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Boosterrific.com: The Complete, Annotated Adventures of Booster Gold
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Showing posts 11 - 15 of 27 matching: max

Monday, January 7, 2019

The Worst of the Worst

What does it take to make a villain a hero's arch-enemy? If it's familiarity, then the villains vying for Booster Gold's most-hated award must be one of these:

Royal Flush Gang and Jonar Jon Carter (aka Supernova III): These long-time foes are tied with 7 encounters each.

The Director (The 1000): The Director was certainly the most dominant of Booster's early villains, racking up 8 encounters before his untimely demise.

Black Beetle: The villain with the most central role in Booster Gold's second volume, Black Beetle crossed paths with our hero 12 times with hints of more to come. Unfortunately, his story will probably remain forever untold thanks to Flashpoint and the arrival of the New 52.

Mr. Mind: Mister Mind has a surprisingly high count of 19 encounters with Booster Gold, a statistic increased both by his tendency to masquerade undetected as Booster's allies and his role in the weekly 52 title.

Maxwell Lord IV: Few characters have such frequently recurring roles in Booster's adventures as Max Lord, who has amassed a total of 65 encounters with our hero to date. Sure, most of those appearances were in supporting roles for the Justice League International (and all of those appearances take place outside modern Rebirth DCnU continuity), but nothing makes for a better antagonist than a former friend and mentor gone bad.

Now that you've seen the numbers, what do you say? Which villain deserves the title of Booster Gold's arch-nemesis?

This week's poll question: Which villain do you consider to be Booster Gold's arch-enemy? Please visit the Boosterrific Polls page to view results for this week's poll.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: black beetle director of death maxwell lord mister mind polls royal flush gang supernova villains

Friday, December 14, 2018

The Booster Gold Revenge Squad

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, 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.

Comments (3) | Add a Comment | Tags: broderick duela dent maxwell lord royal flush gang sportsmaster t.o. morrow villains

Friday, August 24, 2018

Alternate (History) Covers

DCComics.com released some alternate covers for upcoming issues of Heroes in Crisis via , including this J.G. Jones alternate featuring Booster Gold and Harley Quinn.

© DC Comics

It looks like that will be a 1-in-50 "chase" variant, meaning that comic shops will get one for every fifty of the regular covers they order. (For obvious reasons, these are also called "incentive" variants, as they incentivize shops to order more comics than they otherwise would.) Comic shops price these rarer variants according to the purchase threshold, so expect to pay a pretty penny to acquire this cover, probably three or more times the $4 cover price.

There will also be 1-in-100 and 1-in-200 variants, the second of which is by Francesco Mattina and depicts a very bloody Harley wearing Booster's broken visor. Good luck finding that one for less than $50.

In addition to those rare variants, DC also released the Ryan Sook standard alternate covers for the first three Heroes in Crisis issues. Each depicts an "incident report" based on more traumatic moments in the lives of DC heroes. These are purportedly from the files of Sanctuary, "a facility designed to allow superheroes to process the trauma of those not-so-heroic moments." These traumatic moments include the death of Superman, Batman's broken back, Aquaman's lost arm, and Jason Todd's death. Oddly, they also include Wonder Woman's assassination of Maxwell Lord.

That seems to imply that Lord has died at Wonder Woman's hand. Where does this fit in continuity?

When last we saw him in the pages of Justice League vs Suicide Squad (2016), Lord was still alive and continuing his villainous ways. Since the original Justice League International never existed and Ted Kord is still alive in the DCnU, the events kicking off Infinite Crisis that led directly to Lord's death and eventual rebirth must have played out somewhat differently than originally seen in Wonder Woman #219 (2005) and Brightest Day (2010). Does this cover reference that old continuity destroyed by Flashpoint? Or are we being given a glimpse of a as yet unrevealed relationship between Lord and Wonder Woman in the DCnU? (Could Lord be behind the deaths at Sanctuary?)

Maybe we'll find out more when Heroes in Crisis finally sees print.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: continuity covers dccomics.com harley quinn heroes in crisis jg jones max lord rebirth ryan sook wonder woman

Monday, September 4, 2017

Gladys Is Real to Me

Labor Day is intended to celebrate the labor movement by giving everyone a day off from work. Some of us do a better job of not working than others. Take this example by Booster Gold:

© DC Comics
Formerly Known as the Justice League #1 (2003)

Whatever you're doing to celebrate Labor Day today, work twice as hard at it for me!

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: beefcake formerly known as the justice league holidays labor day maxwell lord

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Kilg%re Rising

Boosterrific.com tracks a lot of things about Booster Gold. Most of the things it tracks (if not all the things it tracks) are trivial. Some of them aren't even directly about Booster Gold but how his fans interact with him.

Among the many things Boosterrific.com keeps its eye on is the list of characters in the DCU who have crossed paths with our hero. The site tracks how many "clicks" those character links get in a 30-day span. You can see the most popular in the "SITE INFORMATION & STATISTICS" box on the home page. Since I started tracking this in 2012, one unusual name in particular has almost always been at or near the top of this list. Kilg%re.

For those of you who don't know, Kilg%re is a minor Flash villain (debuting in 1987's Flash #3), an alien artificial intelligence determined to make the Earth safe for machine kind by exterminating humanity. Kilg%re was retroactively integrated into the biography of Maxwell Lord in Justice League International #12 in 1988.

Kilg%re has only a tangential relationship with Booster Gold. So why does he keep topping my click-through list? Is it because people see the name "Kilg%re" and wonder who that could be? Is there a huge Kilg%re fan group following Kilg%re's adventures online? Is it because Kilg%re has infiltrated the Internet and keeps Googling itself? I have no idea.

Every once in a while, I clear my history table, yet Kilg%re always finds his way back. Forget Lex Luthor, Joker, and Darkseid. For my money, Kilg%re is the one villain that just won't stay down.

Comments (5) | Add a Comment | Tags: kilg%re maxwell lord website update


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