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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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Monday, December 10, 2018

Putting Your Worst Face Forward

When Booster booster CDN wrote to suggest more general-interest articles here on the Boosterrific Blog, he had one specific suggestion in mind:

Booster doesn't have the most well defined Rogues Gallery out there. Sure there's Black Beetle, Jonar and Max, but it's not really fleshed out. Maybe given your expertise on our Golden Boy, if you're hurting for Booster news, you could give us your 'Fantasy Booking' for a Booster Gold Rogues Gallery. Poaching villains and anti-heroes from other heroes and books, building a roster that you could see playing off Michael well, like the Flash's gallery or the Bat-Gallery. I've always personally thought Booster should have Punch and Jewelee to contend with, and even Lime and Light. But 2 (4?) people don't really make a Gallery.

What do you think? If you could build a Gallery for Michael, who'd you pick and why?

It is true that heroes are best defined by their villains. (What is good if it's not defined against an evil?) It's no accident that Batman is among the most popular of all comic book super heroes, with his colorful and astonishingly well-defined gang of ne'er-do-wells providing sharp contrast for his every sterling attribute. Booster might not look such a fool to the general public if he had his own Penguin to foil on a regular basis. (Then again, maybe Booster is just plain better at keeping his enemies behind bars than old pointy-ears.)

On a practical level, Booster's lackluster list of antagonists is mostly a side-effect of his having so few solo adventures in which to gather enemies. He's had only 74 issues over 2 volumes, averaging 1 story told per every 2 books. That's only 37 chances to develop recurring foes (not counting the occasional solo story in his various team books over the years). Booster has had some great writers over that time, but there's only so much even a Dan Jurgens, Geoff Johns, or Keith Giffen can do in such a limited span. (So much easier for Batman to develop foes when he's in at least one book a week, sometimes more.)

Further complicating Booster's limited opportunities is the very nature of Booster's self-appointed role as Time Master. Since many of his stories are largely constrained to correcting mistakes in history, unless a villain is temporal in nature, there's not much chance Booster is going to be fighting them twice. It's hard to build a relationship with someone when you never see them again! (All of spacetime is so much larger than one measly little Gotham City.)

Taking all of that into account, Booster should probably count himself lucky that he has such strong recurring villains as the mysterious Black Beetle, the selfish Jonar Jon Carter, and the badly retconned Max Lord.

Of course, I still haven't answered CDN's question of who I would put on the Booster Cave's Wall of Shame. As a comics fan, I certainly have villains I enjoy reading. But as a chronicler, I need a better reason for adding a character to a rogues gallery than "because I like them."

I'll be back in a future post to say who I'd call Booster's biggest foes and why. In the meantime, do you know who you would want to see Booster battle?

Comments (6) | Add a Comment | Tags: cdn villains


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