Monday, August 31, 2009

Working in the Time Frame in Solid Time

Over at Boosterrific.com they have a list of different ways time travel works. I'm not going to try to get into that those type of changes here. Instead I wanted to do a comparison between The Killing Joke and Booster Golds' No Joke. To see how Booster entering the picture works into the time frame we're given in the original story and how little it changes due to "Solid Time." Please excuse some of the blurriness for a couple scans, I had the Killing Joke hard back which isn't as easy to scan. It's also been re-colored though I'm not sure how much of this varied from original.

To start off we have the Joker getting the infamous carnival. 
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Note the rain. 
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Booster arrives at a different spot but at the same carnival. Now this would have to be right after Joker makes the "purchase" and gathered the freaks but before he visits the Gordons. I'm guessing he has some time to spare since he spends a good deal of it inflicting pain onto "Golden Rod." (That will always sound like either a C3P0 reference or something very perverted.)

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The Joker and his misfit gang inflict various types of pain onto Booster, partly off panel including a roller coster racing at him while chained. When their done with him for the moment Skeets and him break free to try to make their way to the Gordons. 

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Despite their intrusion (and various attempts later on) Booster can not break the loop of events. Things are changed to based on his presence like him fighting the Joker but he can not stop what was shown in the Killing Joke at all. 

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Why I started this blog and Hayden Glass

I'm a big Booster Gold fan and I have a fondness for time travel stories. While reading it I was curious about things that turned up in the book. People who are mentioned such as the Linear Men (who I have a vague understanding of) and the original Time Masters who I know from their mini series. But how do they fit? How does the Flash use an exercise machine to travel through time? There weren't many answers to be found when I searched on the web. So I decided to make a guide of sorts to the DC Universes' Time Travel. 

I thought about what to do my first article about. Having Booster Gold or Rip Hunter would be natural choices but I wanted to have do something on a little known series from the 90's called Chronos. The title character Walker Gabriel was part of the new generation of legacy characters much like Kyle Rayner (in fact the Tattoo Man ponders out loud how trendy this is becoming in the book it's self.) Unlike the rest Walkers' a little different neither a villain like his name sake David Clinton nor a hero in a true sense. But more on him later.

The book Chronos was rich with potential. Introducing new concepts, devices, and intriguing characters. Hayden Glass was one of these characters. Glass was a psychotic serial killer known as the Justice League Killer from the 22nd century. He had a disturbing obsession with superheroes that he used in his murders. Walker was unlucky enough to catch him in the middle of one of his killing sprees.

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See his first word there? "Don't you know you can't buy a hero? No, a hero never does anything for money." This is the perfectly scary type  of guy to put Booster up against, plus we'd get to see how he'd react  with a real league member. .  
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Glass may not be that powerful of a meta, only being able to shape shift his face here, but he's ruthless and persistent. This is the sort of man you don't want getting his hands on a time  machine because you know he would make huge waves if he came to DCU present. When pressed by a desperate Walker to reveal his origins (and to stall for time) Glass makes a claim that's never entirely disputed.   
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Cadmus later claims that Glass is a project of theirs that is put into cryogenics for safe keeping.  Walker notes that Glass is so obsessed with the heroes of the league that he will not bother killing them without playing the role. He makes an acceptation later in his life when he seeks revenge on Walker. Hayden Glass has two different fates in Chronos and to the best of my knowledge has not been seen outside the series.
First Appearance: Chronos#1, Chronos 2 linearly first meets Glass in Chronos #7.