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.