I’ve been a huge fan of Booster Gold for as long as I can remember. I’ve always enjoyed scheming, arrogant, self-centered, cocky, smart-mouth, loudmouth but good-hearted characters like Booster, Zack Morris, Wheeler from Captain Planet and Ted from Hey Dude. I could relate to those characters best even if I wasn’t as outspoken and didn’t seek the spotlight like they did.
This was an ad that ran in DC Comic books for the Booster Gold series that started in1986. He was created/written/drawn by one of my favorite comic book creators — Dan Jurgens. The first issue of that series marked the character’s debut but in short time he was added to the Justice League line-up and became a staple of that team for years. This ad really highlights Booster’s ambitions for fame and money and the character was created to be a representation of the 1980s’ “greed is good” excess.
I enjoyed this book. Although it wasn’t based around humor like the Justice League books were under writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, it was still a fun superhero romp showing a self-centered guy trying (and sometimes failing) to be a hero all while trying to make a buck off his exploits. Sadly, the book was canceled in 1988 with issue number 25 but Booster remained in the popular Justice League books for many more years. Luckily, his entire solo series was collected in 2008 as volume one of Showcase Presents Booster Gold.
By the mid ’90s, the character kind of faded away and was treated as a D-list joke but came roaring back in 2006′s weekly 52 series where he was a central character and that led to the great comic book writer Geoff Johns’ relaunch of the Booster Gold comic in 2007 where with the help of his robot pal Skeets and Rip Hunter he travels to different times in history trying to preserve the time stream. In a nice twist, much of this is done undercover so no one really knows just how great of a hero Booster has become. All of this has lead to the character being taken seriously again (and with Booster himself getting a bit more serious about being a hero) by the comic book community, even though the populace inside the DC Universe still views Booster as somewhat of the same screw up he was in his Justice League days.
In a nice touch, after Geoff Johns left the new series, Dan Jurgens returned to the character to write and draw the book and did a solid job. Recently, he too left the title and the book is now in the hands of two men who are certainly no stranger to Booster and have probably written more stories involving the character than anyone: Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis. I expect a bigger emphasis on humor and I’m okay with that because their run on the Justice League franchise is a favorite of mine.
By the way, I’d LOVE to own or even see what that Booster Gold pin looks like.
Tags: Booster Gold, Comic Books, dc comics, Superheroes
Misfit, you can see a in image of the pin here.
Oh that’s awesome! I didn’t even realize there was a Booster website either! Bookmarked!