Friday, I gave you my personal picks to Booster Gold's public Rogues Gallery. But who should Booster be fighting in his "secret" identity?

Presented in alphabetical order, these are my top six suggestions to comprise the Rogues Gallery of Booster Gold, Time Master.

Black Beetle, Chronos (Walker Gabriel), Lady Chronos, Mr. Mind, Monarch, Weapons Master

Black Beetle. Whoever he is, Black Beetle has consistently been a thorn in Booster Gold's side since our hero's earliest adventures as Rip Hunter's time-traveling associate. Few villains have caused Booster such emotional distress or been such a threat to the time-space continuum. For those reasons alone, Black Beetle should be considered Booster's most dangerous foe.

Chronos II. A time-traveling thief with strong opposition to the Linear Men and his own city outside of time, Walker Gabriel makes a great candidate for long-running anti-hero who could work at odds to Booster Gold's directives to maintain an ideal history of the DCU. Who knows, given enough time, they could even learn to admit a grudging respect for one another's work.

Lady Chronos. Booster Gold needs a femme fatale working at cross paths to test both his abilities and his resolve. In her previous encounters with Booster Gold, Lady Chronos teased our hero with a glimpse of more relationship to come. Let the sparks fly! (Adding Gabriel to this dynamic could be even better: multiple Chronoses and Booster Gold all working to "fix" the same problem in their own way with their own motivations and ethics and romantic entanglements. Yeah, I'd read that.)

Mr. Mind. No villain has appeared in more issues with Booster Gold than the Venusian worm who has so bedeviled Captain Marvel. That association should continue, as it seems highly improbable that the devious Mind would ever forgive Booster for thwarting his universe-dominating plans — in multiple timelines!

Monarch. The alternate-universe Nathaniel Adam, normally associated with Captain Atom, may be the most unlikely name on my list, but keep in mind that his history is also interwoven with Booster Gold — who once foiled Monarch's plans only through an accident of his genetic history — and Waverider and the Linear Men. (And Booster's long association with Atom should probably allow him some crossover in foes. After all, the uber-militaristic Captain Atom is just as all-American as uber-capitalistic Booster Gold.) In his many iterations throughout the multiverse, Monarch has been incredibly powerful and hell-bent on universal domination, and no Time Master should ignore him. (Honestly, I'd put Monarch on this list if for no other reason than to see if Booster could "correct" the twist ending of Armageddon 2001.)

Weapons Master. He's not generally recognized as being in the same league as Mr. Mind or Monarch, but any recurring time-traveling foe of the Justice League should cause concern for anyone. More importantly, Weapons Master travels through time and steals history's greatest weapons to use against his foes, which means that he and Booster Gold think a lot alike. It would be fun to see the two of them matching wits across spacetime.

Those are my top picks. Do you agree? Who did I leave out?

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Continuing Monday's discussion of who I would put in Booster Gold's rogues gallery: Booster Gold is unique among DC's heroes because his "secret" identity is also heroic. Booster hides his job as multiverse-spanning Time Master behind his public persona of glory-hogging Justice Leaguer. That means that he needs two sets of rogues, one to oppose each role.

When considering who I would include in either set of Booster's foes, I focused on characters who thematically matched Booster's personality, history, skills, and ideals. I generally gave extra weight to characters Booster has some experience with in the past, but I didn't let that get in the way of two who have never appeared in the same comic as our hero but make great foils to contrast Booster's greatest flaws.

Presented in alphabetical order, these are my top six suggestions to comprise the Rogues Gallery of Booster Gold, time-traveling member of the Justice League.

Broderick, Duela Dent, Maxwell Lord, Royal Flush Gang, Sportsmaster, T.O. Morrow

Broderick. Most super villains are obsessed with their heroes, and who has more cause to hate Bootser Gold than a federal agent from the future who pursed criminal Michael Jon "Booster" Carter into the present and got stuck here? Watching Booster rise to fame and fortune while he was locked away from friends and family... that sounds to me like a good reason to hold a grudge.

Duela Dent, aka The Joker's Daughter. In many ways, Duela is the anti-Micheal Jon Carter. Just as Booster models himself after the 20th-century heroes he idolized, she is obsessed with villains and has gone out of her way to associate herself with them in a desperate need for acceptance and validation. I think she would be ideal for an ongoing character study of Booster's more questionable psychological and ethical motivations. (While the New 52 has made Duela darker, I don't see why Rebirth couldn't mover her closer to her multiverse-spanning pre-Flashpoint origins.)

Maxwell Lord. Corporate raider, employer, rival, murderer, manipulator: for so many reasons, Max should be Booster's arch nemesis in any timeline.

Royal Flush Gang. Booster's first Justice League foes are a visual symbol of Booster's greatest mistake: the gamble that nearly ruined his life. They'll always be associated with Booster Gold, and they always should be.

Sportsmaster: Stop me if this sounds familiar: Lawrence "Crusher" Crock was a brilliant athlete who cheated at football and turned to theft. Just as Duela darkly reflects Booster's psychology, Sportsmaster is a cautionary tale about his actual life choices. What do you do when confronted with someone who has made all the same choices as you did but turned out wrong? Sportsmaster could be Booster's own reclamation project.

T.O. Morrow. Best known as the father of the Red Tornado, T.O. Morrow invented a television that allowed him to see into the future and use its technology to lead a life of crime and triumph over the Justice League itself. Not only has Morrow tangentially crossed paths with Booster on many occasions over the years, he is capable of understanding Booster's "past" and using it against him to gain leverage in his criminal enterprises going forward.

Those are my top picks. Who have I missed? Who would you have chosen instead?

We'll discuss my choices for villains to battle Booster Gold in his more important (and far less public) role as a Time Master next week.

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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?

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Take that, Peter Platinum!

Last week's poll question: Who do you consider to be Booster Gold's arch-nemesis? (64 votes)

Attention novice comic book writers: if you want to create an arch enemy for your hero, have him kill off the hero's best friend. Presto. Instant arch-nemesis!

Honestly, I would have thought the Royal Flush Gang would have made a better showing. I suppose it is hard to be taken seriously when you always lose to a B-list hero.

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On Twitter, Diabolu Frank, aka @CommanderBlanx, said his most memorable Booster foe was Chiller. What else would you expect from someone who runs a website devoted to Justice League Detroit?

Last week's poll question: Who is Booster Gold's most memorable foe? (40 votes)

I imagine that most of you won't see today's Thanksgiving-themed question until Monday. Given that Thanksgiving is official holiday of leftovers, that's probably appropriate.

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