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Boosterrific.com: The Complete, Annotated Adventures of Booster Gold
Boosterrific.com: The Complete, Annotated Adventures of Booster Gold

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Powers & Weapons

"With all this power, those super-baddies out there don't stand a chance!"
—Booster Gold, Booster Gold #8, 1986

In addition to being a world-class athlete, Booster Gold has utilized a variety of advanced technologies to assist his heroic endeavors. With few exceptions, each incarnation of Booster's crime-fighting tools has emphasized defensive force fields, offensive energy rays, enhanced strength, and flight.

Click on section headers to expand.

Natural Abilities

Booster Gold is a human being from the 25th century with well-developed physical prowess and leadership abilities. These natural abilities were honed while Booster played American football for Gotham University, earning accolades as the greatest quarterback of his time. His naturally superior speed and strength are enhanced drastically by the use of technology, most commonly in the form of a power suit of advanced design.

Booster Gold possesses above average intelligence, though he often takes great pains to hide this fact as a defensive mechanism. On multiple occasions, Booster has demonstrated a rudimentary understanding of battlefield tactics and a keen awareness of the benefits of teamwork. Caring little for planning, Booster relies heavily on improvisational tactics and on-the-fly advice from Skeets or other battlefield companions.

Among Booster's greatest strengths is his charismatic power to motivate others. Besides his intelligence, it is this ability of Booster's that is most often overlooked. Evidence of this often seen through his great salesmanship ability. Booster is often seen in the role of motivational cheerleader for his fellow members of the heroic community.

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Genetics and Prosthetics

Prosthetic Limb. Image Copyright DC Comics

Injury is inevitable for someone in Booster Gold's line of work. Medical procedures to repair damage have resulted in added abilities.

Following the loss of his right arm and extensive damage to his heart and lungs, Booster received an undisclosed number and variety of unique prosthetic implants utilizing advanced S.T.A.R. Labs technology. Over time, these implants became painful, and Booster was the willing recipient of replacements offered by the villainous Monarch. While the exact nature of these implants remains unrevealed, they appear and function as normal limbs and organs do, providing no appreciable enhancement in arm strength or endurance.

The fantastic and subversive nature of the implants as originally installed appear to have been rendered inert by Booster's own naturally advanced genetic make-up, which he inherited as a descendant of the Oan-evolved humans from the Millennium event. Only the combined abilities of Skeets and the Mark X Flesh Driver armor were able to manipulate Booster's prosthetic implants as offensive and defensive weapons.

Later in his life, Booster Gold's many adventures through the timestream resulted in his becoming afflicted with the unique malady termed Chronal Leprosy. The disease caused him to come unstuck in time. Brainiac 5, member of the 30th-century Time Institute, was able to cure the disease, though a lingering beneficial side effect of the cure was the considerably slowing of Booster's natural aging process. Booster is now much older than he looks and may be functionally immortal.

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Power-Suit

Uniform. Image Copyright DC Comics

Originally redesigned from the costume of a would-be world conqueror, Booster Gold's signature star-emblazoned blue and gold power suits are generally used to enhance his strength to super human levels.

A complete list of Booster Gold's suits can be found here.

For more information on the inspiration behind Booster Gold's power suit, see the Boosterrific Blog's "Super Power Spotlight on the Booster Shots".

Force Field Belt

Force Field. Image Copyright DC Comics

Among the items that Michael Jon Carter stole from the Space Museum of the 25th-century was a force-field belt originally belonging to Legion of Super-Heroes member Brainiac 5.

This incredible piece of technology, (based on technology created by Brainiac 5's ancestor, the original Brainiac), generates an extremely powerful personal force field capable of deflecting missile blasts or preventing oxygen-loss in the vacuum of space. The force field can be adapted and channeled to focus around the user or projected a moderate distance. Twentieth-century reproductions of Brainiac 5's force field created after the destruction of the original belt were considerably less resistant that the original "invulnerable" belt.

For more information on the history and application of Booster Gold's force field belt, see the Boosterrific Blog's "Super Power Spotlight on the Force Field Belt".

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Flight Ring

Flight Ring. Image Copyright DC Comics

Also stolen from the Space Museum was a 30th-century Legion of Super Heroes Flight Ring. The ring, also designed by the Legionnaire Brainiac 5, harnesses an alien metal to provide its wielder with the power of flight. The ring is activated mentally via willful interaction and requires conscious thought to power flight. Booster has demonstrated that the ring does not need to be worn to be mentally manipulated, but it must be in relatively close proximity to the user. Booster Gold may not know it, but the ring is also capable of translating languages and sending distress calls to other rings (though none are known to exist in the 21st century).

Oddly, the 30th-century technology of the Legion of Super-Heroes ended up in the 25th-century Space Museum by way of the 20th century. When Brainiac 5 accompanied several Legionnaires into the past in order to apprehend Booster Gold for crimes against time (in Booster Gold #8, 1986 and Booster Gold #9, 1986), Brainiac donated his personal technology to Ronald Reagan, sitting President of the United States, in order to save him from an assassination attempt. The equipment would be passed forward, finally resting in the Space Museum where they would be stolen by Booster Gold. In addition to being a time paradox, this also means that Booster's reliable Flight Ring is over 500 years old.

For more information on the history and application of Booster Gold's flight ring, see the Boosterrific Blog's "Super Power Spotlight on the Flight Ring".

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Booster Shots (Wrist Blasters)

Booster Shots. Image Copyright DC Comics

While much of Booster Gold's stolen 25th-century technology is defensive in nature, his alien-designed wrist-mounted blaster rays are pure offense. Each wristband can fire a directed energy ray at the push of a lever concealed in Booster's gloves. The force of the blasts can be adjusted from a simple stun to a destructive blast able to crumble hardened concrete. Booster has nicknamed these weapons his "Booster Shots."

Each version of Booster's armor has contained some form of arm or wrist mounted energy ray, always referred to by Booster as a Booster Shot despite variations in power output and origin. In most cases, Booster Shots exert the greatest strain on Booster's internal power supplies.

For more information on the history and application of Booster Gold's energy rays, see the Boosterrific Blog's "Super Power Spotlight on the Booster Shots".

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Goggles

Telescoping Infrared Goggles. Image Copyright DC Comics

While every power-suit worn by Booster Gold has included some form of eye-protection, few have been as versatile as his original power-suit's goggles. The goggles function as infrared (IR) sensors, allowing Booster to detect body heat and see at night. The goggles can also enhance vision, either enlarging things at a distance, like binoculars, or increase the apparent size of very small objects, like a microscope.

For more information on the history and application of Booster Gold's goggles, see the Boosterrific Blog's "Super Power Spotlight on the Goggles".

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Time Travel

Time Bubble. Image Copyright DC Comics

Considering that it could allow someone to change history, nothing in Booster Gold's arsenal is as powerful or as dangerous as his Time Bubble. Invented by Time Master Rip Hunter, the Time Bubble is capable of traveling through space-time to any point in history, past, present, or future.

Booster original stole the Time Bubble from the Space Museum of the 25th century, but later was granted full access to the device by Rip Hunter himself when Booster agreed to help him defend the time stream from malicious crimes against history. Technology in Booster's power suit coupled with Skeets' internal computers allows remote access to the Time Bubble's time-travel capabilities.

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Mass Dispersion Field

Mass Dispersal. Image Copyright DC Comics

The least used power in all of Booster Gold's arsenal is the Mass Dispersion Field, originally called the "Mass Dispersal Force."

The MDF, also called the Absorbing Field, utilizes the Force Field (by "reversing polarity") to absorb large amounts of mass, either single or multiple objects weighing up to a combined several tons, convert it to energy, and then re-materialize and redirect that mass, either in its original state or in a new combination of the original items. In the few occasions that Booster has used this power, it has generally been utilized to absorb and redirect large projectiles.

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Skeets

Skeets. Image Copyright DC Comics

An artificial intelligence, Skeets was employed as an autonomous robot security guard and docent in the 25th-century Space Museum before Booster Gold stole it to become his sidekick and mentor in the 20th-century. Despite the inauspicious start, their relationship has grown into a genuine friendship over the course of their shared adventures.

A complete listing of Skeets' various models and abilities can be found here.

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SPOILER WARNING: The content at Boosterrific.com may contain story spoilers for DC Comics publications.