Unless you’re a diehard DC Comics fan, you might not know who Booster Gold is. But you should, because he’s the perfect superhero for our times. Basically, he’s a selfish arsehole with a robot sidekick.
Even though he’s been in various incarnations of the Justice League over the years, Booster Gold is a C-lister. Maybe a B-lister, depending on how he’s being handled. But he’s never been the guy that bystanders look up to. Because unlike, say, Superman, he’s not trying to help humanity find the best in itself. He’s all about the worst in himself.
If you’re not familiar with Booster Gold, the upshot is that he’s essentially a washed-out gloryhound from the future who steals advanced technology and travels back in time to get rich and famous. The best thing about the core concept of Booster Gold is it starts off with him doing what most ordinary people would do with time travel technology: making their own lives cushier.
Booster Gold is a superhero that’s perfect for the celeb-obsessed times we live in: preening, self-centred, thin-skinned and vain. He doesn’t have any real superpower or genius-level acumen. He’s never the first guy to fly up to the giant robot or cosmic conqueror and strike the first blow. Michael Jon Carter — the character’s alter ego from the future — is the guy who feels like he got screwed by the universe and breaks its rules to get his own back. It’s a lot easier for him to save the world if it lines his pockets or makes him look good in front of a camera. In past iterations, Booster Gold has evolved in story arcs where he eventually comes around to doing the right thing for its own sake. But the character’s actually more interesting if he stays a jerk through and through.
He’s been done well on various TV shows, including Justice League Unlimited, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Smallville. All sorts of DC Comics’ properties are getting reinvigorated as TV shows or movies, with shows for Supergirl, Krypton and The Titans all in the pipeline to join Arrow, Flash and Gotham on the air. There’s reportedly a Booster Gold project in development at SyFy, too, under the aegis of Arrow and Flash producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg. Given the excellent track record created thus far by those shows, an adaptation in those hands could be a very good thing. I just hope they keep him a jerk for a good long time. He’s a pitchman that only does heroic deeds to burnish his own recognisability. In an age where Twitter and Instagram follower counts are a thing for some people to envy, we need a superhero series who’d obsess over how many faves and retweets his exploits get. We need Booster Gold.
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6 responses to “There Really Should Be A Booster Gold Comic In 2015”
Be careful what you wish for as they might just do it… and assign Lobdell to write the story and by golly gosh would that be a disgusting load of tripe. Bloke has strangled all the fun out of the outlaws.
Hate to say it but if I want a gadget wielding self centered egotistical hero I’ll go back and watch the old Darkwing Duck episodes.
Honestly wouldn’t surprise me if wells from the new flash series is actually booster goldThey’ve proven they’re happy to do whatever the hell they like with canon already, with Slade Wilson. (Amazing casting btw. I loved Aussie Slade.)
Arrow really hit its stride this season. Aussie slade just works. The accent does gruff, angry, sinister, polite and indignant and I think bennet did a fantastic job making a believable deathstroke on screen. I am not 100% sold on
ras al gulyet but they have so far done well with characters that fit into the world and are a part of it.The Booster Gold and Blue Beetle duo was always good value just for laughs alone. See the old JLI stuff done by Keith Giffen and J.M. Matteis.
But on the darker side, Booster Gold was the victim of one of the most violent hits I’ve seen in the mainstream, pre-New 52 DC universe.
In the Death of Superman story arc, when Doomsday is tearing his way to Metropolis, the JLA is trying to stop him. In the process of kicking all their asses, he grabs a hold of Booster Gold, puts him in the open door of a car and slams it shut on him. He survived, but you know that if it had happened in a Vertigo book, this probably would have cut him in half with blood and guts flying everywhere.
I don’t think a Booster Gold show will turn into DC’s tv version of Guardians of the Galaxy, but I like the author’s reasoning for it.