(Titan Books �10.99)

HE is the greatest hero the world has never known, a one-time epitomy of superhero capitalism who has turned over a new leaf to become the champion of the timelines, setting history back on course and ensuring causality plays out as it should… Former Justice Leaguer Booster Gold now works alongside his robot cohort Skeets, his resurrected sister Michelle and time traveller extraordinaire Rip Hunter, jumping through DC history like a costumed Sam Beckett (in the classic TV show Quantum Leap).

This latest collection takes him back in time to meet up with the original Suicide Squad, aka Taskforce X, in the 1950s, and into conflict with the violent martial hero Magog, but the highlight is a multi-part story seeing Gold come up against the new Batman, aka former Robin Dick Grayson.

Before his apparent death, original Batman Bruce Wayne was the only person who knew of Booster’s time-travelling mission and didn’t treat him as some sort of money-grabbing buffoon. But while he is moping about the loss of his ally, Gold finds himself having to save Grayson from a history-warping intervention which opens up the world for conquest by netherworld demon Trigon. Arriving in an apocalyptic future ruled by Trigon’s forces, Booster teams up with the last survivors of the superhero community in a bid to discover when time was knocked out of kilter, in order that he might return to set things right…

A fun, innovative series which takes full advantage of its time-weaving concept to present different storylines set throughout the DC Universe, past, present and future. Gold is an inevitably likeable protagonist, and his growth as a hero charted in successive stories makes for highly enjoyable reading. There’s nothing too demanding here, but with so many superhero comics bogged down in doom and gloom it’s a refreshingly optimistic series which shouldn’t be overlooked.