Review: Booster Gold: Day of Death

The character of Booster Gold began as an interesting idea. Creator Dan Jurgens was watching the Olympics, and noticed how a lot of the athletes were promoting products even before they had won medals. So, Jurgens thought, what would it be like if there was a superhero who did that that? Someone who was willing to perform heroic duties, but wasn't afraid to cash in on the whole merchandising and licensing cash cow that would come with a superhero in reality. Thus, Booster Gold was born.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details, Booster Gold is Michael Jon Carter, a nobody from the future who used time travel and other technology from the future to become a superhero in the present. He cashed in on his superhero image, but eventually became a more serious hero, joining up with Time Master Rip Hunter to help protect the integrity of the time stream as the greatest hero history will never know (TM).

In this volume (originally published in 2010), Booster briefly teams up with anti-hero Magog, has a little adventure in 1952 with an early version of Task Force X, and later faces off with Trigon and the mysterious Black Beetle in an alternate future where Trigon defeated a Batman-less Justice League.

Booster Gold is, at heart, a irreverent and silly title. Its main focus is on humor and fun adventure stories than on being a serious story. If you want a (slightly more) serious story with Booster Gold, read the very good Justice League: Generation Lost. Booster Gold's time traveling escapades are fun to watch, as he valiantly works for the good of all. And while the humor isn't the greatest, the title still retains a lighthearted spirit which makes the title shine. Granted, there's nothing particularly notable about this trade paperback, which has a lot to top what with the previous volume's madcap time traveling antics where Booster Gold wound up fighting his past self while dressed up as Elvis (you'd have to read it for it to make sense), but it's not by any means a bad title. I particularly enjoyed the final chapter where Booster renews his alliance with the new Batman, Dick Grayson, who was subbing for Bruce Wayne. The art is also quite excellent, not by any means perfect, but still rather good.

On the whole, Booster Gold: Day of Death is a good addition to any Booster Gold fan's library, and I'd recommend it to any readers to enjoy a fun adventure story. That said, I enjoyed it a little, but I didn't dislike it.

RATING: 8/10

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