Booster Gold

10 years ago - 24-year-old Michael Jon Carter appears in modern time, saves the president from an assassination attempt, and starts Goldstar Inc.

7 years ago - 27-year-old Michael joins the Justice League in its first major recruiting drive, where he befriends Ted Kord.

6 years ago - 28-year-old Michael meets Lorraine Reilly when the Justice League go to Washington DC to fight Chemo, and begins an on-and-off relationship with her.

5 years ago - 29-year-old Michael tries to battle Doomsday even after most of the Justice League have fallen. He ultimately fails, and feels responsible for Superman's death. His costume is repaired after the battle by Rip Hunter.

3 years ago - 31-year-old Michael suffers a fractured spine while holding off the White Martian invasion during the Justice League's escape.

2 years ago - 32-year-old Michael, discovering the plans Ted Kord had made for a reimagined Justice League, uses all of Goldstar Inc to build the facilities and recruit the team with Dinah Lance, who serves as their new chairperson.

2447 - Michael Jon Carter is born.

2454 - 7-year-old Michael's father runs away after gambling away all the families money, leaving them destitute.

2465 - 18-year-old Michael goes to college on a full football scholarship.

2468 - 21-year-old Michael's father resurfaces and convinces him to throw the national championship. He is discovered, and disgraced.

2471 - 24-year-old Michael steals several scientific artifacts while working as a janitor in a lab, and uses them to travel back in time to become a "hero". He is unaware that the time travel tech has been left for him by Rip Hunter to solve a paradox.

I'm an unapologetic fan of Booster Gold. When he's at his best, he's an powerful character that can hold his own against Superman-level villains that has an incredibly heroic heart buried under layers of bravado and self doubt. You usually just don't see characters with such human flaws in DC. If he were a Marvel character, He'd be a front-runner for the Avengers.

He's been used to great comedic effect over the years, but limiting him to that role really undermines what a fantastic character he can be. Having someone with real human failings that he has to overcome is fertile soil for great superheros stories, especially when the heights he's able to reach are so high.

Booster Gold's Comic History

Booster was invented by Dan Jurgens in 1986, DC's first new major character introduced after the Crisis. He was a showboat who used his knowledge of the future to his own advantage who also wasn't against embracing his publicity or even turning a profit from his heroism. It was a great comic, but once the idea was introduced that he was actually a thief and fugitive from the future, the series seemed to shift and try to make him pay for his crimes, even taking him into the future to answer for them. It affected the overall tone of the series. The character became a recurring Justice League member in Keith Giffen & J. M. DeMatteis's retooled-for-comedy Justice League, and they took over his book as well.

What essentially happened was that, while the character had a unique personality and brought a new perspective into what a superhero could be, he was often used as a punchline. The overall sense of him was that he wasn't really much more than a joke despite the obvious potential of the character.

Geoff Johns went to great lengths to resolve this in his 2007 Booster Gold series that introduced a heavy time travel element, making him quest all over DC's timeline in an effort to protect it. We've already decided that excessive time travel is something we're explicitly avoiding, so we won't be using that story element, and instead doing the work to allow him to be a fun, human character without undermining his potential.

Our Booster Gold Story

The important thing with Booster is to allow him to be a hero without compromising the layers of self interest and doubt that make him such an interesting character. To this end, we have focused on making him a mainstay in the Justice League. Probably the biggest and most important part of portraying him correctly is to allow that a person can have both selfish and selfless qualities at the same time. He might allow his own self interest to take over sometimes, but it should be clear that when it comes down to it, he can be relied on to make the right choice. We see this exact character trait in Marvel's Tony Stark, and we all know how well it works there. This should really come into focus after the death of Ted Kord. Booster may have let his relationship with his best friend give him an outlet to be goofy, but once he's gone you have to imagine that Booster's focus would shift.

We've used Booster as a huge part of the rebuilt Hall of Justice League. He actually sells Goldstar Inc, the company he'd been building his entire career, in order to build and fund the team. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want to lead the team, and he certainly SHOULDN'T. They have Black Canary, after all. At some point, you just have to acknowledge that this guy has been with the team forever and his dedication has to be worth something.

We also tapped into the one-time relationship between Booster and Firehawk. It's a holdover from a less-remembered era of the League, but I think it actually does a good job of taking these two often overlooked and underutilized characters and gives us a window into who they are as people. I also just like the idea that a US Senator would wind up in a relationship with Booster; it gives us a sense that there's more to him than we might think.

Booster Gold by Thejason10

Booster Gold's Costume

Booster's costume is really fantastic. It's clean, uncomplicated, and tells a story all in itself. When he FIRST showed up he actually wanted to incorporate a cape that connected to his collar, but in classic Incredibles fashion it never really worked out.

Speaking of that collar, a lot of really great designs for the character actually do away with it (like this totally fantastic fan art by Deviant Artists Thejason10). I can see why they do that; the result looks really cool. Here's the thing thought; one element that is often overlooked in superhero design is the character's silhouette. You should be able to immediately recognize the character simply by their outline. In cases when Booster has other elements of his shape that make him stand out (commonly his hair), then the absence of the collar works, but I still think it's something that should at least be present in his original costume before it's destroyed by Doomsday and repaired by Rip Hunter.

Another element of the modern Booster Gold design is the presence of Nascar-style trademark patches. It's a joke taken, we suspect, from the character Captain Amazing in the movie Mystery Men, and it certainly carries over to the character well. I can imagine it being at least a one-off joke somewhere, but leaving them a permanent part of his design is kind of letting the joke overshadow the character (a common Booster Gold problem), and maybe undermines just how cool he can actually be.

Booster Gold's Future

I fully admit to the fact that my status as a fan of Booster Gold is a factor in his heightened presence in the Justice League. Even with that, though, I think there's a well of possibility with Booster that remains untapped. He has tremendous heroic capability, and it really just takes the right opportunity for it to come to the limelight.

As we're leaving our timeline, he remains a founding member of the Hall of Justice League. They are about to confront their greatest challenge yet in the form of the Legion of Doom, and Booster will be right in the mix. He's been such a utility character for so long that he doesn't really have his own arch-nemesis; he's devoted himself so much to the League that you really don't see a collection of Booster Gold baddies, and I think that this battle might be a unique way to exhibit that a lot of villains simply don't have a plan for what to do with him, because he is can be a very effective superhero.

From there, If I'm honest, I'd really just like to see his overall profile increase. Maybe actually give him his own new villains, supporting cast, and some grander solo adventures; now that he's sold Goldstar Inc we could see what he's like when he's just a normal dude.

Related Characters