Booster Gold #23

Booster Gold #23
Cover Date: December 1987
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Roy Richardson (Inks)/Steve Haynie (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Barbara Randall (Editor)

Previously...

 In Adventures of Superman 424-428, Superman feuded with the nation of Qurac, who sent some sort of scorpion-tank to destroy Metropolis and Superman. That didn't work, and so Superman went to Qurac, yelled at the president-for-life of the country, and then blew up most of Quracs' war materiel.

In Action Comics #594, it was Superman Day in Metropolis, but Booster seemingly ruined the festivities by flying into town and delivering a blistering polemic against Superman, who he accused of crimes against humanity. Booster then wreaked a bit more havoc until Superman caught up with him, and they started fighting until the real Booster showed up, and that's where we are now...

Summary

Booster finds the fake Booster already in a fight with Superman, and the fake Booster is winning.  Booster has been out of town for a bit, but isn’t happy to see that he has a doppleganger that is better at fighting Superman than he is.

Superman recovers, and similarly realizes that the Booster than attacked him wasn’t the real one because, although the real Booster would totally be enough of an asshole to accuse Superman of war crimes, he didn’t have the muscle to actually hurt the Man of Steel.

Booster, meanwhile, is a bit confused because he’s able to handle his double without too much difficulty, even though he himself was incapable of doing much damage to Superman in their previous fight, and the transitive property says that the fake Booster should be kicking the real Booster’s ass right now.

He and Superman talk about it, and both are baffled.  Still, Booster thinks about how this might mean that maybe Superman isn’t as tough as he thought,  and this awkwardly leads to a flashback…

Earlier that day, he, Dirk and Trixie returned to the BoosterHaus after Michelle’s funeral, and Trixie asked what the deal was with Booster blasting Superman in a press conference, and then ignoring her when they ran into each other on the streets. Booster has no idea what she’s talking about, so Dirk shows a video of the press conference. Booster agrees with his impostor’s main arguments, what with Superman being a dick and all, but he doesn’t like the misappropriation of his image. He then sees fake!Booster fighting Superman on live television and flies off to help.

Back in the present, Booster has figured it all out, and just rips the arms off his double, revealing that it was a robot all along. Booster then destroys the robot’s skin, revealing the metal frame underneath. Superman still feels weak for some reason, the cause of which is revealed when Booster finally smashes the robot to bits and reveals a piece of Kryptonite serving as the robot’s power source. Booster thinks it looks neat, and wonders if he could make a ring out of it. Superman recoils in horror from the Kryptonite, and Booster taunts him with it, telling Superman that he’s going to hang onto the stone as “you never know when it might come in handy.”

In his own command center, Lex Luthor is mildly put out that Superman unraveled this plot so easily, especially since Superman will know exactly who set this all in motion. But the real point of this plan was to discredit Booster Gold. And, to screw with Booster some more, Lex has also outbid Booster Gold International for an optics firm, and then orders its headquarters relocated to an office building across the street from the BoosterHaus out of spite.

Back at the scene of the fight, Booster starts ragging on Lois Lane to Superman because of that article she wrote a few issues ago.  He’s also not happy about how the press has been reporting on the comments made by his robot duplicate…although he once again mentions that he endorses those arguments.

A Lexcorp stooge named Attack Dog then attacks Superman, but not Booster, because Lex wants to make Booster look bad by ignoring him. Lex also orders a drone to take the Kryptonite back from Booster, because that shit is expensive.

Attack Dog then tries and fails to kill Superman, realizing only too late that Lex lied to him about his weapons being strong enough to defeat the Last Son of Krypton. Superman then flies him into the air and starts disassembling the man’s armor, only to see that the man is nominally an employee of Booster Gold International and that the components of the armor were similarly made by BGI.  Booster flies over and tells Superman that it’s a frame-job, and Superman tells Booster that he knows, which is why he didn’t rip open the armor in front of the press.

Booster then pouts that he never got a Booster Gold day in Metropolis, as this story has taken place on Superman Day, and Superman intimates to Booster that he wouldn’t hate it if Booster found another city to make his base of operations.

On a yacht, Lex hosts a party, and Booster shows up to tell Lex that he intentionally bid up the price of that optics firm so that Lex would have to pay more, right before stealing Lex’s date and leaving, claiming that he can do anything Lex can…but better!

And that's an assertion that last for nearly one scene transition before being proven demonstrably false,  as all of the operating funds of Booster Gold International have been transferred to a Swiss account by a shadowy figure who claims that “You’re broke, Gold…now I own you body and soul!” The saddest part of Booster Gold is that it's big ending story got swallowed whole by Millennium...

 

Continuity

-This is a crossover with Superman at the height of John Byrne's tenure on the book, so Lex Luthor is an evil corporate executive here, and Superman is the kind of guy who would go to Qurac and just blow shit up for a couple of issues for pissing him off.

Review

Well, this, along with the first Superman team-up in Booster Gold #6-7 are kind of like bookends to this series. In the first story, Booster was just looking for some publicity, and was pretty excited to meet Superman for the first time. In this story, Booster is now a corporate overlord, and he and Superman have a mutual loathing of each other. It's far to say that Booster hasn't quite evolved as a character.

This team-up awkwardly slots into this last batch of stories. For example, Michelle's death is brought up only in flashback, and, even then, it's not really Booster bringing it up, while in the next two issues, Booster is angsting about Michelle a whole lot. Then again, there's a decent chance this crossover was set up awhile before they knew that Booster Gold was going to get cancelled, and so they were locked in, even if this story didn't quite fit the final story arc of the comic.

As for the actual content of this book...well....team-ups are usually kind of lame, because there's a convention that says that if two super-heroes from different comics are in the same story, then they must fight at least once. Granted, introducing the fake Booster is a good way to get out of that, especially since Booster has already fought Superman once, but the story leaves me feeling cold. It's not a bad Superman story, I guess, and it helps move along the subplot in the main Superman books, but it really doesn't do much for Booster. Yeah, there was an impostor, and he hurt the public perception of Booster, but we're ten issues past the point where the public perception of Booster mattered. Remember, that only mattered when Booster's business model was all about merchandizing himself. He's running a billion-dollar business now, and told Skeets just a couple of issues ago that he was only doing the hero shit for fun at this point.


There's a lot of potential with Booster's character, and his set up, but it's being used in service of stories like the Rainbow Raider blinding Booster for an issue, and the mainly ineffectual plots of the denizens of Dimension X. Those aren't Booster Gold stories, they're just stories that happen to feature Booster Gold.

Well, at least it's almost over.

Booster Gold #22

Booster Gold #22
"Tortured Options"
Cover Date: November 1987
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Ty Templeton (Inks)/Steve Haynie (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Barbara Randall (Editor)

Summary

The head alien from Booster Gold reiterates Booster's dilemma from the end of last issue, Booster can either save his sister, or else save Minneapolis from a giant monster. Booster tries to threaten the man for a bit, but he’s stuck, and he knows it. I mean, Booster loves his sister, but letting Minneapolis get destroyed would look pretty bad. So he sends Skeets to find Michelle while he heads back to the Metrodome to fight the Destructor Agent.

He arrives back on Earth just in time for the Destructor Agent to rip the roof off of the Metrodome, which makes the monster roughly as powerful as a large pile of snow, I guess. Booster tries to fight the beast, but he’s made out of some sort of putty, meaning that he’s all give, and Booster can’t seem to do much damage.

Back in Dimension X, Skeets frees Michelle, and they both try and figure out how to get out of there.

Booster is still fighting the monster when the new look Justice League International shows up! Their current roster is:

-Mister Miracle, the greatest escape artist in the universe!

-Martian Manhunter, now being repositioned as the one constant of the Justice League!

-Captain Atom, hard alien metal shell cover crispy candy center!

-Rocket Red 7, avowed Communist!

-Guy Gardner, currently in Panglossian mode thanks to a concussion!

-Black Canary, wearing the worst costume of the era!

-Blue Beetle, I still don’t see the appeal of Blue Beetle. There's a good reason why the highpoint of Ted Kord's career was being comic relief in a comedy book.

With their powers combined…they make no progress. Guy, whose brain no longer works so well, wonders if the rampaging monster wouldn’t be a great addition to their team.

In Dimension X, the aliens are not happy that Booster has found his friends, but they’re almost ready to transport their main army in, so things should work out for them.

Also, this series is almost over, so it’s time to start the big wrap-up story arc! To kick things off, a shadowy figure hacks into the Booster Gold International computer system, and transfer all of the money into a Swiss bank account.

Minneapolis! The Justice League finally comes up with a solid plan, as Captain Atom bores a hole into the alien monster with his powers, and then Booster flies inside the alien before the hole closes, Booster then expands his forcefield until the alien explodes.  The team then turns to rescuing Booster’s sister.

Speaking of which, she’s getting her ass kicked by the aliens, since they drained most of her energy last issue. Booster barges in and saves her, but the alien leader has some bad news for him. This was all a diversion to allow the aliens to assemble their real army in a room with an even bigger portal that will teleport the army, as a whole, to the Earth in an instant.

Booster realizes that he can’t fight an entire army, but his forcefield is enough, for the moment, to allow him to find the army, and start looking for some way to destroy the teleporter. He eventually finds some energy conduit that he figures is probably vital to the proper operation of the device, and just blows it to bits, because he doesn’t have time to figure out anything else.

That works, but it also starts a chain reaction that causes the alien base to start self-destructing.  He quickly heads back with Skeets and Michelle to the gate they had used before, but the gate is set to ‘receive’ rather than ‘send’, Booster will need to protect the gate with his forcefield while Michelle tries to operate the alien controls to make it work right. And she manages to figure it out! And the gate is ready! And then a severed power cable falls down from the roof and Michelle gets blown up! The entire base then goes up in an explosion, and Booster and Skeets are blown through the portal back to Minneapolis. And, to make it absolutely clear to Booster that his sister is really, really dead, he finds a tattered piece of her Goldstar suit by his side.

At Michelle’s funeral, it’s kind of sparse crowd, as Booster only has four guys in his supporting cast, and the Justice League, there as a courtesy, never actually met her. Mac Garrison never met Michelle either, and so doesn't really give a shit either, hanging out only for a few minutes before going back to work, pissing off Dirk and Trixie in the process.

Trixie asks if Booster blames himself, and, well, given that Booster was the one who brought her back to this time, commissioned the Goldstar suit in the first place, and was the one who ultimately couldn’t quite save her, he does. Trixie wonders what is happening to Booster, especially since she just saw him in Metropolis at the same time he was supposed to be in another dimension.

Booster then asks Dr. Fate to teleport the tombstone into  some other dimension as, after all, a tombstone for a woman who died over four centuries before she was born doesn’t belong in the normal universe. Booster then broods. The end!

 

Continuity!

-This version of the Justice League is from between Justice League International #7 (When Rocket Red #7 joins) and Justice League International #8 (When Rocket Red #7 reveals himself as a Manhunter spy AND a robot AND gets blown into tiny pieces. )

-Trixie is referring to Action Comics #594, which came out the same month, where Booster Gold seemingly calls a press conference to denounce Superman’s “crimes against humanity”, referring to a running subplot where Superman had attacked a country named Qurac. He then kidnapped a woman in order to draw Superman out and fought him for a bit before he and Superman fought to an inconclusive battle before the real Booster Gold showed up, setting up the events next issue.

Review

You can tell that Jurgens knew his comic was doomed at this point given that Michelle died before she even did anything. Hell, I don't think she ever even managed to use her Goldstar suit in a single fight.

Anyway, I'm not sure that Jurgens is successful at the tonal whiplash at the end of the book. For the first two-thirds of the story, you've got a pretty light story involving invaders from "Dimension X" and the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League, who were always more of a sitcom than anything else, and then Michelle suddenly dies and there's a rather somber funeral scene. Oddly enough, it's the sort of thing that Keith Giffen did in just about every other story he ever wrote...also Adam Warren, come to think of it.

Here, though, I think Michelle is a bit too much of cipher for this to work. She hasn't really done much of anything, and while she is Booster's sister, they've had literally three conversations in this entire series, including their scene in this issue. From a theoretical perspective, you could see how this would bother Booster but, there's no visceral feeling here. Michelle is just too much of a non-entity to have her death mean much of anything for the audience.

Had this comic lasted a few more issues, this probably would have felt a bit more meaningful. The fact that next month's crossover with Superman got shoehorned in at the end didn't really help, either, especially since it's deeply confusing unless you've actually read Action Comics #594. The Justice League showing up worked a bit better, because Booster is a member of that team, so it's a bit more organic, and because the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League was one of the highpoints of this era, making other stories better just by their presence.

In a better world, Dan Jurgens would have had a bit more time to build Michelle up as a character before killing her off for emotional impact. Unfortunately, he didn't get it, and the story suffers for it.

Booster Gold #21

Booster Gold #21
"Invasion from Dimension X"
Cover Date: October 1987
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Ty Templeton (Inks)/Steve Haynie (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Barbara Randall (Editor)

Summary

Booster Gold finds out that Michelle is missing when the tracer that Dr. Soo put on the Goldstar costume suddenly goes dark. On the plus side, Booster’s eyesight has come back.

He finds his way to the motel she was abducted from, only to find it empty, and the desk clerk dead. He starts searching the rooms, and finds an energy portal, which he finds rather troubling. Booster then gets attacked by an alien, but Booster is able to overpower him. Booster demands answers, but the alien, after expositing that his race has been defeated by the Titans twice before, chooses suicide instead. On the alien’s body, Booster finds a ticket stub to a Twins game, and wonders what it could possibly mean. That Kent Hrbek is, and always has been, an evil alien bent on the destruction of all mankind?

Still, Booster did hear the alien talking about the Titans, so he calls Donna Troy, who he worked with in a couple of issues of New Titans a few months earlier. She tells Booster that these aliens appear to be ones from a place called ‘Dimension X’. Holy fuck…I knew the day would come when Booster would have to take on Krang and the Technodrome. Alright, TMNT crossover!

Well, no, not really. This is a different Dimension X full of generic alien invaders. That could not be more disappointing. Anyway, Donna offers the help of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Titans, but Booster declines, claiming that he’s got the Justice League backing him up…

…except he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want them stealing his glory. Man, I guess he doesn’t like his sister very much.

At Booster Gold International, Booster has finally realized that putting his publicist in charge of his multi-billionaire company isn’t the best idea, and hires Mac Garrison as the new corporate manager. And, gasp, Mac Garrison is a woman in a pantsuit! That's just nutty! A woman in the male world of corporate raiding? Madness!  Anyway, Mac has some big plans for BGI that may or may not be villainous. Because this series is ending in four issues, we'll never actually find out.

Booster and Skeets use their powers to locate a space gate right in the middle of the Metrodome, and Booster wonders what the aliens’ plan could be.

On their ship, the explain to a captive Michelle, who is currently being drained of life for the purposes of dramatic tension, that they plan to invade Earth and conquer it out of a fear that Earth might someday become advanced enough to conquer them. Well, as far as motivations go, that’s not the worst.

Booster breaks through the walls of the Metrodome and finds the portal, but the aliens control it, and strand him in a limbo dimension, where he fights some alien lizards who are immune to his powers for a little while. Eventually, he does manage to make it to the aliens’ home of Dimension X, and threatens them with a good, ol’ fashioned beating. But they’ve prepared for this, and offer Booster a choice. He can either defeat them and rescue his sister, or fight the giant “destructor agent” the aliens just teleported to the Metrodome in the middle of the Twins game. The name of this destructor agent? I'm going to guess "Mark McGwire"! To be continued!

Continuity!

-Booster made an appearance in New Titans (v2) #29-30 as part of a team of heroes backing up the Titans as they took on Brother Blood. Booster was only in about four panels in total. But apparently that's enough to allow him to ask for help here.


Review

This issue is all set-up, which is a problem as this story is only two issues long. Booster does get into a couple of fights, but they seem more like filler than anything else. Actually, this entire story feels like filler. Booster is fighting some aliens from another dimension who want to conquer the Earth for mainly evil reasons. That's not a particularly interesting story, mind you, as the aliens have no depth to them, and Booster's motivations, that is, rescuing his sister and saving the planet, are understandable, but, again aren't particularly interesting.

Hell, even if the cliffhanger at the end of the issue: "Will Booster save his sister, or save the city of Minneapolis?" seems kind of rote.

The whole Mac Garrison sub-plot probably would have led somewhere interesting had the book lasted past issue #25, but it didn't, and so she just kind of arrives to stir the pot a bit at Booster Gold International without ever really doing anything. I guess that, back in 1987, the thought of a woman being an executive was probably a bit more novel than it was today, although, again, as there's no time to really explore that, it doesn't really matter. 

Again, Jurgens is good enough as a writer and penciler to make this issue decent, but it's nothing really more than that.

Booster Gold #20

Booster Gold #20
Cover Date: September 1987
Creative Team: Dan Jurgens (Writer and Pencils)/Arne Starr (Inks)/Steve Haynie (Letterer)/Gene D'Angelo (Colors)/Barbara Randall (editor)

Summary

Booster Gold is blind! BLIND! Also, he’s been drained of color. Why? Because the Rainbow Rider has a bunch of crazy light-related powers that allowed him to do both of those things.

Booster feels around the rooftop where he had fought Rider, and finds Skeets, who has been encased in black light…somehow. Booster scrapes it off, and Skeets turns back on, though he too has been drained of color. Skeets, who can still see, maneuvers Booster around as our hero wonders if he’ll ever regain his sight. Well, given that Booster isn’t Daredevil, and he doesn't have the sort of powers that work without sight, I'm going to guess that he does.

Booster lands at the BoosterHaus, and Dr. Soo does some examining. It turns out that Rainbow Rider’s light blast at the end of last issue blew out Booster’s retinas, but there’s no permanent damage, so Booster’s sight should return…eventually. Dr. Soo also reminds Booster that Soo is not a medical doctor, and Booster should really see one. But hey, he does manage to restore Booster Gold to glorious Technicolor, so Soo is at least somewhat useful.

As usual, Dirk has some bad news. That insurance agent from last issue who wanted to hire Booster has decided to hold a press conference to announce that, in fact, he had hired Booster, even though Booster was dead set against it, as he was worried about the public fallout. Booster calls the insurance agent who tells Booster that he doesn’t really care what Booster thinks.

Still, Booster realizes that the only way to deal with all of this bad press is to get the paintings back…but he’s still blind. Dirk suggests that Trixie go out in the Goldstar suit, though she objects. It turns out to be a moot point as the suit has been stolen…

…by Michelle, who takes it for a spin while still on a roadtrip. But then she gets stunned by a laser gun shot from those two suspicious-looking kids from last issue, who turn out to be aliens. They abduct her, as they are evil aliens, and that is what they do.

Rainbow Rider has decided to take his plan to the next level, and threatens to burn down the Metropolis Art Institute unless Morris is delivered to him. Booster arrives to stop him, using Skeets as a sort of guide robot. But as Booster couldn’t quite handle Rider when he was sighted, and quickly loses track of the Rider in the museum. Skeets then scans Morris’ paintings, and reveals to Booster that Rainbow Rider must have this grudge because Morris stole his designs. Rider appears to explain to Booster that it doesn’t matter, as no court of law would rule for him, and the only way to get justice is to beat on Morris for a while.

They start fighting again, and Rider accidentally starts a fire, and Booster guilts him into saving the paintings from the fire, because Rainbow Rider was once an artist. They work together to get the paintings out, and Rider finally proves that Morris ripped him off by showing his original side-by-side with Morris’ reproduction. Booster celebrates a job well done, but has one more thing to do…

…He confronts the insurance agent in his office and announces that he’s fired because Booster just bought the entire company in order to have this moment of revenge.

Also, the aliens are planning on using Michelle for…something. To be continued!

Continuity!

-Michelle took the Goldstar suit with her when she Booster in Booster Gold #16. Booster kind of shitty security.

-House ad for the new version of the Doom Patrol. This would be the version of the Doom Patrol where Erik Larson got his start, and was so awful that DC just gave the book to Grant Morrison and let him do whatever he wanted, because it seemed like a lost cause at that point.

Review

Booster gets beaten up by the Rainbow Raider again! And then essentially defeats Rainbow Rider by talking at him! Kind of a let-down of an ending.

I mean, it would be one thing if Booster had to overcome his handicap, but he didn't. He was blind, and it made him even less capable of beating a guy who had already defeated Booster last issue. That's probably realistic, but it isn't very exciting.

Come to think of it, all the blindness does is delay the fight scene at the end, especially since Booster gets his sight back by next issue. 

And, for that matter, Rainbow Raider, to the best of my knowledge, has never really been portrayed sympathetically enough to earn a two-issue story where he rights a wrong from his past. He's the Rainbow Raider. He wears a ridiculous costume out of frustration that his color-blindness has made it impossible for him to become a successful artist. I mean, it's hard to turn that into a redemption story, and for that matter, it's hard to say that Rainbow Raider has really been all that vindicated. Granted, Morris stole his designed, but seeing as Raider's problem was that he couldn't get the colors right, and Morris' designs are colored, so it could be said that, even without Morris, Raider wouldn't have been a successful artist anyway, because he wouldn't have been able to overcome his handicap. Then again, I'm probably overthinking this, as any story featuring the Rainbow Raider as its main villain really isn't going to be able to stand up to scrutiny.

But why the hell make a two-parter about the Rainbow Raider into one of the more serious stories that this comic has ever done? Booster's blindness isn't played for laughs, which is a fair thing to do, but, again, a story that has the Rainbow Raider in it is going to be inherently capable of any gravitas. Hell, the cover says "Blinded by the Rainbow Raider". You can't even say that sentence out loud without cracking a smile!

I did like the last scene, however, as it shows that, at heart, Booster is capable of being a very petty person, and as that's one of his distinguishing characteristics, showing that off is a fine way to end an issue.