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Showcase Presents Booster Gold vol. 1
01/06/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Titan Books. 624 page black and white graphic novel softcover. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84576-852-2. check out website: www.titanbooks.comand www.dccomics.com
Back in the mid-80s, DC generated two characters that were poles apart but different from their standard characters. As I've covered Lobo in an earlier review, with the release of this volume of 'Showcase Presents', we meet the other one. His real name Michael Jon Carter aka Booster Carter if you knew him in the 25th century aka Booster Gold in our time. A super-hero who saw nothing ethically wrong in filling his own bank balance.
His origin is covered three times within this book. In the future, Carter was an upcoming college American Football star in a revival of the game. He also needed money to pay for his mother's medical care and fell in with a bad lot. Carter wouldn't throw games but would influence the score. It didn't take long to come to the attention of the authorities when he also started to bet on his own matches and ultimately found out by his over-spending. Thrown from the game and his reputation in tatters, Carter was also disowned by his mother and sister largely cos his father had always been a gambler and they saw him going the same way. I would have thought it a bit late to realise that at this stage. Ultimately, the only job he could get was as a night watchman at a Science Museum which housed an odd array of super-hero equipment from the past. With the help of a small robotic museum guardian, Carter steals various equipment and powers up Rip Hunter's time machine and comes back into the past where no one knows of his reputation. Locating himself in modern day Metropolis, Carter sees nothing wrong in being both a super-hero and being an entrepreneur endorsing various products along the way building up a financial empire. If anything, as Booster Gold with a known address and base, he becomes more of a target than his compatriots whom he eventually joins in the reformed Justice League under the auspices of Maxwell Lord.
This volume covers the twenty-five issue run of the 'Booster Gold' comic together with a cross-over into 'Action Comics' (which also appeared in the recent Superman: Man Of Steel graphic collection previously reviewed) and the 'Secret Origins' backstory. With the exception of the 'Action Comics' tale, all of this work was the product of Dan Jurgens who not only wrote but drew these stories with a host of inkers. Whether it was Jurgens withdrawal or lack of sales, when the book ended, Booster Gold became permanently attached to the Justice League title and a working partnership with the Blue Beetle.
In many respects, Booster Gold is an arrogant money-grabber and something easier to recognise in the USA than over here. The fact that he also had a heart of...gold, not necessarily after all his own interests except for when his reputation got frequently tarnished, made him much more dimensionalised than many of his counter-parts. You might not necessarily like him but to creator Jurgens credit, you want to read on and find out what happened next.
These Showcase volumes are released in black and white to keep the price down but the page numbers up. The one disadvantage is if you have a villain like the Rainbow Raider who manipulates colour and when Booster is bleached white you're at a somewhat disadvantage from seeing the original 4-colour version.
The last two tales also are part of DC's 'Millennium' mini-series and although there is enough information here to work out what was going on, I seriously hope there's a collected volume of it available soon for newer readers to find out all that was going on there.
Love him or hate him, Booster Gold wasn't a run-of-the-mill DC super-hero and Dan Jurgens did a beautiful job of bringing him and his supporting cast to life, perfectly hitting the marks when you wanted questions to various things raised. It is also still very funny in showing how Carter adapts to life on current day Earth. You might be in for a pleasant surprise and did I mention members of the Legion Of Super-Heroes make an appearance?
GF Willmetts
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