Remember the good old days when Booster Gold was leading his own team of international heroes? No, not the Nu52 Justice League International. I'm talking a team of real heroes. I'm talking about the Conglomerate.

Back in 1991, the original Justice League International was falling apart over Max Lord's apparent death (his first second of many; the man has more lives than Resurrection Man). Meanwhile the corporately-owned Conglomerate was a stable, productive organization, thanks in no small part to Booster Gold's sterling leadership.

With the JLI disbanded, Blue Beetle felt sure he could turn to his best bud and roommate Booster Gold for a hand up. Too bad for Beetle, the Conglomerate's corporate sponsors had some pretty high standards for admission.

Guess who got to break the bad news?

Poor Booster. Sometimes it's no fun to be the boss.

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Seventeen years ago today, DC released what remains my least favorite comic to include an appearance by Booster Gold. That comic was Total Justice #1.

Why is this my least favorite book? It was inked by Dick Giordiano and lettered by Gaspar Saldino, two longtime DC legends. Too bad inking and letters can't make up for the abysmal script by Christopher Priest and eye-gouging pencils by Ramon Bernado. No doubt the artists are fully aware that they are working on a glorified toy advertisement — the issue cover proudly procliams "based on the Kenner acton figures" — and they can't be bothered to make themselves care about it.

See what I mean? Those 4 wordy panels include Booster's only dialogue in the series, and are pretty indicative of the rest of the issue. Why is so much dialogue necessary? This miniseries is supposed to promote action figures, not talking dolls!

(While we're on those panels, who is Gypsy even talking to? Captain Atom? "Jar head" is slang for a marine, not an Air Force Captain! Is she saying that Booster's head looks like a jar? If so, shouldn't the artist draw Booster's head to actually look like a jar? Grrr. It's just all so bad!)

That's just a taste of what is bad here. Nothing about this series makes much sense. Heroes lose their powers. But only some of their powers. Sometimes. Marian Manhunter is excluded from action because his powers might cut out, but Aquaman keeps his powers because they are "native." The Beetle's Bug works just fine, but Booster Gold is kept on the sidelines because his technology won't work. Suffice it to say, this is not Christopher Priest's best work.

I've heard a lot of people over the years say that they liked the figures this series promoted. Part of the draw was the novelty. It might be hard to imagine, but the Total Justice toys were the first DC heroes action figures released since the Super Powers Collection of the 1980s. Too bad they all had "extreme" 1990s poses. Maybe I would have enjoyed the comic more if they had led to a Booster Gold figure. But no.

Even though there was some appreciation for the figures, I've never heard anyone say a kind word about the comics. There's a reason for that: they were terrible. Without a doubt, the worst Booster Gold comics to date.

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On this day in 1994, Zero Hour concluded with issue #0. (The mini-series counted backwards from #4 to #0.)

Booster Gold had been erased from time through the events of earlier issues, and this issue doesn't actually show Booster return. However, he's around for Extreme Justice #0 a few months later, so I think we can safely assume he got back just fine. Here's hoping he can repeat that feat by 2014!

Over the years Zero Hours has been much criticized as a mediocre event used to justify rewriting the convoluted history of the DC Universe. In that way it was similar to Flashpoint.

Where Zero Hour is drastically superior to Flashpoint is in the fold-out timeline on the back cover that shows explicitly what history had been changed by the event. Two years into the New 52, we still don't have any such guide for whatever nebulous changes Flashpoint made.

It isn't surprising that history repeats itself. It's just interesting to see the new wrinkles as it does so.

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Okay, so there won't be any Booster Gold comics for awhile. This isn't the first time Booster has gone through a bit of a drought. Our hero was rarely seen around the turn of the millennium, too. That made him perfect fodder for reinvention in DC's Tanget Comics alternate universe titles.

Tangent Comics: Tales of the Green Lantern #1, "Brightest Light," by Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning and Mike Mayhew/Wade Von Grawbadger

On this day in 1998, Booster Gold was reimagined in Tangent Comics: Tales of the Green Lantern #1. The comic features three possible origins for the Tangent Universe's Green Lantern. In the "Brightest Light," Booster plays "the crooked billionaire playboy" who had his minion Kilowog murder Lois Lane aboard his yacht, the Black Condor. Booster also kills Kilowog before getting his own comeuppance.

This was hardly the first time that Booster was given the villain treatment. He was also bad guy in Justice League America Annual #10 in 1996. Given DC's mistreatment of JLI characters over the years, we should probably be glad that it was Maxwell Lord and not Booster Gold, who became the heavy in "Infinite Crisis."

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On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed Virginian Richard Henry Lee's resolution for independence from Great Britain, and thus was born the United States of America.

The adoption of the declaration of that new-found independence two days later is what we now celebrate, but the real secret of America's independence is the role that Booster Gold played in ensuring it ever happened.

What really happened in Independence Hall in the summer of 1776? The world may never know.

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