If there's one thing that Booster Gold loves, it's stealing time machines from Rip Hunter.

On this date in 1990, Booster Gold makes a 2-page cameo appearance in Time Masters #4 just so that he can help Animal Man get his hands on one of Hunter's prototypes.

To be fair to Booster, he didn't actually know he was stealing this one. Animal Man lied about reimbursing Rip from Justice League coffers for the totally understandable personal reason that he wanted to travel back in time to save his family from being murdered. Who wouldn't do the same? (For more details on how that goes, read Animal Man #22. Spoilers: not well.)

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I've updated the pictures and links, but the text in the following post originally ran ten years ago today, on January 29, 2014. So it's a double throwback! (Will I run it again in 2034? Stick around, and we'll find out together.)

Do you remember January, 1991? The New York Giants won Super Bowl XXV. Operation Desert Storm began. Vanilla Ice won Favorite New Hip Hop Artist at the American Music Awards. Ah, those were good times. Unless you were Booster Gold.

On this date in 1991, Booster Gold was hunted by the Linear Man, the first of what would come to be recognized as the policemen of history in the DC Universe. Desperate to make Booster pay for his crime of stealing a time machine and returning to the past, the original Linear Man kidnapped and tortured Skeets. Bad cop!

Fortunately for Booster, this attack took place in The Adventures of Superman #476 — that's not a typo, kids: back in the day books kept consecutive numbering for years instead of resetting every few months — so of course Superman got involved and was displaced in time instead of our hero.

The story played out in the "Time and Time Again" storyline over the following month, but Booster Gold had already been rescued by Superman and was too busy leading the Conglomerate and watching Tonya Harding win the U.S. Figure Skating Championships to return the favor. Oh, Booster!

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As a general rule for this series, I'm going to try to steer away from full-page panels. But sometimes they're just too good to ignore.

Like this page from Booster Gold volume 1, number 8, depicting the very first flight of Booster Gold in costume:

This selection will come as no surprise to longtime Boosterrific.com boosters, as it was the panel selected to be basis of the imagemap for this site's original homepage in June 2007:

What a long, strange trip it's been, eh, Booster?

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In ancient times, May Day was a celebration of the dawning of a new season from the old, a rebirth. In the 20th century, "mayday" became a distress call for pilots.

Both of those etymologies are reflected in CRB.com's latest Booster Gold-centric clickbait, "Every Terrible DC Timeline Booster Gold Has Prevented (or Caused)" by Brandon Zachary.

As one of DC's resident time-travelers, it makes sense that Booster Gold has left an outsized impact on the DC Universe timeline over the years. While he's done some of this to protect the timeline from the influence of others, he's also sometimes done this to try and suit his own goals.

That's a fair point. Booster Gold isn't perfect, and that's a key part of why we like him.

Before you click on over to CBR, know that the article title isn't entirely accurate (surprise!). Zachary covers some of the larger (and worst) changes that Booster has made to history, but there are plenty of other terrible timelines that Booster prevented but didn't cause (like saving the multiverse from the likes of Mister Mind in 52 and Starro in Booster Gold #13, just to name a few).

And, of course, no list of the worst timelines that Booster both caused and prevented would be complete without the time he killed a little girl's dog, as seen in Booster Gold #31.

In a multiverse with an infinite number of terrible timelines, a time cop's job is never done.

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It didn't take long after Booster Gold joined the Justice League before he and Blue Beetle were inseparable. (Some might say insufferable!) The pair quickly became the Abbott and Costello of superheroics, their pranks and self-interested business ventures providing a comedic release from the stress of facing down would-be world conquerors six days a week.

None of their hijinks is bigger, more famous, or more disastrous than the time they established a casino on the tropical island of KooeyKooeyKooey, as seen in the story "Club JLI" published in Justice League America #34 (1989), an issue that easily ranks among the twelve best Booster Gold comics.

Writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis had been sowing the seeds for what would become "Club JLI" for months. After the JLI fought aliens in the South Pacific (Justice League International #23), the island nation of KooeyKooeyKooey decided to allow the JLI to host an embassy on its territory (Justice League International Annual #3). Their own tropical paradise on the far side of the world was the perfect opportunity for Booster and Beetle to establish the one business venture guaranteed to make money: a casino. The house always wins, right?

What out heroes didn't plan for was that their venture would attract the attention of another would-be world conqueror — the DCU is practically infested with them — the aptly named Major Disaster. Disaster also wanted to get rich, and he had an ace-in-the-hole, his card-counting companion, Big Sir. Together, the pair set out to break the bank.

Unfortunately for everyone, the bank had been established with money embezzled from the JLI's United Nations-funded bank accounts. Our heroes had assumed that they would be making so much money so fast, they would be able to replace the money before it was noticed missing. Oops.

As if things couldn't get any worse, Aquaman arrives to inform the newly-bankrupt heroes that their island paradise KooeyKooeyKooey isn't a normal island. It's alive. And it's not very interested in having a resort on its back.

By the end of the issue, Beetle and Booster find themselves far worse off than they were before, which is par for the course for our two favorite hard-luck heroes. Better luck next time, guys.

As you can see in the panels above, this Giffen/DeMatteis masterpiece is a perfect mix of comedy and action. Almost every panel has either a punchline or plot consequence. Most of the humor comes from the personalities of the characters involved, and the events will provide material enough to propel plots for months' worth of issues. (The fallout of the Club JLI misadventure will lead directly to Booster's quitting the League for a leadership position in the Conglomerate.)

And while I'm heaping praise on the writers, I'd be remiss to omit the contributions made by Adam Hughes, who was drawing only his fourth DC Comic! Even considering the limitations of four-color printing on newsprint, Hughes' character are so full of life that they nearly spring from the page. It must have been a hard job to follow the original JLI artist, master of expressions Kevin Maguire, but Hughes proves a formidable talent in his own right. (How many copies did DC sell based on Hughes' brilliant cover alone?)

Sometimes everything works, elevating what might otherwise be a light adventure story into a truly great comics. Justice League America #34 is one such case, and that's why it is rightly included among The Best Booster Gold Stories Ever.

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