Barbara Randall (Editor)

Summary

Booster Gold finds out that Michelle is missing when the tracer that Dr. Soo put on the Goldstar costume suddenly goes dark. On the plus side, Booster’s eyesight has come back.

He finds his way to the motel she was abducted from, only to find it empty, and the desk clerk dead. He starts searching the rooms, and finds an energy portal, which he finds rather troubling. Booster then gets attacked by an alien, but Booster is able to overpower him. Booster demands answers, but the alien, after expositing that his race has been defeated by the Titans twice before, chooses suicide instead. On the alien’s body, Booster finds a ticket stub to a Twins game, and wonders what it could possibly mean. That Kent Hrbek is, and always has been, an evil alien bent on the destruction of all mankind?

Still, Booster did hear the alien talking about the Titans, so he calls Donna Troy, who he worked with in a couple of issues of New Titans a few months earlier. She tells Booster that these aliens appear to be ones from a place called ‘Dimension X’. Holy fuck…I knew the day would come when Booster would have to take on Krang and the Technodrome. Alright, TMNT crossover!

Well, no, not really. This is a different Dimension X full of generic alien invaders. That could not be more disappointing. Anyway, Donna offers the help of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Titans, but Booster declines, claiming that he’s got the Justice League backing him up…

…except he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want them stealing his glory. Man, I guess he doesn’t like his sister very much.

At Booster Gold International, Booster has finally realized that putting his publicist in charge of his multi-billionaire company isn’t the best idea, and hires Mac Garrison as the new corporate manager. And, gasp, Mac Garrison is a woman in a pantsuit! That's just nutty! A woman in the male world of corporate raiding? Madness!  Anyway, Mac has some big plans for BGI that may or may not be villainous. Because this series is ending in four issues, we'll never actually find out.

Booster and Skeets use their powers to locate a space gate right in the middle of the Metrodome, and Booster wonders what the aliens’ plan could be.

On their ship, the explain to a captive Michelle, who is currently being drained of life for the purposes of dramatic tension, that they plan to invade Earth and conquer it out of a fear that Earth might someday become advanced enough to conquer them. Well, as far as motivations go, that’s not the worst.

Booster breaks through the walls of the Metrodome and finds the portal, but the aliens control it, and strand him in a limbo dimension, where he fights some alien lizards who are immune to his powers for a little while. Eventually, he does manage to make it to the aliens’ home of Dimension X, and threatens them with a good, ol’ fashioned beating. But they’ve prepared for this, and offer Booster a choice. He can either defeat them and rescue his sister, or fight the giant “destructor agent” the aliens just teleported to the Metrodome in the middle of the Twins game. The name of this destructor agent? I'm going to guess "Mark McGwire"! To be continued!

Continuity!

-Booster made an appearance in New Titans (v2) #29-30 as part of a team of heroes backing up the Titans as they took on Brother Blood. Booster was only in about four panels in total. But apparently that's enough to allow him to ask for help here.


Review

This issue is all set-up, which is a problem as this story is only two issues long. Booster does get into a couple of fights, but they seem more like filler than anything else. Actually, this entire story feels like filler. Booster is fighting some aliens from another dimension who want to conquer the Earth for mainly evil reasons. That's not a particularly interesting story, mind you, as the aliens have no depth to them, and Booster's motivations, that is, rescuing his sister and saving the planet, are understandable, but, again aren't particularly interesting.

Hell, even if the cliffhanger at the end of the issue: "Will Booster save his sister, or save the city of Minneapolis?" seems kind of rote.

The whole Mac Garrison sub-plot probably would have led somewhere interesting had the book lasted past issue #25, but it didn't, and so she just kind of arrives to stir the pot a bit at Booster Gold International without ever really doing anything. I guess that, back in 1987, the thought of a woman being an executive was probably a bit more novel than it was today, although, again, as there's no time to really explore that, it doesn't really matter. 

Again, Jurgens is good enough as a writer and penciler to make this issue decent, but it's nothing really more than that.