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52 was DC’s first modern weekly comic. It bridged the missing year between INFINITE CRISIS and the “One Year Later” relaunches. At heart was the mystery of the 52 – what was the significance of the number? I’ve been following the 52 subplot through the series. First I covered the missing super geniuses from across the DCU and then the death of Booster Bold. Finally, we had the revelation that his robotic sidekick Skeets had turned major league Evil.
In Week #26 Dr Sivana’s kids momentarily see a flash forward of the time traveller Waverider saying “I know who” and then being attacked. We see the actual event in Week #27, Evil Skeets catches up with the terrified Waverider. He had been organizing the time criminals, Chronos, Time Commander, Clock Queen and others into a new group of Time Masters to stand against the threat that Rip Hunter had discovered. However, Evil Skeets was too strong for them and had attacked/murdered each of them in turn.
When Skeets finally comes for Waverider he calls him “The Seer of Hypertime. Keeper of the Divergent Timelines.” This may well be the last in-canon reference to Hypertime – the now defunct model of DC’s cosmology. In INFINITE CRISIS Alexander Luthor splintered the Universe into a infinite number of parallel universes before the heroes managed to collapse it back into a single universe, but something new was left in its wake. Evil Skeets can sense the change, but it doesn’t know exactly what it is. Only Rip Hunter knows and he’s beyond Skeets’ ability to track. By attacking Hunter’s allies, Skeet’s had hoped to find force Hunter out into the open. He kills Waverider while gloating this his own metallic body is actually made from metal taken from Waverider’s corpse.
Meanwhile the enigmatic Supernova is has been on a scavenger hunt through the DC Universe. By week #31 Ralph Dibny has deduced Supernova’s true identity and tells him as much. At the end of Week #36 and into Week #37 it is revealed that Rip Hunter has been hiding in the Bottle City of Kandor in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Supernova had been working for him, searching for a suitable power source for his Time Bubble, but nothing they’ve found is compatible. Hunter himself is having trouble saying focused in linear time and proclaims that “Broken! Is Time!”
When Evil Skeets finally tracks them down, Supernova is revealed to be Booster Gold, alive and well, and working with Rip Hunter. They joined forces in during Booster’s first visit to Hunter’s lab in Week #6. A bit of time travel allowed him to appear as Supernova alongside himself and to fake his own death. This part of the plotline sets up the BOOSTER GOLD series that spins-out of 52 and establishes Booster’s new job as Rip Hunter’s agent in the timestream. The powers of the Supernova suit were all based on technology derived from the Phantom Zone Projector. This is how Supernova was able to teleport thousands of people out of the chaos in Metropolis in Week #35 – by shunting them through the Phantom Zone.
Supernova/Booster and Rip Hunter try to imprison Evil Skeet using the original Phantom Zone Projector, but he starts to absorb the entire dimension. Its enough of a diversion to allow Booster and Hunter to teleport away with Hunter counting down “52… 51…”
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