Unfinished future stories (+ babble)

[iesika]

I have drifted from Fishes. I want to finish it, I really do. Comics are now eating my brain, though. I've mostly finished the Dick/Harry thing (which in my head is called Tom, Dick, and Harry, but I really need a better title than that), but I am still waiting on a report from canonistas as to whether my egyptology curator can in fact make a cameo. Babs is in it, and Alfred. And there is Threat of Zatanna or Dr. Fate, because Batman does, indeed, know how to ask for help. Sometimes.

As for what I'm not writing (not really, outlining and dialog, that's not writing, right?):

The thing where Robin (Tim) makes a brief jaunt to an AU where Robin Never Was (and thus everyone is dead). And kidnaps himself. And maybe there is crazy bondage/stockholm identity porn in the dark of the abandoned batcave, and Robin is facinated by all the places the scars are not, and Tim is facinated by the scars and the muscles and threatening crazy persona. Maybe.

The thing where Booster meets Tim while visiting Babs, and they *ahem* bond. Because their love is so breakingthelawsofnatureforonemoremomentwiththemantheylove. (No, really. They would be creepily perfect together. I can just see Tim making Booster take him back to Cadmus to steal specs and DNA samples. Tim was Ted's fanboy. There's been talk (all the way up the ladder to Chuck Dixon, actually) of what a great Beetle Tim would make, if he weren't a Bat.)

And it's just hit me that I have not babbled here about Identity Porn OR Boostle. Shame on me.

Identity Porn is a phenomenon that is, as far as I know, pretty limited to the DCU (where half the characters have secret identities). Sometimes it's playful, sometimes it's honest misunderstanding, and sometimes it's fucked. up. On one side of the spectrum you've got Bruce Wayne getting interviewed by Clark Kent. Take it a little further, and you can get Matches Malone (sekritly Bruce) pimping Gary Glantz (sekritly Tim) to Pete the Penman (Secretly Kal-el). Take it all the way, and you get Tim (in various disguises) seducing a completely unknowing Kon-el, like, ten times, in different guises, in one fic. Identity porn is made even more fun by the honest-to-god canon status of Crossdressing for Justice. (Dick, for example, was batgirl for a night. I am not making this up!)

Boostle is. *flails* Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. Micheal Carter and Ted Kord. Best Friends Forever (when they aren't punching each other for hitting on women. I am not making this up. I can't think of where to start with this. You can look here for 20 years worth of highlights. I've read the first two JLI collections, 52, and the first two collections for the new Booster Gold series (which, omg, go find it, go find it noooooow). Booster and Ted are so slashy that even they and their teammates' wives are aware of it. Ted fangirls Wonder Woman like a gay little gay boy, and Booster owns a Wonder Woman costume. In his size. I am not making this up!

I should start at the begining. Booster has the best origin story, ever. He was born in the 25th centure. He was a washed out college football star (his father got him to throw a game for gambling purposes and he got caught), who got a job as a night janator in a museum of heroes in Gotham city (where the story of the Batman is told to frighten small children), where it occured to him he that a superhero could make a killing off their publicity, and so he steals some nifty goodies (flight ring, blasters, force field generator, suit which gives him super strength) and a time machine, and goes back to the Age of Heroes (now), accompanied by a security droid named Skeets (who is the awesome), who thankfully has all sorts of data about the past, since Booster was a crappy student of history. He always manages to be in the right place at the right time to confront criminals and stop disasters, and then to deliver his sponsor's message. His publicist gets him into the JLI by hiring crooks for him to beat up (Booster didn't know). There he meets...

Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, who is one of the smartest people in the DCU, and a non-powered, gadget-type hero (Night Owl, from Watchmen, is based on Ted, who was originally a Charleton comics character along with The Question, who was the model for Rorschach). They almost immediately go out to have a nice dinner with lots of wine in Gay Paris. Ostensibly, they are cruising for girls, but they come home alone(/together). They have a similarly juvenille sense of humor (as does most of the JLI - even Batman and J'onn are hilarious in the JLI), and quickly become bffs, and are a collective noun (Blue&Gold), except when they are having loud and visible lover's spats. Like over Booster getting married (to an old rich woman who apparently makes him dress like Wonder Woman, and who is actually kind of awesome), or quitting the team. When they're on, they're the funniest pair of guys ever (they steal the Martian Manhunter's oreos. His OREOES!) and when they are off they are punching each other at funerals and begging on knees for forgiveness.

Then. Then then then. Infinite Crisis. Ted works out that Maxwell Lord is embezzling form both Kord Industries and Wayne Enterprises. He goes to Bruce for help, but Bruce has Other Concerns. Ted finds that Lord has somehow gained control of the (creepy, creepy) satellite Brother Eye (which Batman made as the ultimate counter-measure to meta-human aggression, after discovering that the JLA, Zatana specifically but at the urging of several others, erased part of his mind). And. And. Booster was in the hospital. Ted leaves him there to take care of some things. Ted goes missing. Booster is frantic. Batman calls a meeting. Tells them what's happened to Beetle. Booster does not take it well. Booster tried to kill Batman because he believed he was responsible for Ted's death. And, from the look of Bruce's posture, if Superman hadn't gotten in the way of the blast, I think he would have succeeded. I think Bruce was going to let him. (And re-reading this now, knowing that Bruce knows certain things about Booster's future, rips. My. Heart. Out.)

Booster goes sort of rogue during 52. Booster's arc in 52 is made of awesome, actually. There's time travel and mindfuckery and meeting ancestors and (even if Booster doesn't know it) descendants. And Booster, who has from day one been all about the glory and the gold, learns to work in the shadows for the greater good. He starts working with Rip Hunter, one of the Time Masters, who patrol the timestream and basically keep this from happening. Then he saves the multiverse. And no one ever gets to know. Because as Rip (not his real name) says, part of being a Time Master is being anonymous - if your enemies can travel through time, you are vulnerable at every moment in your childhood. They could (Rip says) go back in time and kill your father. Which is why Rip uses a false name (I am so tempted to spoil who Rip really is, here, but I won't).

Booster then gets his own (new) series, Booster Gold: The Greatest Hero The World has Never Known. It is. Wow. So good. Time travel and mind-fuckery and the humor, and the saaaaad. Booster's one condition for working with Rip is that he be allowed to go back and save Ted. To prove the futility of this, Rip first sends him to save Barbara Gordon from being paralyzed (she was Ted's close friend). So he tries to save Babs, but something goes wrong and she ends up hurt anyway. So he tries again. And again. And again. Until my heart broke.

But then he went back to save Ted anyway. And succeed. And they got to adventure together for a while. But it changed the timeline completely and fucked everything over, and Booster almost ceases to exist. So Ted is Ted. And saves the day. By going back to die . And what punched me in the gut, more than anything in that last page (even more than Ted's smile and his hand on the glass) is that his goggles are broken. They were intact when Booster snatched him from certain death. He's going back to let Max Lord shoot him in the head, and his googles are already broken.

What really pissed me off? Rip saves Booster's twin sister, Michelle. This would be a good thing, if it weren't so wrong that she comes back, (and so easily) immediately after Booster looses Ted again. But what was beautiful? Booster talks to Batman, and discovers that he knew all along, ever since Babs was shot, that Booster was present when it happened. That he'd tried to stop it. Because Joker took pictures. He was there to take pictures in the first place (of Barbara dying, to use against Jim Gordon). He got a picture of Booster. Bruce knew Booster was a time traveler. He knew he'd gone back to try to save her. Wow.

On a more humorous and less mind blowing note, in 52, Booster used the Time Sphere to snag weapons from all over time and space in his battle with Mr. Mind. He does it again in the series (I linked above, but here it is again), and shows up, rather randomly, in Legion to snag something (Legion is set in the 31st century). He's shown up in The Atom recently and blown the book out of the water by snagging the current atom and bringing him back in time. People on scans_dailyare starting to call him their favorite deus ex machina. He went back to some point where Dick was Robin and Babs was Batgirl, and Shel (his sister) stole her outfit and impersonated her, and Alfred tried to shoot them when they showed up in the batcave (and hit Rip, though I maintain that they were rubber bullets). They steal the Batmobile, and later a bat-suit, And Booster winds up impersonating the killer moth and then impersonating Batman in the same fight, so that it will happen the way it's supposed to. So crazy!

Oh, screw it, have a picture. I'm afraid no one will click on my links, and this is too beautiful to pass up:




 
ETA: I was cooking dinner and it hit me really hard that I want to do a fic where Booster goes back in time just to talk to Ted before he dies. Like, visits baby Ted, and small child Ted, and teenager Ted, and so on. Spies, maybe, until young adult Ted catches him. Ted who's never met him, and Booster's in civies and 20 years older than he will be when Ted officially meets him. And they talk. Mostly I want the talk. I wouldn't mind a smooch. God, I'd break my own heart, attempting that one.

Comments

[starherd.livejournal.com]

...You know, I've only scratched the easily accessable surface of the DC multiverse, but that last page you showed there is everything I ever loved about it. Priceless. :-D

[iesika.livejournal.com]

Did I mention everyone is/was a zombie? THE ANTI-LIFE!!! Also, I was reading a Nightwing comic yesterday where the bad guys were stealing the bodies of martyred superheroes to make superzombies. It was all kinds of awesome.

scans_daily is a lj community where people scan portions of their comics - it's not all dc, but it's mostly dc, and it's mostly slashy (or at least extremely slash friendly). Whenever something good happens, there's like a race to post the pages or panels there. It's a good place to dip your toes in...kind of the Good Parts version of the DCU. (Also, there is much crack).

I just realized I forgot to include Booster's drunk-time-traveling accident in my babbling. Because he looses a drinking contest in the wild west and insists on driving the time machine himself, because "who are we going to hit?" and then in the next panel, rear-ends Barry Allen. ("You rear-ended The Flash?" "Oh grow up!")

[darthanne.livejournal.com]

I would really like to read the AU Tim thing. I love that kind of plot....

[iesika.livejournal.com]

I wanted a PWP, but even without being written it's turning into character development (Of the "Batman Needs A Robin sort"). Mostly I want Tim tied up in the cold dark of the empty cave (with just a glimmer of green light from a chemical flare) and Robin running his fingers over his stomach feeling where the scars and muscles aren't, and Tim freaking the fuck out. And this:

Robin: What do you know about the Batman?
Tim: What? Isn't that what Wayne called himself before they stopped him?
Robin: Stopped him?
Tim: Because he was crazy and he wore a mask and a cape and attacked people in the middle of the night!

and

Robin: Did your parents take you to the circus when you were six?
Tim: *creeped out*
Robin: The Flying Graysons were performing...
Tim: OMGWTFGETOUTOFMYHEAD *kicking and screaming*
Robin: Did they fall?
Tim: You sick fuck! Let me go! (cuz, you know, most traumatic moment of his life - he watched three people die, including the 12 year old boy who was so nice to him before the show...)

[iesika.livejournal.com]

I can't find the scans now, that inspired this. There was an actual occurence in the Robin comics where, through a time anomalie, Tim!Robin meets Dick!Robin, and they go for a ride in the Redbird. And I kept waiting for Dick to say "Let's make out!" a la xkcd.

(Then I found where somebody wrote that, only now I can't find that either. Anyway, that's where this came from).