Monday, November 05, 2007

Booster Gold & Jonah

Okay, I only pick up my comics once a month or so, therefore my posts about 'recent' comics can be a few weeks old, but I make up for my lateness with incredible in-depth analysis. Everyone cool with that? Onward.

Booster Gold #3. I have never liked Booster Gold. Didn't like the idea when it came out, never cared for the character, didn't read 52, not reading Countdown, but, dang, they put Jonah Hex on the cover I had to drop a couple of $$ to read it.

Rip Hunter tells Booster that they are going to the mid 1800's to Kansas City. "mid 1800's" is an odd, squishy term for a time traveler to use, but if we divide up the 1800's into "early", "mid", and "late" they would be 1800 - 1833, 1834 - 1867, and 1868 - 1899 respectively and since I'm not a scholar (but I AM a thinker!) I'll give some leeway a year on each side of those dates. That means, since we are focusing on "mid-1800's", that our story will plant Booster Gold in Kansas City, at the latest, in 1868 and, at the earliest, 1866 (because that was when Jonah was scarred).

Good. What did Kansas City look like in 1866-1868? If you're talking about Kansas City, Mo, Wikipedia sez:
After the Civil War, the City of Kansas grew rapidly. The selection of the city over Leavenworth, Kansas, for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad bridge over the Missouri River brought about significant growth. The population exploded after 1869, when the Hannibal Bridge, designed by Octave Chanute, opened. The boom prompted a name change to Kansas City in 1889


Hmmmm, that doesn't look like THAT will fit. What about Kansas City, Kansas, old dear Wiki?
Kansas City, Kansas dates back to the middle of the 1800s. Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) formed in 1868 and incorporated in October of 1872.


Good, and the population for Kansas City, Kansas in 1800 was 3,200, so that appears to be about correct for the town depicted in Booster Gold #4. We have the place, now how about the man?
I have to admit, the depiction of Jonah Hex was pretty straight on. He guns a man down for asking too many questions (obviously not for a bounty, even though he could have been a bounty hunter by that time), ends up having Booster buy him drinks and then knocks out a man gunning for him.

Good job here.

1 comment:

SallyP said...

I really did love this issue. Booster has GOT to stop trying to pick up men in bars! And it had Skeet riding a horse, which is just insanely fabulous. And buffalo! And a drunken and even moderately friendly Jonah!