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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 36 matching: origins

Friday, September 16, 2022

My Favorite Pages: Booster Gold 9

My Favorite Pages

To borrow another quote from Tom King's interview with Russ Burlingame exclusive to The Gold Exchange The Boosterrific Edition book:

Booster puts up a lot of shields — he's got forcefields; it's a good metaphor — but he puts up a lot of shields around himself, and some of those shields hide a lot of depth.

I couldn't agree more with that. If there's anything that Booster Gold is known for, it's his over-the-top confidence, but that confidence is often just an act, a projection of how Booster *wants* people to see him.

Rarely is the difference between Booster's private and public persona more visible than in my favorite page from Booster Gold volume 1 #9, the scene in which Michael Jon "Booster" Carter officially becomes Booster Gold.

© DC Comics

Golly, I miss thought balloons in comics.

That "At least it's... different!" really sums up another key aspect of Booster's personality: his determination to make the best of every situation (even when he's responsible for making the current situation so bad).

He might be a time traveler, but Booster Gold is always looking forward.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: balloons favorite pages gold exchange interviews origins ronald reagan russ burlingame tom king

Monday, August 24, 2020

What Booster Gold Fans Learned From FanDome

DC's self-contained convention was this past weekend, and while it was a smorgasbord for fans of super hero movies, television, and video games, there really wasn't much news about DC's plans for comic books. And since Booster Gold doesn't exist in any current movies, television, or video games, our hero was nowhere to be found.

The closest we got to Booster was this Easter Egg spotted by the eagle-eyed Ouoya (@Ouoya on Twitter.com) in the Suicide Squad Versus The Justice League video game trailer:

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

Suicide Squad Versus The Justice League is set in the same continuity as Rocksteady Studios' Batman: Arkham series of games. Blaze Comics appeared in Gotham City in Batman: Arkham Origins (2013) and Batman: Arkham Knight (2015).

It's good to know that Blaze is still doing well enough to have a storefront in Metropolis, but you're going to have to wait a while to see it for yourself. Suicide Squad Versus The Justice League isn't scheduled to be released before August 2022.

So maybe that's not the Booster Gold bonanza Booster boosters might have been hoping for, but it's not nothing. And since FanDome was split into two weeks with most of the comics-related content pushed to September 12, we may still hear more about Booster yet.

Thanks for bringing that screenshot to our attention, Ouoya.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: 2020 arkham knight arkham origins batman conventions ouoyo suicide squad twitter.com video games

Friday, November 29, 2019

Gold by Any Other Name

Although I tried on Monday, I can't say enough good things about this week's new hardcover reprint Booster Gold: The Big Fall.

In addition to all the great art, the book contains a 25-page "The Making of Booster Gold" appendix of historical detail, including among other things the aforementioned original art for Booster Gold #6, some promotional material from DC, pictures of Jurgens' original model for Skeets, and key to today's post, Jurgens' original pitch for the series, which reads in part:

Metropolis University, 2162. Twentieth Century Super Heroes 101 is in session and Professor Fairmont drones on and on. Michael Stewart, former amateur athlete surpreme and star quarterback of the football team is bored. To him, super heroes are a boring lot. A bunch of do gooders who just didn't know how to take advantage of a good situation.

Did you catch that? In Jurgen's original pitch, Booster Gold's "real" name was to be Micheal Stewart!

If you think that bit of ephemeral comic book trivia is as cool as I do, you'll love Booster Gold: The Big Fall, now available at your Local Comic Shop — and coming to bookstores next month, just in time for Christmas shopping season.

© DC Comics

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: big fall dan jurgens reprints secret origins

Friday, October 18, 2019

This Day in History: Clarification or Retcon?

The DC Comics reading world of 1986 was not ready for the debut of Booster Gold. Who could blame them? Gambler-turned-thief-turned-celebrity sounds more like a traditional DC villain than a hero. Anti-heroes wouldn't become all the rage for a few more years yet. Creator Dan Jurgens was ahead of his time.

The letter columns of early Booster Gold books were filled with complaints that the hero was inherently unlikable. A typical letter, from Booster Gold #5 called him "egotistical, self-absorbed, conceited, self-hyping, and immodest," which even Booster boosters have to admit was a pretty accurate assessment. This situation was only made worse once Booster's origin was revealed in issue #6. No less a moral authority than Superman thought Booster was "nothing more than a 25th-century crook!"

Souring fan reaction to the character was a major factor in the cancellation of the original Booster Gold series. Jurgens resisted polishing Booster's rougher edges, and the Powers That Were decided to move Booster in a new direction with Justice League International where Booster's less palatable character traits were often exploited for comic effect. This worked out in Booster's favor. It was with the JLI that Booster really became a star.

As such things go, public demand for the Justice League led to the JLI team being featured in three consecutive issues of Secret Origins, giving Jurgens another opportunity to sell Booster's origin to the comics reading public. This time he did what he had previously been unwilling to do: he made Booster Gold sympathetic.

In Secret Origins #35, released on this day in 1988, it is revealed that Michael "Booster" Carter only started gambling on his own football games in order to afford an expensive operation for his sick mother. No longer was he a selfish lout. Now Booster was a good son!

© DC Comics

"Child with a heart of gold breaking the law to help his family" may not be the most original origin, but it did the job burnishing Booster's tarnished reputation with readers. Booster's worst mistakes could now be chalked up to good intentions. I'm sure Superman would agree that even 25th-century crooks deserve a second chance.

Comments (5) | Add a Comment | Tags: blue beetle dan jurgens origins secret origins

Friday, December 22, 2017

The Hard Cover We Deserve

Last Wednesday, CBR.com ran Jeffrey Renaud's interview with Dan Jurgens about the Booster Gold appearance in Superman's Action Comics #993. The interview included the following tidbit from Jurgens:

It's kind of weird in a way, because if you go all the way back to Booster Gold, Volume One, Superman was a part of Booster's origin story. Right about then, John Byrne came to DC to reboot Superman, and we had to do some surgery to the book so it fit what John was doing.

I still have the unused pages from the book, which are still waiting for the Booster Gold hardcover so they can see print. No. That is not a hint. Uh-uh. Not at all. Nope.

Superman was supposed to be in Booster Gold #1?!

I probably shouldn't be too surprised. For those of you who don't know, Booster's origins, as originally conceived, were tied to the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Silver/Bronze Age Superman mythos. Booster was supposed to have stolen his equipment from the Superman Museum (not the Space Museum). His force field belt would have belonged to the original Braniac, his costume would have been made from Lex Luthor's power armor, and his Legion Flight Ring would have been Superboy's. That would certainly have given an extra edge to the Booster Gold/Superman rivalry.

I have to wonder, did any of that make it into the script or pencils of Booster Gold #1 before Byrne's post-Crisis plans to streamline Superman continuity? Even if Superman only made a cameo appearance in the book, it still would have been his first post-Crisis appearance as well as the first time Jurgens drew Superman. What a treat!

Hey, DC! Give us that book already!

(Thanks to Damian Damex for ensuring I saw this particular bit of news.)

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: cbr.com dan jurgens interviews jeffrey renaud origins superman


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