Booster Gold

Cover Description: Booster Gold flies with Skeets. This is the first issue of Booster Gold to lack the masthead title, instead using a version of Booster Gold's logo. This style of cover was used on most DC books published during the month of January, 2011.

Brief Synopsis: Booster Gold fights a new villain and is forced to change coffee shops.

Costume Worn: MARK I.v2 power-suit

Issue Notes: This issue is missing the credit line for Dan Jurgens, creator of Booster Gold. When asked, Jurgens attributed the omission to a "simple mistake."

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ISSUE ANNOTATIONS

Page 4, panel 1
Booster Gold's age is given as 35 "but given the chronal paradoxes inherent in time travel -- an exact determination is problematic at best." This is slightly older than previous estimations, but it is true that Booster should be aging faster than his DC Universe counterparts, given that he spends much of his time having extended adventures in non-native time lines.

Page 4, panel 3
HIS STORY: Booster Gold's history is being told by a scientist who is attempting to reconstruct it given only partial information. As a result, while the general trends of this apocryphal origin are correct, most of the finer details are wrong. For example, Booster is shown here playing running back, wearing the number 5x, and is described as having "a somewhat above-average" talent for football. Booster actually wore the number 13 as the universally admired all-star quarterback for Gotham University. (His ancestor Daniel wore number 52.) Most of the story of Booster's origin in this issue was written to be intentionally incorrect.

Note that the player wearing the number 75 is named "Lesl." Is this an homage to the mysterious "Pesl" of earlier issues?

Page 5, panel 3
HIS STORY: Booster Gold was not a janitor at the Space Museum, but a security guard. Booster has been seen as a janitor in alternate history stories, including an alternate future created by Waverider and the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century cartoon.

Page 6, panel 2
HIS STORY: It is possible that Booster's loathing his old teammates and resenting their success could have been a motivating factor in his decision to become a hero, but this is a supposition by the scientist telling his version of Booster's origin. Booster has never openly expressed this sentiment.

Page 8, panel 2
FASHION ALERT: As seen in Booster Gold, Volume 1, #8, the power suit and equipment that Booster Gold stole from the 25th century required tailoring and a redesign after Booster arrived in the 20th century to become his familiar collared costume. And Booster Gold originally planned on naming himself Goldstar, not Booster Gold. Certainly the scientist telling Booster Gold's story had no way of knowing these facts.

Page 8, panel 4
HIS STORY: Again the details are wrong, but the story is essentially correct. Skeets was a robotic co-worker of Michael Carter at the Space Museum, not an exhibit. But yes, Michael Carter did steal Skeets as well.

Page 11, panel 1
Booster Gold and Skeets are once again in battle with a villain outside a Sundollar coffee shop. A similar scenario was previously seen in Booster Gold, Volume 2, #33, where Booster Gold battled the giant Brigadoom in an unspecified city. This issue makes it clear that both this and the previous encounter take place in Metropolis.

Page 12, panel 2
Like Brigadoom before him, this coffee-shop baddy's name is a pun: Hit Point. "Hit point" is a term commonly used in gaming to describe a unit of health.

Page 13, panel 1
Robert Downey, Jr. played the title character in the film Iron Man based on the Marvel Comics character who shares a lot in common with Booster Gold. (Robert Downey, Sr. was a director.) Hit Point wears an armored suit like Iron Man, causing Booster to draw the connection and revealing that Booster does know who Iron Man is even though the two have never met. (Hint, hint, DC/Marvel.)

Page 16, panel 3
Booster tells the barista Diane that he has been coming to this Sundollar "for years." Traditionally, the international DCU SunDollers coffee franchise is spelled as such, not with an "a," except in the cities where franchises mysteriously appeared following the Infinite Crisis (as revealed online by The Daily Planet [see 52: The Website for details]). If Booster believes that he has been coming to this franchise for years, is his memory affected by the change in reality generated during the Infinite Crisis?

Page 18, panel 2
Booster Gold returns to Rip Hunter's Arizona Time Lab to find that it has been burglarized. Rip Hunter informs Booster that the database of Booster Gold's origins has been hacked by an unknown source. Hunter does not make it clear whether the mis-information reported earlier this issue was an intentional ruse by Hunter or whether it was a corruption of more accurate data.

Page 19, panel 2
Booster Gold is seen in flashback to events seen in Justice League International #7 and Booster Gold, Volume 2, #26, though Rip Hunter's dialogue mentions events from Justice League America #34 and 52 Week 52.

For more annotations from this story which occur at a different point in Booster Gold's chronology, click here.

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ISSUE REVIEW

Boosterrific Review: There is a lot of information in this issue that long-time Booster Gold fans are going to find contention with. However, Booster's origin is skillfully retold for a new audience in a way that allows for multiple interpretations, bridging multiple incarnations of the character. The highlight of the book is Booster's struggle with his own past and personality. It's a good bit of character development that is unfortunately overshadowed by some rather inexplicable -- and startlingly out-of-character -- behavior by Rip Hunter. The issue is a nice try at sidestepping an actual retcon, but fails to equal the sum of its parts.

Boosterrific Rating:

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.

Worth Its Weight In Gold.

Average Fan Rating:

Currently 2.5/5 Stars.

(4 votes)

Currently 2.0/5 Stars.

Harry (Feb. 7, 2011, 12:55:51)
I agree with what the reviewers below has said about this issue. Nothing special, moderately entertaining, and a handful of nitpicks.

Currently 2.0/5 Stars.

Erin (Feb. 5, 2011, 21:07:30)
The first read through confused me but otherwise nothing really special happened. The semi-origin went on too long to the point I half expected it to be over before we got to Booster. Dr. Desmond: Yes in the first series Rip went with Booster and helped him evade his death punishment for the crime. Jurgens has stayed firm on this in his Booster stories but it's unclear how this team will write it.

Currently 3.0/5 Stars.

Dr. Desmond (Feb. 1, 2011, 02:19:55)
Okay, the retelling was good, and I like the plot, but didn't Booster Gold meet Rip Hunter 20 years ago, and go into the future together? Then they created havoc, and Booster got in more trouble. But at least the sister came into the past. I was just confused which crime Booster is going to atone for.

Currently 3.0/5 Stars.

KMD (Jan. 15, 2011, 16:50:21)
While I appreciate repeating the origin, I thought it was a bit too inconsistent with past accounts. The fight with Hit Point was well done--the end with Rip Hunter better have a good logical explanation. I like the fact that there is a new bad guy, someone else besides the Black Beetle.

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