The DC Multiverse can be a darkly unforgiving place to live. One day you're a hero, the next you're a villain. Sometimes you don't even get the chance to find out what you are. Today we look at one of those unfortunate souls, Alexandra Gianopoulos.

Alexandra's story begins in Booster Gold Volume 2 #45 when Booster Gold falls into her bed. Literally.

Unfortunately for everyone, Booster is being pursued by Doomsday, who makes short work of her Coast City penthouse apartment, forcing Booster and Alexandra to flee. Booster soon deduces that he had unintentionally arrived in an alternate timeline orchestrated by Flash's archnemesis, Professor Zoom and sets out to apprehend the villain.

Alexandra liked the idea of a world where humans and metahumans weren't waging a world war against one another. Her own father had been killed in the fight against Emperor Aquaman, and worse, she was a closet metahuman herself. She was born a "parasite" with the innate ability to temporarily absorb the abilities of anyone she touches. The unexpected arrival of a time traveler made her think that maybe the world really could be changed for the better.

When Doomsday and Booster Gold resume their fight, Alexandra flies into action with Booster's powers. However, her rash intervention only results in all three of them being captured by the United State military (Booster Gold Volume 2 #46). When Doomsday proves too powerful to be tamed, Alexandra utilizes the military's mind control technology to force the monster to kill itself (Booster Gold Volume 2 #47).

As changes to the timestream began to eat away at Booster's memory, he heroically vows to Alexandra that he will tap into Flash's Speed Force, resolve the Flashpoint paradox, and take her with him to a better timeline.

Booster fails.

In an interesting quirk of history, death in the Flashpoint timeline was not intended to be the final fate of poor Alexandra Gianopoulos. You can see in the panels above that Alexandra nebulously disappears into the Speed Force, and in comics, if there is no body, there is no death.

As DC timeline rebooted itself into the New 52 Universe, we can be sure that Alexandra was to join the reformed Justice League International. She can plainly be seen as the "woman in black" in the originally solicitated cover for Justice League International Volume 3 #1. However, for reasons that remain unclear (perhaps an editorial mandate that no characters were allowed to escape the Flashpoint paradox?), when the book was released, Alexandra had been replaced by former Global Guardian Godiva.

Alexandra will make one last appearance on the released cover of Justice League International Volume 3 #5 (another editorial oversight?), but she hasn't been seen since, a lingering reminder that time definitely does not heal all wounds.

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Over 3000 different keywords/phrases have been used over the years here on the Boosterrific! Blog, some obviously more often than others. Some of them are recurring categories, perhaps first and foremost among them being "solicitations" and "new releases," which alert Booster boosters to upcoming and new Booster Gold appearances in comic books.

Select few recurring items over the years have earned their own banner images. Click on any of the following banners to see their associated posts.

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Every family has its bad seeds. While many might suggest that Booster Gold is the problem child in his own family, the real black sheep of the Carter clan is actually Booster's father, the good-for nothing Jon Carter.

In the very first telling of Booster's origin (by Skeets to Superman in Booster Gold Volume 1 #6), Booster's father is mentioned only in passing. Booster later confirms his father's absence from his 25th-century life while relating the story to his friends in Booster Gold Volume 1 #13: "You see, my old man was a compulsive gambler. He lost everything we had a couple of times over and finally took off when I was four."

Booster led everyone to believe that his father wasn't particularly important in his life after the year 2446 other than for setting the example on how gambling can destroy families (thus making young Booster's turn to gambling even more tragic).

The truth is actually much worse.

Booster Gold Volume 2 #44

As it turns out, before Jon "Jonar" Carter* abandoned his family, he was actually quite abusive to his wife, to the point where Mrs. Carter required hospitalization on multiple occasions (Action Comics #995). It is no surprise that after he left, his mother swore off relationships, declaring that she was "fine without a man!" in Secret Origins #35.

Despite this history of abuse, young Michael Jon "Booster" Carter always craved the approval of his absentee father. After achieving early success as a quarterback at Gotham University, Booster sought his father out. But approval was not forthcoming.

Instead, Mr. Carter manipulated his son into a deepening spiral of illegal activity for his own personal gain.

Booster Gold Volume 2 #0

Despite the warnings of his twin sister, Michelle, Booster was unwilling or unable to extract himself from this bad situation. In 2462, he was caught, expelled, and ostracized, leading him to exercise more of his trademark questionable judgement by stealing a time machine and running away into the past.

Rather than stand by his son, Mr. Carter turned state's evidence against his former gambling associates, even going so far as trying to sell out his own son (as Booster would only discover many years later after a time travel accident in the aforementioned Action Comics #995).

Rather than serve out a ten-year prison term for his own bad behavior, Mr. Carter jumped at the chance to join Black Beetle and Mister Mind in their time-manipulating scheme to seek revenge on Booster and Rip Hunter, who had prevented Mister Mind from taking over reality in 52. Despite the fact that Mr. Carter was little more than a small-time crook, the supervillains needed his Carter family DNA to access the powers of the of the Supernova costume created by Hunter.

It was while masquerading as Supernova that father and son would once again cross paths in Booster Gold Volume 2 #2 before the mask came off in Booster Gold Volume 2 #4.

Once the truth was revealed, Booster cut off his father's own ear to excise the Venusian worm in his brain and free him from the villains' control (Booster Gold Volume 2 #10). Shortly afterwards, Ted Kord sacrificed himself to correct an unstable alternate timeline. Mr. Carter hasn't been seen since.

Understandably, Booster has been in no hurry to re-establish a connection.

Action Comics #995

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

* In four decades of Booster Gold comics, the elder Mr. Carter is identified by name only once: as "Jon" in 2008's Booster Gold Volume 2 #10. In a response to the 2010 Boosterrific.com post "Dan Jurgens on the Creation of Booster Gold," Booster booster Erin of exploringthetimelab.blogspot.com pointed out that Geoff Johns writing as Skeets in an article on the Newsarama website (presumably in 2008) explained "'Jon' is a 25th century shortening for Jonar which means 'he who tried and failed.'" I have never been able to track down the original article, and the name "Jonar" has never appeared in print in an official DC publication. But I believe Erin and a significant portion of the fanbase seems to accept this as a fact, so Boosterrific.com has adopted "Jonar" as a convenient shorthand to differentiate father and son who share the name "Jon."

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Last week, DC released Super-Pets Special: Bitedentity Crisis, an anthology issue featuring such famous pet sidekicks as Krypto, Ace, Streaky, and Bitewing to name but a few. There are also many lesser known pets in here, some of whom don't even have any super powers! It seems every animal showed up for this party, every animal except two: Booster Gold's housecats, Jack and Jill.

That's right, Booster Gold has pets, and he always has. Jack and Jill debuted alongside Booster and his suffering secretary, Trixie Collins, in 1985's Booster Gold Volume 1 #1!

To be fair, calling them Booster's "sidekicks" might be a bit of an overstatement. Booster has never spent much time in the same room with them, and his robot buddy Skeets openly dislikes them.

Booster and Skeet's disinterest in them doesn't seem to much bother Jack and Jill. They clearly prefer to spend their time lounging around the Goldstar, Inc. offices with Trixie, where they help her manage Booster's adoring public (in Booster Gold #2), greet Jason Redfern and the alien Z (Booster Gold #6), and avoid the lecherous advances of comic book artists Benny and Marty (Booster Gold #7).

The cats spend so much time with Trixie that it would be easy to mistake her as the cats' proper owner (in as such as anyone can "own" a cat). However, Booster's self-serving manager, Dirk Davis, makes their relationship clear while rescuing them from a building collapse in Booster Gold #11. Whatever you do, don't call them "ordinary."

When Booster left Metropolis to join the Justice League International, he left Jack and Jill in Trixie's care (Booster Gold #25). They must like it there, as they haven't been seen since, not in stories with other super pets.

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The life of any comic book hero would be a lonely one if not for the many characters who have made up their supporting cast. Just as Superman has Lois Lane and Batman has Alfred, Booster Gold has also shared his adventures with quite a few people over the years. Today we look at one of those, Mindancer.

They say you never forget your first time. First love. First paycheck. First stollen time machine you used to travel back in time to become a super hero. And even first defeat.

In Booster Gold's case, that means he'll always remember the first time he met Mindancer.

Blackguard gets all the fame for appearing on the cover of Booster Gold #1, but the real villain in Booster Gold's 1986 debut issue is the "unidentified, super-powered woman who," in the breathless words of WGBS television news reporter Cindy Miles, "took S.T.A.R.'s satellite guidance system from Booster Gold!"

That mysterious, garishly-costumed assailant is "an extremely dangerous" psychic mercenary codenamed Mindancer. According to Booster's sidekick Skeets, she can leach the mental energy from nearby bystanders to boost her innate telekinetic and telepathic abilities.

At the time she crossed swords with Booster Gold, she was working for The 1000, who also employed Blackguard. In fact, Booster's inaugural defeat of Blackguard led directly to his rematch with Mindancer when she was sent to spring Blackguard from Metropolis Prison in Booster Gold #2. They fight to a draw, and Mindancer escapes after Blackguard creates a distraction. Considering that escaping was her whole reason for being there, this should probably count as another win for Mindancer.

Their third encounter, inside the headquarters of The 1000 in Booster Gold #3, goes even worse for Booster, as he is left unconscious and placed in a 1000 death trap!

Booster escapes thanks only to the timely intervention of Thorn (Booster Gold #4), who also defeats Mindancer in hand-to-hand combat. Thorn tears off Mindancer's mask, revealing that her red hair is only a wig. Mindancer's true face underneath is... well, this:

Why does she look like that? We may never know. The humiliation of having her true face exposed empowers Mindancer, an "unskilled physical combatant" according to her entry in Who's Who Update '87 #4, to overwhelm Thorn and escape.

Mindancer has rarely been seen since. She next shows up in 1994's Green Lantern Volume 3 #52 as a (masked) inmate in Slabside Penitentiary for metahumans, indicating that at some point she was caught and brought to justice. It must have been a long sentence. She's not seen again until The Flash #800 (2023), where she is caught participating in a poker game with stolen goods and presumably re-imprisoned.

After nearly four decades, it doesn't look like Booster and Mindancer will be crossing paths again anytime soon. Therefore, the final record stands at Mindancer 3, Booster Gold 0, a result so lopsided, I'm sure Booster Gold would prefer to forget.

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