He's Not The Greatest Hero You'll Never Know

One thing that caught my notice in Booster Gold this week was Rip Hunter's inner monologue on the first page. He says Booster is important because he'll train the greatest of all the Time Masters. This has been hinted at earlier, such as in #8 when the Time Stealers discuss how they must destroy Booster's confidence, because of his importance to the lineage of the Time Masters, which suggests Booster's influence would extend far beyond his own lifetime.

Still, it's an unusual comment to me, given where Booster is at now, still very new at protecting the time stream, prone to letting his emotions dictate his actions*. He does show a certain aptitude for it, given his ability to save Superman's life by drinking with Jonah Hex, but he's still very much a novice. And usually in cases like that, Rip would be playing the role of Sage/Teacher, who takes the character who never lived up to their potential/Diamond in the Rough and makes them the "Greatest Blank of Blank". Yet, if what Rip says is true, the role of "Teacher of the Greatest" actually falls to Booster.

It strikes me as a deviation from what we usually see, where the main character is the best, the person who will save the world, the only one who can**. For an imperfect comparison, it would be similar to beating the final Super Mario game ever***, and learning that all Mario's battles with Bowser accomplished little, and his true gift was his actions giving one of the Toads the courage to become a hero, and that Toad is the one who finally completely defeats the Koopas and brings peace and harmony to the Mushroom Kingdom for all time. Except we don't ever play that story, we just learn about it at the end of the of Mario's game****. Or maybe we would have needed to learn that somewhere in the middle of one of the earlier games, Super Mario 64 or Super Mario 3, perhaps?

I'm curious to see if this colors Booster Gold's stories from here on, assuming that whoever takes over for Mr. Johns opts to pick up on that idea (perhaps it could go to his cowriter, Mr. Katz?)***** Are the missions going to be as much about Booster learning something about protecting time, as the actual protection of time?

*Which I'm not against per se, but it seems to have backfired in the case of saving Ted Kord.

** Not that the person that taught them, so they could do that, isn't important, but stories often seem to focus more on the person who'll be doing stuff, rather than the one teaching characters how to do stuff. Unless it's a story about teaching.

*** I don't know why there would be a 'final Super Mario game ever', just humor me.

**** I thought about using Legend of Zelda for the example, since that definitely conforms to the idea of "Only this very special person can save us!". But I remember the Ocarina of Time Player's Guide suggested that it might not be the same Link and Zelda in each game, but rather generations of them, so that might actually be the same thing as what's being suggested in Booster Gold, they just don't come right out and say it. Hopefully, they haven't made similar suggestions for the Mario franchise.

***** I know, Chuck Dixon wrote the August issue, but I doubt he was the permanent replacement, even before he and DC parted company. I meant the permanent writer, assuming the book will have one, and not just start rotating creative teams.