Week Thirty-Seven
This week opens at the exact moment that last week closed. I guess the scene takes place at the stroke of midnight. Supernova and Rip Hunter are in the bottle city of Kandor, and Skeets is waiting outside. Supernova grows in order to confront Skeets and hold him off for long enough so that Rip can get the two guys to safety, and, in the process, Supernova reveals his secret identity. If you haven’t read this issue, stop reading this now.
Supernova is Booster Gold. When Booster first entered Rip Hunter’s lab, he was able to figure out what Skeets was up to, along with some info supplied by Rip himself, who appeared in a temporal vortex inside the lab to explain things. Using time travel, they were able to replace Booster with his own corpse from the future at the critical moment that the blast detonated above Metropolis in Week 15. Booster then, along with Rip’s help, donned the identity of Supernova and went back in time twelve weeks in order to cover his tracks. Acting as a humble hero, he was able to track down all the equipment Rip Hunter needs in order to stop Skeets in his, er, tracks, so to speak. Sky tracks. Anyway, after explaining everything, Rip Hunter grows out of the city and attempts to trap Skeets in the Phantom Zone, which Skeets instead eats, digesting all the souls trapped inside. Rip mentions that it’s only an appetizer for the robot, but it bought them enough time to escape. Escape they do, but Skeets follows.
Meanwhile, the spaceketeers put Buddy Baker, aka Animal Man, to rest on an asteroid, with the honorable Lobo presiding as minister. Adam Strange and Starfire then leave tearfully, for Animal Man’s corpse to drift off in space forever. Only, he’s not dead. As soon as the other two are gone, Animal Man wakes up, screaming, “Don’t leave me!” He’s joined by two coneheads, one of whom replies with, “And so it begins.”
What a great issue. Top to bottom, it’s truly something. The DC Nation column is worth noting, too, as there’s some cryptic paragraph about Lord knows what, followed by the statement that that paragraph holds the secret to 52. I’m sure some nerd on the Internet will figure it out, so keep your eyes peeled. And, hell, if you’re that nerd, feel free to leave a comment and let the rest of us know.
See ya in seven.
I got a good chuckle out of the “stroke of midnight” line.
Also, did you read the line about Skeets not being himself? Booster says: “I had to play dumb. And if you were really yourself, Skeets, you’d be having a field day with that statement.” So, Skeets isn’t really Skeets. But who or what is it?
After close inspection, I figured out what the DC Nation column is talking about. The “x-ecute” phrase is what tipped me off. From there, I used my detective skills to…nah, I’m kidding. I looked around on the Internet, and it turns out that if you take the first letter of every third word, it spells out, “The secret of fifty-two is that the multiverse still exists.”
Wow, that was really complicated.
Wow, Jim Doom was right after all.
Really?
Back when I wrote my omniverse thing, you were explaining to me that you thought the multiverse still existed after 52. Turns out you were right, even if you were wrong at the time.
[…] We’ve made it most of the way through 52, with World War Three now looming. Plenty of plot points have been wrapped up, but lots more questions remain unanswered (one Question, though, is dead). One of the biggest questions is who is Skeets. As we saw in week 37, he isn’t Skeets. At least, that’s what Booster Gold/Supernova said. And, as we’ve seen throughout the series, Skeets has done some bad, bad things. […]