Friday, April 20, 2012
Booster Gold International: Germany
Germany is the economic engine of the European continent, so would Booster Gold feel right at home there? Since we started the week with news from Germany's Morgenstern (one of Booster's biggest fans), it seems right that we should let him close the week with today's entry in the "Booster Gold International" files:
To me, he is the most American kind of hero, even more so than Superman or Captain America. Instead of simply being an example of how 'a true American Hero' should be, Booster Gold is an example how an American Hero would be (in good and bad). His obvious flaws are not there to make him more likrable (like when Superman wonders if he is doing enough or maybe even too much to help mankind), but to make him more believable.
But that just explains how Booster relates to the American culture (from our perspective), but not to us. This can be boiled down to a single feature of our favourite Time Master: The mistakes he makes and how he deals with them.
There is a long list of screw-ups, disasters or even outright crimes that can be attributed to Booster, but eventually he owns up to them. He accepts his responsibility and even is willing to go to jail for them. Yet his story is not one of simple redemption, of a character who did wrong in the past and suddenly turns his life around and banishes all his vices of the past. Instead Booster is still a man with weaknesses, but one who tries his best to learn from his past and not to repeat them, yet still manages to come up with new ones.
Other character at DC (*cough* Hal Jordan) need a huge retcon every few years to wipe the slate clean of all their mistakes to salvage them, while with Booster Gold they are used to form and grow someone who went through what was most likely the biggest & most cohesive character development of the past 10 years.
Thank you for those great points about Booster's appeal, Morgenstern. We will soon look at Booster Gold from the Swiss point-of-view. If you are from another country and wish to share what Booster Gold would mean to your culture, drop me an email at webmaster at Boosterrific.com.
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