Booster Gold #3

Booster Gold #3

Cover Date: April 1986

Creative Team:   Dan Jurgens (Writer/Pencils)/ Mike De Carlo (Inks)/Augustin Mas (Letterer)/Nansi Hollahan (Colors)/Janice Race (Editor)

Last Time: Booster got his ass kicked by Mindancer...twice. Also, Skeets got blown up.

Summary

Skeets has been destroyed! Everyone’s bummed, even Dirk, because Skeets was in charge of Booster sounding like a normal person, and with him gone, Booster’s malapropism level will surely reach Yogi Berra-esque levels. Still, as Dirk and the rest of the gang point out, at least Skeets’ death will make Booster look more sympathetic to the public.

Underground, Minddancer brings Blackguard to the Director, who reveals himself as leader of the 1000, some sort of criminal organization whose ominous name outstrips their ability by quite a bit. The Director knocks Blackguard out with an android he can control remotely, and then thinks that it is time to decommission Blackguard for his many failures.

Out in the slums of Metropolis, we find out that the woman who was looking for information about the 1000 last issue is actually the latest incarnation of the Thorn. That’s disappointing,  since the Thorn has never been part of a good story. Ever. In sixty years. I mean, you can look it up, but I'm pretty sure this is true.

At Goldstar, Inc., Trixie wants to go home. Dirk makes her type up a press release about Booster’s fight with Mindancer and Blackguard instead. She is not appreciative of the extra work, since it’s already late. Booster, in the meantime, has to go on a date with Monica Lake, Hollywood star to boost his public image.

Comically enough, Booster’s dress-up clothes involve him putting a shirt and jacket over his costume, even though he doesn't really have a secret identity or anything. The date does not go well, with the narrator noting, “the night goes downhill. The charming Booster Gold continues for hours about his incredible feats. The tactful Monica Lake goes to sleep.” Booster Gold! The hero whose adventures are a powerful sedative!

Suddenly, Booster gets a signal on his ring and flies off, but not before running into Senator Ballard, the same guy from issue #1 who is still calling him ‘Buster.’ He flies to Centennial Park, passing Thorn, who apparently wants revenge on the 1000 for the death of her father, and meets with Skeets, who didn’t die at the beginning of the issue. Instead, Skeets just let everyone think he was dead so the robot could spy on Mindancer and her employers. Booster knew all along because there was no wreckage. They head down into the 1000’s secret base.

At her aunt’s house, Trixie has a crush on Booster, and is jealous of Monica Lake. Well, I guess if you've got a male hero, and only one female member of the supporting cast, there is a strong temptation to go down that road. 

Inside the secret base, Booster blasts through the underground tunnels, easily bypassing the 1000’s security system and beating up a bunch of goons right until he runs into Mindancer, who uses her ability to tap into the psychic energy of all of the minions in the base to blast Booster with the combined power of over nine hundred people. It also kills most of the 1000’s manpower, but I guess that’s considered collateral damage.

Elsewhere, it turns out the shadowy figure who wanted all the information on Booster was Senator Ballard all along! He orders his minions to begin their plan to destroy Booster Gold!

Later, Booster awakes and finds Skeets in a stasis cube and himself strapped to James Bond-like device that has a laser that will slowly cut him in half.  Blackguard is similarly strapped down, as the 1000 has decided to cut its losses with him as well. To be continued!

Continuity!

-The Thorn is the second incarnation of the character, introduced in the late-60s as a woman with two different personalities, one a timid woman, the other an aggressive vigilante who tried to bring the 100, a gang and precursor to the 1000, to justice for killing her father. She was an update of a Golden Age character that was a villain. The problem with her as a character is that if the 'evil' personality is essentially just acting as just another super-hero, it doesn't make for much in the way of interesting psychodrama. In fact, her split personality isn't even really mentioned in this issue, only vaguely alluded to.

Review 

I'm not going to lie, the best part of this issue is probably Jurgens' art, which is, as usual, pretty damn good. 

Beyond that, the biggest problem with Booster is that he's at his most interesting when he isn't fighting super-villains, because his gimmick of being the Gordon Gekko of the super-hero world can't really come through is he's just blasting some no-name villain like Blackguard for most of an issue. 

Plus, it doesn't help that the villains of these first three issues, the 1000, are just kind of a generic super-villain organization. Hell, I'm not even quite clear on what their master plan is. I assume that it's a plan to take over the world somehow, but it comes across as a bit vague, especially since Booster has caught them before they had even come close to putting their nebulous plan in motion.

The rest of the issue, though, with Booster going on a date with a starlet, is a bit more interesting, if only because it helps illustrate that Booster is different from other heroes, and he does stuff like trying to create publicity by having a tabloid-friendly romance. I do think that Trixie is being painted a bit too strongly as the young innocent in all of this, but it's still early enough in the series to forgive that.