Friday, April 26, 2019
This Day in History: Booster Gold Dies
It is a cliche in superhero comic books that characters die and then get better. The trope was well established by the time Superman's funeral ignited the general public's imagination, but ever since 1992, you simply aren't a real super hero until you've returned from "the other side" at least once.
Booster Gold joined that not-so-elusive club on this day in 1994 between the panels of Justice League Task Force #13.
At the time, the Justice League had been fractured into three groups with incompatible philosophies about what constituted "justice." Wonder Woman's "international" faction was most in line with the historic methods of the team as the strong arm of traditional, established political authorities. Martian Manhunter's task force was also aligned with the United Nations, though it preferred less direct means of diffusing problems. Captain Atom, on the other hand, championed more unconventional and forceful means of "extreme" justice, fighting fire with fire, so to speak.
These internal differences were exacerbated by the threat of the alien Overmaster, who had returned to Earth (after a previous encounter with the Justice League a decade earlier) in order to eradicate humanity. He had the power to do it, too. The dysfunctional Justice Leagues America, International, and Task Force have to put aside their differences to stop him. The crossover event, titled "Judgement Day," reads better than many of DC's official "Crisis"s.
Usually, comic book deaths are used as a cheap trick to ramp up the stakes, tug at the heartstrings, or inflate the threat posed by the bad guy. Booster was lucky. He died in a good story that respected established characterization. Specifically, his death was a side-effect of his overconfidence that history couldn't ever be changed, a misunderstanding with tragic consequences.
Of course, that wouldn't mean much unless Booster recovered to learn from his mistake. Spoiler alert: he did.
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