52
“Outshined”
Volume 1, Issue 15, August 2006
Released August 16, 2006
Cover Price: $2.50
Estimated Issue Sales: 119,185
Writers: Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid
Pencillers: Keith Giffen, Shawn Moll
Inker: Tom Nguyen
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
Assistant Editors: Jann Jones, Harvey Richards
Editor: Stephen Wacker
Cover Artists: J.G. Jones, Alex Sinclair
Heroes: Booster Gold, Supernova I
Villains: Ballostro, Mister Mind
Supporting: Clark Kent, Skeets II
Setting: Metropolis, DCU, USA, 21st-century
Cover Description: Supernova is reflected in Booster Gold's cracked goggles.
Brief Synopsis: Booster Gold has a very, very bad day.
Booster Gold's role in this story:
Featured (Booster Gold plays a prominent role)
Costume Worn: MARK I.v2 power-suit
Issue Notes: This issue contains the final appearance of Booster Gold.
This story has been reprinted in:
52 Omnibus (2012)
52 Volume 2 (2007)
Page 1, panel 1
PRODUCT PLACEMENT: "Week 15, Day 1." Carol Ferris has terminated Booster Gold's endorsement deal with Ferris Aircraft via a letter. Booster Gold sprays over the Ferris Aircraft logo on his costume with gold spray paint. Previous logos were shown as patches sewn onto the costume, but the Ferris logo was presumably painted on.
Page 1, panel 3
EXTRA, EXTRA: "Week 15, Day 4." For the first time, Booster Gold is directly compared to Supernova, unfavorably, on the Daily Planet's webpage. Booster's "all-time high" approval rating in an unofficial survey of Metropolis citizens, 91 percent, following his rescue of Ferris Aircraft Flight 2824 in 52 Week 2 has fallen to an "all-time low" of just 2 percent. The website goes on to explain that Booster's approval rating has fallen below that of "Bibbo" Bibbowski, a bar owner and supporting character in the Superman mythos who once took the moniker Superdood to battle crime in Metropolis following Superman's apparent death at the hands of Doomsday.
Page 2, panel 2
HIS STORY: At Booster's request, Skeets II provides Booster with three options from the historical record for the evening's crimefighting in Metropolis: a stolen car, a power outage, and a submarine crash. Though each of these events will take place within this issue, Skeets fails to mention that Booster will be integral to all three incidents despite himself. In panel 3, Booster's comment about Brainiac shrinking Metropolis to "bottle-size" is a reference to the Bottle City of Kandor, one of Krypton's major cities that was indeed shrunken and placed inside of a bottle now residing in Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Booster saw the bottle city when it was in the lab of Dr. Emil Hamilton in Superman, Vol. 2, #124.
Page 9, panel 4
During battle with Ballostro, the undersea monster rampaging through Metropolis with a nuclear submarine on its back, Booster Gold is thrown through the Centennial Park statue of Superman, decapitating it. Booster Gold was present for the dedication of the statue at Superman's funeral, so it is fitting that he should have a hand in destroying it.
Page 10, panel 3
Booster Gold "carjacks" an automobile to use as a projectile against the Ballostro. This is the first of Skeets' predictions to be fulfilled by Booster himself.
Page 12, panel 1
Booster attempts to use the power from the Metropolis monorail system to electrocute the Ballostro and causes a major blackout of the Midtown Metropolis power grid. This is the second of Skeet's predictions to be fulfilled by Booster himself.
Page 14, panel 3
A PAIR OF DOCS?: Supernova arrives and uses his powers of teleportation to dispatch the Ballostro. This is the first time that he and Booster Gold appear on the same panel.
Page 15, panel 6
After a terse exchange of barbed comments, Booster Gold attacks Supernova. In their first meeting, Booster Gold and Supernova, two heroes of Metropolis, engage in the traditional cliché of two battling superheroes.
Page 19, panel 1
While attempting to carry the damaged nuclear submarine hijacked by Ballostro to safety above the city, Booster Gold is caught in the submarine's explosion and apparently killed. This is very similar to events in Booster Gold #5, where Booster carried a bomb into the sky to save Metropolis from Mister Twister. Even more interesting, this occurs on Day 5 of Week 15: August 20. Booster Carter arrived in the 20th century on August 20, 1985.
Page 19, panel 3
HIS STORY: Skeets reveals that Booster's death does not appear in the historical record of the future.
Boosterrific Review: Fittingly Booster Gold appears in all but 6 pages of this story advertised as "His Last Battle." The issue features a no-holds-barred battle between Booster and Supernova, during which both combatants let fly verbal jabs almost as punishing as their physical attacks. It is yet another credit to the pacing and storytelling of this series that you don't realize that it has only been 7 weeks since Supernova first appeared, leaving very little time for teh writers to create such believeable animosity between the two characters who are barely even rivals. Events of this issue represent a crucial bit of history for Booster Gold and certainly qualifies as a "must read" issue.
Boosterrific Rating: Boosterrific!
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