Per TVTropes.org, Internet Rule 63 is defined: "For every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa."

Example from instagram.com/marlon_vallieri/:

While the original pinup artist, Marlon Vallieri, identifies this piece as "Booster Gold", I like to think of it as a drawing of Booster's fraternal twin sister, Michelle, also known as the superhero Goldstar.

Although, come to think of it, I suppose it's possible that all the fan art pinups that at first glance look to be Booster Gold might really be gender-swapped Goldstars. It's all a matter of perspective, innit?

On the other hand, Skeets, being a genderless robot, is always just Skeets, and that's the way we like it!

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Not so long ago, I was asked where a new reader interested in learning more about Michael "Booster" Carter's twin sister, Michelle, should start. That's a pretty reasonable request, if an especially rare one.

Michelle doesn't have many fans who haven't already read a bunch of Booster Gold comics, mostly because Michelle really hasn't appeared in all that many comics.^† She's never appeared in a book without Booster in it.

In fact, she doesn't even appear in her first appearance! That's because we first see her portrait in a holographic globe alongside the twins' mother in Booster Gold Volume 1 #5.

Michelle's early life in the 25th-century is seen via brief glimpses during Booster Gold origin-story flashbacks in (ordered chronologically relative to Michelle's life) Booster Gold Volume 2 #0, Secret Origins #35, Justice League Quarterly #10, and Booster Gold Volume 1 #6.

We don't get to meet Michelle in person until Booster Gold Volume 1 #15, when like a God in the Machine, she descends from the heavens to save her brother's life (plus the lives of Rip Hunter, Jack Soo, and original Goldstar Trixie Collins) and return with them to the 20th-century. Not bad, so far as grand first entrances go.

Now living in the "present" day, Michelle takes over the Goldstar costume from Trixie and appears in most following issues of Volume 1 until the unfortunate events of Booster Gold #22 where — spoiler alert — she dies.

But being the twin sister of a Time Master means that there's always time for more adventures. Michelle is granted a reprieve in Booster Gold Volume 2 #1,000,000.

Thereafter she played a recurring spring role in many issues of Booster Gold Volume 2, Time Masters: Vanishing Point, and Convergence.

We haven't seen her since Rebirth-Death Metal-Infinite Frontier-Dark Crisis fully restored the DC Multiverse, but we can be sure that she's still out there helping her brother make the world(s) a better place.

For more information about Michelle, read my "Character Spotlight on Michelle Carter."

^† Michelle has appeared in a total of 42 comics since her debut in 1986. Most were written by her creator, Dan Jurgens. The rest were by Mark Waid, Geoff Johns & Jeff Katz, Chuck Dixon, Rick Remender, J.M. DeMatteis & Keith Giffen, and Jeff King & Scott Lobdell.

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Booster Gold #14 is my least favorite issue of Booster's original volume.

I can't put my finger on just one reason why, but the art is a big part. Jurgens' take on the future of the DC Universe (and sequential-panel storytelling) was clearly being influenced by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which had taken the comic-book-reading world by storm earlier that year. What works for Batman doesn't necessarily work for Booster.

It doesn't help that the crowded panels are oversaturated with secondary and pastel colors. I typically like colorist Gene D'Angelo's work, but his color choices, clearly intended to play up the psychological tension of our physically-ailing hero stuck in an era that's out to get him, are perhaps working too well for me.

That said, the issue is not entirely without redeeming value. For example, page 19 does efficiently introduce Broderick, the Dirty Harry of the 25th century. And the final page, with a deconstructed Skeets, builds to a good cliff hanger.

But for my money, the best page in the whole book is this one:

If you couldn't tell before now, I'm a sucker for the Booster/Trixie relationship. Seeing them support one another emotionally in the lamplight.... Yeah. This one's got to be my favorite.

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I hope you're in the mood for some T&A today!

Booster Gold #13 is the only time Gary Martin ever inked a Booster Gold adventure, and the difference between it and what came before is striking. Take page 10 as an example:

Surgically clean lines, heavy black shadowing, and screentone gradients all contribute to a fittingly moody environment as a weakened Booster Gold struggles back into the super-hero saddle.

Or maybe that mood is just the sexual tension between scantily-clad Trixie and full-moon Booster?

"Ready to go," indeed!

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As all Booster boosters of a certain age know, when Michael Jon "Booster" Carter first came to the 20th century back in 1985, he started a company he called Goldstar, Inc. in honor of his originally intended alter ego (which he fumbled naming in front of the United States president).

The name "Goldstar" was used a lot in the first year of Booster's adventures, eventually becoming the name of Booster's sidekick. And then, after a trip back to the future, Booster renamed his company "Booster Gold Incorporated" with very little explanation why.

Which is not to say that there wasn't a reason.

The answer lies in Russ Burlingame's exclusive interview with Dan Jurgens in a book I'm sure I haven't mentioned around here yet, The Gold Exchange: The Boosterrific Deluxe Edition:

Burlingame: It's funny. I was talking to someone younger than me, recounting the story of how Booster was originally Goldstar. And I said that I always wondered whether that was because of Goldstar, the electronics manufacturer, and whether you had really made that change, rather than it just being a throwaway gag. But that person was younger than me, so they had no idea what the company was that I was even talking about.

Jurgens: Yes. Yeah, it was, by the way. That's exactly what it was: we were into it, I had done Goldstar, and Booster's sister as well, but ultimately, they said "We've got to work away from this," and it was because there was a company out there called Goldstar, which none of us were aware of when I first started using that name. So I was like, "Okay, we've got to roll with that one too."

So yes, that is 100% true.

To be clear, United States trademark law protects a "word, phrase, or design" that distinguishes a company's goods and services from its competitors' similar goods. Therefore, while it was in Booster's best interest to rename his licensing company to avoid confusion with pre-existing international electronics company GoldStar (which you can tell your kids became part of what is now known as LG Corporation), there's no reason DC can't keep using "Goldstar" as a character name.

And now you know... the rest of the story.

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