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There's nothing comic book superhero fans love to debate more than the relative power levels of their favorite heroes. So how does Booster Gold compare? Let us count the ways.

Flight
Booster Gold's Flight Ring is 30th-century technology that gives its wearer flight capabilities constrained only by the wearer's willpower and physical ability to withstand the physical hardships of flight within its current environment. The exact limits to the acceleration and maneuvering of Booster's ring, formerly the personal ring of its inventor, Brainiac 5, have never been definitively established, but Booster has used the ring to keep up with spaceships and Superman.

Super Strength
Booster Gold's costume was created from a "special fabric/microfiber power suit" liberated from the 25th-century Space Museum. Modeled on the suit once invented by Lex Luthor to fight Superman, the suit gives him enhanced strength enough to lift several tons (though not quite at Superman's level).

Energy Bolts
Booster's wrist-mounted "Booster Shots," are a repurposed Space Museum exhibit that generate a ranged energy beam that can be fine-tuned mild enough to stun a human or strong enough to shatter stone.

Enhanced Vision
Another piece of Space Museum equipment, Booster's goggles give him microscopic, macroscopic, and infrared vision on demand.

Force Field
Arguably the greatest of Booster's powers, his force field is truly impenetrable, having originally been created by the villain Brainiac and used to stymie Superman on many occasions. The force field generator is in a belt concealed under Booster's power suit, and although the field it generates surrounds Booster just above his skin by default, the field can be enlarged, shrunk, become semi-permeable, or be projected remotely via emitters in Booster's gloves. Though the field is generally used to repel matter, it can also be repolarized to absorb and redirect matter, a trick Booster calls the "Mass Dispersal Force." The only demonstrated weakness of the force field is that it runs on the same batteries with a limited charge that also power the suit and Booster Shots.

Wrist Communicators
Booster's gloves are chock full of useful tools, so it's easy to overlook that they also include audio-visual devices that passively monitor ambient network traffic and enable dedicated two-way communication with his sidekick robot, Skeets. They also allow convenient livestreaming access to social media sites.

Time Travel
As an ally of Rip Hunter, Booster Gold's power-suit has been wired with remote access to Hunter's time-travelling Time Sphere and Time Platform. So long as he is within range of the relay embedded in Skeets, Booster can teleport himself and Skeets to a Time Sphere located at any point in spacetime

In addition to all the above, it's always worth remembering that should our hero be caught without any of his very impressive technology, he is still an Olympic-level athlete with demonstrated outside-the-box problem solving skills.

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What makes a hero super? The super powers! From awesome strength to zero-to-sixty speed, great superpowers are the most useful tricks in every famous costumed crime-fighter's tool kit. Michael Jon Carter knew this, and that's why he started his career with a time machine.

Power suit, energy rays, force field, flight ring... "Booster" Carter could steal every super power in the Space Museum, but none of those would make the citizens of the 25th century forget that he had committed the ultimate crime: shaving points in a college football game.

To move on with his life, Booster would have to think outside the box. He'd have to think in a sphere. Specifically, he'd have to think in Rip Hunter's Time Sphere.

Rip Hunter and his distinctive time machine, the "amazing" Time Sphere, made their debut appearance in Showcase #20, 1959. He and his 20th-century companions, calling themselves Time Masters, would continue to improve the Time Sphere's design as they traveled from one end of history to the other with many adventures in between.

At any given time, there were several operating spheres, any one of which could have ended up in the Space Museum of the 25th century for Booster to, um, borrow. Although Booster broke that first Time Sphere, he has since had the opportunity to use some of Hunter's other Time Spheres for other temporal journeys both with and without the Time Master, beginning in 1987's Booster Gold #13, and as recently as 2021's DC's Cybernetic Summer.

Though the story of the time-traveling globe doesn't end (or begin) there. As we will eventually learn, while Rip Hunter may have invented the Time Sphere, he certainly did not invent time travel. Or even spherical time machines.

As revealed in Booster Gold volume 2, #1,000,000 (2008), Rip Hunter is Booster Gold's son. Later issues of Time Masters: Vanishing Point will demonstrate that Rip traveled through time as a child with his father. That crates a paradox, since it's impossible that at some point in the future, Rip Hunter could have gone back in time to create the circumstances that led to his own birth.

But it's not impossible that at some point in the future, a super-intelligent alien from another planet could have traveled backwards in time and laid the groundwork for Booster to do so. That alien is Brainiac 5.

In addition to inventing the Force Field Belt and Legion Flight Ring that Booster liberated from the Space Museum, Brainiac 5 also worked with the 30th-century Time Institute, perfected the time-traveling Time Bubble that his fellow Legion of Super-Heroes would use to have time-travel adventures with Superman beginning with 1958's Adventure Comics #247.

Clearly, the Time Bubble precedes the Time Sphere. Since Brainiac 5's history is in no way connected to Michael Jon Carter's, it is no stretch of the imagination to speculate that Brainiac 5 or the Legion of Super-Heroes made trips through time that somehow created the impossible sequence of events that lead to Rip Hunter appearing to create the machine necessary for his own birth. Fortunately, Brainiac 5 also has the power to resolve such space-time paradoxes.

As seen in Time Masters Vanishing Point #3, Brainiac 5 has access to the uniquly powerful Miracle Machine, a device that turns imagination into reality. With a power like that, even the most difficult paradox can be untangled with a thought.

That panel makes it clear that time-traveling Rip Hunter knew Brainiac 5 from an early age, so it's probable that the future Time Master's time-machine design was influenced by the Legion of Super-Heroes' pioneering inventor. When a design works that well, why change it?

(Footnote: Amusingly, there is also a time-traveling globe from the future in 1951's Batman #67. Although the Batman of the 31st-century takes credit for inventing it, he wouldn't be the first person to steal a Time Sphere.)

If you'd like to read about other powers in Booster Gold's arsenal, check out previous spotlight posts on his Force Field Belt, Booster Shots, Flight Ring, and goggles.

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Booster Gold makes only a small cameo in Millennium #4, and we only hear about him in Millennium #5 when we (and Mister Bones) eavesdrop on a conversation between siblings Jade and Obsidian.

Millennium #5, words by Steve Englehart, art by Joe Staton, Ian Gibson, Carl Gafford, Bob Lappan

It's not until Millennium #6 when we see our hero finally return to full-page action. Three pages of action, actually. And I have to say he puts on a pretty good showing for himself despite siding with the Manhunters.

Booster's rarely-seen Absorbing Field wins the day, temporarily incapacitating both Batman and a Green Lantern. Even if you are on the wrong side of this conflict, Booster, that's impressive.

And that's why this is one of My Favorite Pages.

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What makes a hero super? The super powers! From awesome strength to zero-to-sixty speed, great superpowers are the most useful tricks in every famous costumed crime-fighter's tool kit. Michael Jon Carter knew this, and that's why he started his career with high-tech goggles.

Energy blasts, impenetrable force fields, flight: Booster Gold's best known powers are also the ones that show up the best on action-oriented comic book panels. But Booster's arsenal contains more than just power gauntlets and powered tights. He's also got a fancy pair of glasses which, while less flashy, can be just as useful.

Booster's goggles have been a part of his costume from the very beginning. Using components he stole from the Space Museum in the 25th century, Booster and Skeets integrated the goggles into the hood of his power-suit and fueled them with the same "little power rods" that supplied energy to his other technological abilities, as detailed in Booster's very first chronicled adventure detailed in Booster Gold volume 1 #8.

Though their technology isn't traceable to any particular hero or villain, their powers were clearly inspired by the incredible range of abilities of a certain Man of Tomorrow's Kryptonian eyes.

Booster has used the goggles' infrared filters to help him defeat the mad bomber Mister Twister in Booster Gold #5 (1986) and infiltrate the 1000's waterfront stronghold in Booster Gold #12 (1987). The magnifying ability came in handy when the Justice League needed to find a weak point in the otherwise indestructible hull of the alien Klaarsh spaceship in Justice League Quarterly #7 (1992), and the telescopic function was useful when traveling into the Old West to help Jonah Hex bring the warped Hootkins Gang to justice in All-Star Western #20 (2013).

Super strength is great if you want to break through walls, but a hero always knows which walls can be broken safely. Knowledge is real power, and nothing is better at gathering information than high-tech magnifying infrared goggles, just like the pair Booster Gold wears.

If you'd like to read about other powers in Booster Gold's arsenal, check out previous spotlight posts on his Force Field Belt, Booster Shots, and Flight Ring.

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