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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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Showing posts 1 - 5 of 14 matching: powers

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Fashionably Late Super Powers

McFarlane Toys has announced the latest additions to their line of updated Super Power Collection action figures, including Manga Batman, Brainiac, Green Lantern Kilowog, and, most importantly Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) and Blue Beetle's Aerial Mobile Headquarters, better known as The Bug!

Those are all great, but McFarlane has buried the lede. If you look closely at the Bug's packaging, you just might notice another figure that has not been released or even announced.

© McFarlane Toys

© McFarlane Toys

© McFarlane Toys

There's no way McFarlane made a Booster Gold figure just to take pictures for the Bug's packaging, right? It seems a safe assumption that we'll be getting a McFarlane Toys Booster Gold Super Powers Collection figure sooner or later.

Blue Beetle and his Bug are available for pre-order via links at McFarlane.com. You might want to go ahead and buy both so you'll be ready with your own "Blue And" whenever Gold finally arrives.

Thanks to eagle-eyed Jake for bringing this to our attention.

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: action figures jake mcfarlane.com super powers collection

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Super Power Spotlight on the Time Sphere

What makes a hero super? The super powers! From awesome strength to zero-to-sixty speed, great superpowers are the most useful tricks in every famous costumed crime-fighter's tool kit. Michael Jon Carter knew this, and that's why he started his career with a time machine.

Dressing for Success: The futuristic super powers of Booster Gold

Power suit, energy rays, force field, flight ring... "Booster" Carter could steal every super power in the Space Museum, but none of those would make the citizens of the 25th century forget that he had committed the ultimate crime: shaving points in a college football game.

To move on with his life, Booster would have to think outside the box. He'd have to think in a sphere. Specifically, he'd have to think in Rip Hunter's Time Sphere.

© DC Comics

Rip Hunter and his distinctive time machine, the "amazing" Time Sphere, made their debut appearance in Showcase #20, 1959. He and his 20th-century companions, calling themselves Time Masters, would continue to improve the Time Sphere's design as they traveled from one end of history to the other with many adventures in between.

© DC Comics

At any given time, there were several operating spheres, any one of which could have ended up in the Space Museum of the 25th century for Booster to, um, borrow. Although Booster broke that first Time Sphere, he has since had the opportunity to use some of Hunter's other Time Spheres for other temporal journeys both with and without the Time Master, beginning in 1987's Booster Gold #13, and as recently as 2021's DC's Cybernetic Summer.

Though the story of the time-traveling globe doesn't end (or begin) there. As we will eventually learn, while Rip Hunter may have invented the Time Sphere, he certainly did not invent time travel. Or even spherical time machines.

As revealed in Booster Gold volume 2, #1,000,000 (2008), Rip Hunter is Booster Gold's son. Later issues of Time Masters: Vanishing Point will demonstrate that Rip traveled through time as a child with his father. That crates a paradox, since it's impossible that at some point in the future, Rip Hunter could have gone back in time to create the circumstances that led to his own birth.

But it's not impossible that at some point in the future, a super-intelligent alien from another planet could have traveled backwards in time and laid the groundwork for Booster to do so. That alien is Brainiac 5.

In addition to inventing the Force Field Belt and Legion Flight Ring that Booster liberated from the Space Museum, Brainiac 5 also worked with the 30th-century Time Institute, perfected the time-traveling Time Bubble that his fellow Legion of Super-Heroes would use to have time-travel adventures with Superman beginning with 1958's Adventure Comics #247.

© DC Comics

Clearly, the Time Bubble precedes the Time Sphere. Since Brainiac 5's history is in no way connected to Michael Jon Carter's, it is no stretch of the imagination to speculate that Brainiac 5 or the Legion of Super-Heroes made trips through time that somehow created the impossible sequence of events that lead to Rip Hunter appearing to create the machine necessary for his own birth. Fortunately, Brainiac 5 also has the power to resolve such space-time paradoxes.

As seen in Time Masters Vanishing Point #3, Brainiac 5 has access to the uniquly powerful Miracle Machine, a device that turns imagination into reality. With a power like that, even the most difficult paradox can be untangled with a thought.

© DC Comics

That panel makes it clear that time-traveling Rip Hunter knew Brainiac 5 from an early age, so it's probable that the future Time Master's time-machine design was influenced by the Legion of Super-Heroes' pioneering inventor. When a design works that well, why change it?

(Footnote: Amusingly, there is also a time-traveling globe from the future in 1951's Batman #67. Although the Batman of the 31st-century takes credit for inventing it, he wouldn't be the first person to steal a Time Sphere.)

If you'd like to read about other powers in Booster Gold's arsenal, check out previous spotlight posts on his Force Field Belt, Booster Shots, Flight Ring, and goggles.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: brainiac 5 powers rip hunter time sphere

Friday, September 29, 2023

Uh Oh Spaghettios

It appears there was some data loss on the host server, and I've lost everything since Tuesday morning. Which, thankfully isn't much, as I haven't even gotten around to adding Action Comics #1057 to the database yet. So maybe it's a good thing that it's been a slow month for Booster Gold.

[For future reference, the lost post was a link to a custom Super Powers Collection-styled Booster Gold and Goldstar action figure by SuperPoweredCustoms at www.etsy.com.]

Goldstar by SuperPoweredCustoms

Here in the wee hours of Friday morning, I'm still finding a few glitches in the web hosting services. I'm not sure what all this means exactly (hardware failure? user error? malicious action?), but rather than risk losing another post, I'm just going to backup the database again and call it a week. See you Monday, I hope!

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: action figures etsy.com fan art super powers collection superpoweredcustoms website update

Friday, July 7, 2023

My Favorite Pages: Millennium 6

Booster Gold makes only a small cameo in Millennium #4, and we only hear about him in Millennium #5 when we (and Mister Bones) eavesdrop on a conversation between siblings Jade and Obsidian.

© DC Comics
Millennium #5, words by Steve Englehart, art by Joe Staton, Ian Gibson, Carl Gafford, Bob Lappan

It's not until Millennium #6 when we see our hero finally return to full-page action. Three pages of action, actually. And I have to say he puts on a pretty good showing for himself despite siding with the Manhunters.

© DC Comics

Booster's rarely-seen Absorbing Field wins the day, temporarily incapacitating both Batman and a Green Lantern. Even if you are on the wrong side of this conflict, Booster, that's impressive.

And that's why this is one of My Favorite Pages.

My Favorite Pages

Comments (8) | Add a Comment | Tags: batman favorite pages guy gardner powers

Friday, October 15, 2021

More Powers Than Batman

You know most CBR.com listicles just annoy me, but every once in a while, they say something I agree with.

For example, take "DC Comics: 10 Sidekicks Who Need To Break Away From Their Mentor" by Derek Faraci.

8. Skeets Plays Second Fiddle To A Goofball

Of all the sidekicks in comics, Skeets may get the least respect. A super-intelligent robot that holds all of human history up to the 25th century in its databanks, Skeets works alongside Booster Gold to help the hero from the future become the greatest hero of today. But Skeets only shows up when Booster bothers to turn him on. When Booster was a member of the Justice League International, he boxed up his sidekick up and left him in storage, which is just plain rude. With its smarts, its lasers, and its sense of humor, Skeets is more than ready to branch out and do its own thing.

Yes! In Skeets' case, striking out on its own might even seem like *less* work.

© DC Comics
Booster Gold #37

If you're paying attention, DC: yes, I would buy a Skeets solo comic.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: cbr.com derek faraci listicle skeets


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