Yes, that banner up there says "one page at a time," but today you're getting two!

In 1989, a three-part story written by Cary Bates in Captain Atom #26 , #27, and #28 that more-or-less resolved the messiest parts of the backstory of why Captain Atom lied to the Justice League about his personal history.

(Turns out the adventures of the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Captain Atom were just a government cover story to disguise how Atom was really blackmailed into participating in the weapons test that gave him his powers by a criminal conspiracy of Vietnam vets in a plot stolen directly from Lethal Weapon. Like I said, it's messy.)

Anyway, the point here is that Booster Gold was one of the three Leaguers who confronted the good Captain with evidence of his mounting lies. Since Booster played a significant role in only the first two chapters of this story, appearing only on the first page of the third, I figured I might as well present my favorite pages from those two issues at the same time.

First is Captain Atom #26. As my favorite page, I could have chosen a sequence earlier in the book in which Booster, Blue Beetle, and Mister Miracle clasp hands then go undercover... by wearing sunglasses. But for full-page goodness, I'm going with page 22, in which a thief from the future living under an assumed name unironically demands "no more secrets"!

Yeah, the posed figures are stiff, but I'm enamored by the layout. Note how the top of the page is a separate panel presenting an establishing shot of the city skyline, and the tail on Booster's speech balloon acts like a pointer showing where they are, as well as allowing Booster to speak first despite being in the center of the page. I assume the balloons were all created by letterer Carrie Spiegel on top of Pat Broderick's art. Well done.

In the very next issue, Captain Atom #27, my favorite page is also based mostly on what Booster has to say. Despite never having been seen wearing a deerstalker cap or skis, our hero is suddenly an amateur detective and an expert skier!

And he flies faster than the Blue Beetle's bug? Oh, Booster, is there anything you can't do?

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Despite the fact that Captain Atom spends most of the issue running away from the New Gods' Black Racer on the astral plane, somehow Booster Gold and Black Racer never come face to face in Captain Atom #17.

So instead, I have to settle on page 5 as my favorite page of the issue.

Yes, Booster plays a more important role on page 8 when he identifies a nearby hero who can help the situation (future enemy Brainwave!), but what I like specifically about this page is that it's Booster Gold who carries the wounded Captain Atom to safety.

For one thing, while armored, the good Captain weighs three-quarters of a ton (according to the Captain himself in Justice League: Generation Lost #6), so Booster is the only hero present who could lift him.

More importantly, in years to come, it will be Captain Atom who cradles Booster Gold after the Devastator leaves our hero for dead in Justice League America #89. That's some good symmetry.

Both Booster and Atom joined the DCU at almost the same time following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and both have always represented different, competing aspects of American culture that are just as relevant today as they were in the 1980s. I always like seeing them on panel together.

Still... one of these days, I really would like to get a showdown between Booster Gold and the Black Racer. I also always enjoy seeing Booster Gold cheat Death.

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If you've ever read Captain Atom #16, you can probably guess my favorite page, but here, I'll save you the trouble of guessing:

Booster Gold busting through trees like a super man! Blue Beetle swooping out of the sky to rescue a buxom damsel from drowning like some kind of dark knight! And in place of a Wonder Woman, we get a Mister Miracle! It's like a Justice League International roll-call.

Can't you just imagine this animated and set to the Superfriends theme with Ted Knight calling out their names? I sure can.

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If you've seen any movie filmed in New York City during the 1970s and 80s, you know that town was an absolute cesspool overflowing with garbage and urban blight. Thankfully, one visionary man bucked the system, seized power, and began cleaning up the city in the mid 1990s.

Yes, Booster. That man was the dictator Monarch. And readers of Extreme Justice #7, released on this date in 1995, would have recognized him as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Therefore, the question at the heart of this story isn't whether or not the familiar Monarch had become a sheep, but just which wolf he was.

First, a bit of backstory. Debuting in Armageddon 2001 #1 (1991), Monarch was a corrupted hero who had grown so frustrated at how bad the world was being run, he was determined to take it over himself. The time-traveling would-be world dictator (co-created by former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Archie Goodwin with shades of Doctor Doom and Kang the Conqueror) had already had run-ins with almost every super hero on Earth.

What makes Monarch particularly unique in the DC Universe isn't the character's origins or motivations, but his very complicated relationship with Captain Atom. See, as originally planned, Monarch *was* Captain Atom. DC's writers and artists seeded clues to Monarch's true identity for months, but when news of the planned reveal leaked to the general public, editors made a last-minute change to his secret identity.

However, no one liked the change (perhaps because of all the strong clues already in print to the contrary), and thus would begin years of stories revising Monarch's identity and intentions. Stories like this one.

Those who remember Extreme Justice often remember the "extreme" art, which makes it easy to say that the strength of the series was writer Dan Vado's character-driven melodramas and morality plays. What is the cost of being a hero? What defines a villain? Who are we all, really? This issue doesn't answer those questions, but life is about the journey, not the destination.

Just remember to never, ever trust a tyrant like Monarch.

Especially not if your name is Booster Gold.

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Here's an interesting footnote in the adventures of Booster Gold.

George Morrow at CBR.com recently referenced a 2006 Comicon.com Pulse article in which Jennifer M. Contino interviewed comedian Patton Oswalt, writer of JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, about his "upcoming" contribution to the Justice League Unlimited comic book:

THE PULSE: Out of all the superhero cartoons that have come and gone, what do you like the best about JLU?

OSWALT: The wide-ranging aspect. Also, they don't just focus on the Big 5. I also like what they do with the villains. I wish they'd just do an Injustice Society cartoon. Wow!

THE PULSE: That would be cool. What is your JLU story about? How did you get involved with doing a story for that imprint?

OSWALT: Well, I tried out to be the monthly writer, but they thought a lot of my story pitches blew. But there was one they liked, which involves Booster Gold and The Atomic Knight. So that's the one I'm doing.

THE PULSE: Out of the zillions of heroes in the JLU universe, how did you settle on Booster Gold and the Atomic Knight?

OSWALT: I thought of the kind of story I'd like to tell first, and then went through my old Who's Who and figured out who'd be the best characters to tell that story emotionally. We'll see.

As we all know by now, we didn't see. Justice League Unlimited was cancelled in 2008, never having included any story crossing Booster Gold with the Atomic Knights. But Oswalt is very correct that it would make a great pairing.

Every Booster booster knows that Booster Gold arrived in our "present day" on August 20, 1985, a date our hero selected in part because it occurred before a nuclear conflict of the late 20th century (Booster Gold #14). But what you may not have realized is that the nuclear war of Booster's future history was better known as The Great Disaster of the DC Universe, and according to the heroic Atomic Knights, it happened in October 1986 ("Rise of the Atomic Knights", Strange Adventures #117).

Given that the goal of the Atomic Knights was to rebuild society after the disaster, a crossover story between them and future rags-to-riches success story Booster Gold would be a good story set-up!

In hindsight we know definitively there was no nuclear disaster in the DCU in 1986. Superman discovered that the original stories of the Atomic Knights were all fictional simulations (in DC Comics Presents #57, 1983), and the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Atomic Knights would go on to aid the city of Bludhaven after a scaled-down nuclear event in Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven — a mini-series drawn by Dan Jurgens!

Will we ever get to read Oswalt's story? Only time will tell.

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