REVIEW: Booster Gold Flintstones Annual #1

While on a date with a woman named Amy, Aliens invade Gotham and begin to attack. Time traveler Booster Gold decides to go back to the time of the invaders first appearance on Earth, which just so happens to be the Stone Age and the time of The Flintstones. His plan is to destroy the invaders in the past to save Gotham (and its residents) in the future. However, Booster being Booster makes more of a mess of things.

The story is fun and has a lot of small easter eggs throughout.Â The humor in the book is good and surprisingly adult. I never thought I’d see a Flintstones book with an erection joke. This is a Booster story first and foremost and The Flintstones seem along for the ride. I would have liked to see more of The Flintstones and their side of the story. My assumption is the brass at DC understand that the audience for this skews older, to folks who grew up with Hanna-Barbera and the Flintstones. I don’t know if anyone under 20 would really have a connection to these characters, so the slightly more adult tone makes sense to me. The story is definitely told tongue-in-cheek with a lot of self-referential humor. The characters in the book know the plot is silly and have no qualms about mentioning it.

I felt the art was mediocre and inconsistent in its quality. Some panels look great (when the dinosaurs burst onto the future street comes to mind), but other panels seem to be incomplete without even noses drawn on the characters. It’s almost as if Rick Leonardi was rushed or out of time with the book.

The Mike Allred cover is fun, but I’m not sure why Fred is so muscular. The variant cover is also good, and I’m happy that Dan Jurgens, creator of Booster Gold, was given an opportunity to contribute.

The highlight of this book for me was actually the Jetsons sideÂ story. This story invoked thoughts of the season 3 “San Junipero” episode of the television series Black Mirror. I don’t want to give anything else away. I could see the surprise coming, but boy was it an interesting surprise. If you are a fan of the Jetsons, you owe it to yourself to read this.Â It also made me think of how well the Jetsons futuristic theme could be used to tell interesting stories when presented with maturity, as shown in this issue. Overall, this Booster Gold/Flintstones crossover is a fun book that fans of either series should enjoy. However, The Jetsons story was the standout for me. I give this 3.5 out of 5 stars.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Written by Mark Russell
Art by Rick Leonardi and Scott Hanna
Published by DC Comics