Broken Frontier

Skeets joins forces with Booster Gold’s ancestor to once more investigate Rip Hunter’s lab. But all is not as it seems…

Daniel Carter once knew glory. As a high school football star, he broke records…as well as his leg. When injury sidelined him, Daniel’s life spiraled into mediocrity. That is, until a bizarre little robot from the future arrives claiming he is the ancestor of the heroic Booster Gold. With Daniel’s help, Skeets seeks to investigate the lab of time traveler Rip Hunter and find out what the late Booster wasn’t telling him about their previous visit. But there is more to the innocuous little droid than there seems.

As Daniel answers the call of destiny, the space heroes are granted audience with "Archbishop" Lobo on a refugee planet. Someone has ravaged this sector of space and put a price on the heads of our wayward travelers. Can the archbishop lead them to salvation? And what is going through Wonder Girl’s head as she entertains a bizarre theory about the new hero, Supernova?

As my parents might say, "the thot plickens." This issue of 52 contains a surprising twist that is sure to startle readers and leave them scratching their heads for what this could mean. The clues were there and the writing quartet has turned in another masterfully teasing script that has me eagerly anticipating the next chapter and the unfolding implications of this plot point. JLI fans may again lament the apparent rewriting of a character’s personality but there is clearly more story to be told and more going on than meets the eye. Aside from the big reveal, this issue also contains a number of other eyebrow-raising moments. Lobo’s conversion to the Church of the Triple Fish-God is an amusingly surreal sequence and it seems the space plotline may finally be kicking into higher gear. Top it off with a troublingly familiar mystic artifact and a strange statement from the increasingly unstable Wonder Girl and this is one of the more intriguing issues of 52 thus far. Some have argued that Wonder Girl’s personality has done an about-face but I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt during a time of grief.

Artist Patrick Oliffe illustrates the story with straightforward, solid draftsmanship and particular care for the emotions and expressions of our puzzled champions. Clever angles and moody lighting from inker Geraci and colorist Sinclair even give the faceless Skeets the illusion of an impressive range of reactions. The only flaw in the visuals this time out is no fault of the art team but an apparent printing error in my copy of the issue that renders the inks slightly blurry on a few pages (did anyone else experience this problem?). Week Nineteen also delivers "The Origin of Animal Man" with the always striking realism of Brian Bolland, reprising his work on the covers of the character’s Vertigo series.

While on some level, 52 contains tease after tease in a somewhat protracted mystery, one can’t argue that it’s achieved its goal of raising the excitement level of going to the comic shop each week.