Friday, December 4, 2015
30 Years of Power
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the first appearance of Booster Gold, I've spent the year asking Dan Jurgens questions about Booster Gold's earliest adventures. Today I conclude this year-long column with two final questions about Booster's powers.
In the pages of Secret Origins #35 (1989), Mark Waid pointed out that all of Booster's original powers and abilities were based on equipment found in Superman's pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths adventures, including Superboy's Legion flight-ring, Brainiac's force-field, and Lex Luthor's power suit. Most of those original powers are still part of Booster's ability set today, except for the Mass Dispersal Force, originally based on Jor-El's Phantom Zone Projector.
Being able to dematerialize and rematerialize matter at will is a pretty significant power. I asked Jurgens why it faded into the land of forgotten powers so quickly.
People seemed to have a hard time grasping what it was.
On top of that, I'd had a conversation with a couple of people at DC who thought it seems a bit too "magical". So, with that in mind, we dropped it.
On the other hand, one of the most enduring components of Booster's power set didn't have any clear antecedent: his Booster Shots ray blasts.
What could have inspired Jurgens to give Booster ranged gauntlet attacks? And perhaps more importantly, which came first, the power or the "pun"-ny name?
Good question!
The name really did come first in that case. I had been scrawling ideas in a note bad -- just sort of an idea matrix, if you will -- and wrote down "Booster Shots".
Once I did that, I simply had to find a way to use it!
There you have it. (And yes, I did save that one for last because Jurgens said it was a good question. Hooray, me.)
Thank you, Dan Jurgens. I've really enjoyed quizzing you on thirty-year-old trivia.
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