Booster Gold

ARTISTS

Writer: Dan Jurgens
Pencillers: Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway
Inkers: Jerry Ordway, Norm Rapmund
Colorist: Hi-Fi Designs
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Michael Siglain
Cover Artists: Hi-Fi Designs, Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund

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CHARACTERS & SETTINGS

hero: Booster Gold
villaines: Cyborg Superman, Mongul
supportinges: Drew, Grace Greene, Michelle Carter, Skeets II, Sondra Crain

Settings: 20th-century Coast City, DCU, USA; 21st-century Rip Hunter's AZ Lab, DCU, USA

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ISSUE SUMMARY

Cover Description: Booster Gold shields Goldstar from the explosion of Coast City. This cover is intentionally reminiscent of the cover to Superman, Volume 2, #80, also drawn by Dan Jurgens.

Brief Synopsis: Booster Gold struggles to save Coast City from the mad schemes of Cyborg superman and Mongul.

Costume Worn: MARK I.v2 power-suit

Issue Notes: With this issue, the back-up story featuring Blue Beetle II is dropped and the cover price returns to $2.99.

This story has been reprinted in the following issue:
Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory (2010)

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ISSUE ANNOTATIONS

Page 2, panel 1
Booster Gold, Skeets, and Captain Sondra Crain are defending Coast City from a rain of 77,000 "powerful explosives" spheres. The final moments of Coast City were originally seen in 1993's Superman, Volume 2, #80.

Page 3, panel 3
Mongul's spaceship looks quite different from the version originally seen in the aforementioned Superman #80. Since most other visual elements were kept intact from their original appearance, this change must be intentional even if the reason isn't immediately apparent. Perhaps the change of the starship is a remnant of Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, or any of a dozen other world-redefining events in the intervening time between the publication of the two stories.

Page 4, panel 3
Booster's reference to Barbara Gordon refers specifically to the events of Booster Gold, Volume 2, #5.

Page 7, panel 5
Skeets' reports that there is no historical record for the death of "Grace Greene" dying in Coast City, but how would he know? Despite his later assurance that the "dead are well documented," when the city is leveled by Mongul, 7 million inhabitants are atomized in a matter of seconds and the resulting crater transformed immediately into an alien machine-city: there were no ruins to sort through, no records to review, no bodies to count. With no evidence, inhabitants of Coast City must be presumed dead, and every comic book reader knows that no body means no death. Therefore, for Skeets to be certain, it can only mean that Grace Greene must reappear at some other time, proving that she was definitively not a victim of the Coast City disaster.

Page 8, panel 3
Booster Gold begins his first encounter with the warlord as he assaults Mongul's massive ship in the skies above Coast City.

Page 9, panel 1
POWER UP: The awesome alien firepower of Mongul's space ship appears to be insufficient to overpower Booster Gold's force field...

Page 9, panel 4
POWER DOWN: ...However, the same cannot be said for the force field's ability to withstand the awesome Kryptonian firepower of Cyborg Superman.

Page 10, panel 4
FASHION ALERT: Return of the disappearing/reappearing star! For the third time in the span of 6 panels, Booster's costume has a star on the back between his shoulder blades. This is likely attributable to a change in inkers -- Jerry Ordway takes over for regular series inker Norm Rapmund on page 9 -- rather than any change in Booster's costume. On both earlier and later pages, Booster will have no star on his back, as is usually the case. The disappearing/reappearing star on booster's back was frequently seen around 1990, the time of Adam Hughes' work on Justice League America. Note that Booster is not he only one to suffer a wardrobe malfunction: in this panel Cyborg Superman's mechanical arm has inexplicably switched from his right to his left side.

Page 12, panel 4
SPOILER WARNING!: Booster Gold is unwittingly attacked by a familiar face: himself. Reveal

Page 13, panel 1
For the first time in over a year (since Booster Gold #15, in fact), Booster Gold is reunited with his sister Michelle Carter. This is Booster's first meeting with Michelle's friend, "Drew."

Page 13, panel 5
The transmission intercepted by Skeets appears at length on page 6 of Superman #80.

Page 14, panel 1
HIS STORY: Booster claims that he did his "best work after the two-minute warning" is either bluster or an indication that college football in the 25th century is somewhat different than contemporary college football. American National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules as used by college football programs of all sizes, do not include a two-minute warning, a concept embraced specifically by the professional National Football League (NFL).

Page 14, panel 5
The events of this and the next two panels are taken verbatim from consecutive panels of Superman #80, page 9. This issue contains even more direct quotations from Superman #80, including...

Page 17, panel 1
...a reproduction of the mushroom cloud enveloping the remains of Coast City. Of course, in this case it is neither homage nor plagiarism, as the original writer and artist of Superman #80 was Dan Jurgens. Now that Dan Jurgens has taken Booster Gold into the past to revisit earlier work done by Dan Jurgens, how much longer until Booster Gold revisits the earlier adventures of Booster Gold?

For more annotations from this story which occur at a different point in Booster Gold's chronology, click here.

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ISSUE REVIEW

Boosterrific Review: I knew that I was captivated by the events of this issue when I became irritated at having to put it down during an unexpected interruption of my first reading. There's action and melodrama galore in the midst of the worst day in the life of Coast City, and certainly not everyone gets the happy ending that they probably deserve. All of this is served up with a nice twist in the ending for fans of Booster Gold.

Boosterrific Rating:

• Currently 5.0/5 Stars.

Average Fan Rating:

• Currently 5.0/5 Stars.

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