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Booster Gold Reading Order

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Not to be confused with Green Lantern, Booster Gold was created by Dan Jurgens and made his debut in Booster Gold #1 in February 1986. He’s the first significant new hero introduced after the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths!

Booster Gold, aka Michael Jon Carter, is presented as an opportunist hero who likes a good publicity stunt and making money. Simply put, he’s no Superman and he knows it!

Michael and his twin sister Michelle were born in the 25th Century Gotham. They had a loving mother and debts inherited by a gambling father who abandoned them. At first, Michael was dreaming of a career in football but had to stop when his mother fell ill. He turned to illegal gambling to help pay for treatment but was caught by the authorities.

Michael tried to rebuild his life in Metropolis where he worked at the Space Museum and studied superheroes and villains from the 20th century. This is where Michael stole several devices in order to go back in time and make money as a superhero. For his first adventure, he saved the life of the President of the United States Ronald Reagan.

Our gold-seeking hero would soon join the Justice League (International), until the group disbanded in 1996. This is where he met his new best friend, Blue Beetle II (Ted Kord), known together as “Blue and Gold”.

Like other DC Superheroes, Booster Gold goes through a lot of personal tragedies and other traumatic experiences, and all those events pushes him to become a more honest hero, despite having quite a reputation for being a glory-seeking character!

Booster Gold Reading Order

I. Post-Crisis: Meet Booster Gold (1985-1988)

Who is this handsome new hero? Adventure seeker Booster Gold came to the past — or our present at the time! — to build his future and his wealth in his first own series!

With his robot sidekick Skeets, a flight ring, a force field, and other tools and weapons, Booster Gold is determined to make a name for himself and build an empire! If only people didn’t erroneously call him Buster!

II. Booster Gold and the Justice League (1987-2005)

The year after his introduction, Booster Gold became a member of the Justice League. This is not your ordinary Justice League, but your sitcom-like version written by Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis.

As the whole run is not collected in trade paperbacks, we invite you to consult our Justice League International Reading Order to check out all the different editions and an issue-by-issue reading order!

  • Justice League International Omnibus Vol. 1
    Collects Justice League #1-6, Justice League International #7-25, Justice League America #26-30, Justice League Annual #1, Justice League International Annual #2-3, Justice League Europe #1-6 and Suicide Squad #13.

    • Justice League International #9-10 are tie-ins in the “Millennium” crossover storyline.
  • Justice League International Omnibus Vol. 2
    Collects Justice League America #31-50, Justice League Europe #7-25, Justice League America Annual #4, Justice League Europe Annual #1, Justice League Quarterly #1, and Justice League International Special #1. 

Following the end of the run of Giffen and DeMatteis, Dan Jurgens took over the title and lead us into one of the most important events of the time: the Death of Superman! Booster Gold is still a member of the JLA during this period.

Following the events of Zero Hour, Booster Gold joined Extreme Justice, led by Captain Atom. Maxima, Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), and Amazing-Man (Will Everett III) are also members of this team. They are later joined by Firestorm (Ronald Raymond), Plastique, and the Wonder Twins (Zan and Jayna). It’s worth noting that there are two other ‘Justice League’ teams in action at some point and they are more rivals than friends.

In 2003 and 2005, Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, and Joe Rubinstein got back together to write two miniseries working as a sequel to their Justice League International run. You bet Booster Gold is back with the old team!

III. Booster Gold through DC’s Crisis

We enter some turbulent times in the DC Universe, starting with Identity Crisis when the spouse of a member of the Justice League of America is brutally murdered. Though Booster is not really present in this event, it had an impact on him and pushed him to leave the superhero life behind for a time. A short time, as he is pulled back in by his bestie Ted to help him investigate the theft of funds from Kord Industries in Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Tragedy strikes and led Booster to reunite his old teammates for another investigation in the OMAC Project, before reapparing again in Infinite Crisis.

But, this is really in the aftermath of the Infinite Crisis that Booster Gold shines, as he and other secondary DC characters take center stage in 52, during a time when Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are absent.

  • Identity Crisis
    Collects Identity Crisis #1-7.
  • Infinite Crisis Omnibus
    Collects Action Comics #826, #829, Adventures of Superman #639, #642, Countdown to Infinite Crisis, Day of Vengeance #1-6, Day of Vengeance Infinite Crisis Special, JLA #115-119, Infinite Crisis #1-6, Infinite Crisis Secret Files 2006, The OMAC Project #1-6, The OMAC Project Infinite Crisis Special, Rann-Thanagar War #1-6, The Rann-Thanagar Infinite Crisis Special, Superman #216, #219, Villains United #1-6, Villains United Infinite Crisis Special and Wonder Woman #219.
  • 52
    Collects 52 #1-52

Following the conclusion of 52, Booster Gold headlined his own series! Our hero only wants to be a member of the Justice League of America, but that’s more complicated than it appears! Someone is exploiting the ravaged time stream, hoping to eliminate the world’s greatest heroes — and only Booster Gold can stop them!

More crises and events hit the DC Universe! From Final Crisis to Blackest Night and Brightest Day, heroes die and came back to life. Though Booster Gold only make minor appearances in all those stories, they have an impact on his own title and actions, so we invite you to check them out if you are unfamiliar with those events.

Directly tied to Brightest day comes the new reunion of the original Justice League International! The team is back in order to stop a former friend from destroying all of the world’s super-heroes.

The DC Universe has changed and only Barry Allen seems to know it! This is Flashpoint, a crossover story that changed the status quo and led us into the New 52 relaunch. The last issues of Booster Gold are tie-ins to this story:

IV. Booster Gold New 52

Following Flashpoint, the DC Universe was rebooted. What does it mean for Booster Gold? Michael is still a time-traveling hero but his previous adventures were erased from the timeline. During this period, Michael can be found in the new Justice League International series. Following the title cancellation, he made some guest appearances in other comics.

Booster Gold’s story continues in Futures End, an alternate future for the DC Universe, and Convergence:

V. Booster Gold Rebirth & Infinite Frontier

A new DC era started following a soft reboot, and Booster Gold

Booster Gold features heavily in the unpopular story Heroes in Crisis. The Sanctuary is an ultra-secret hospital for superheroes who’ve been traumatized by crime-fighting and cosmic combat. But something goes inexplicably wrong when many patients wind up dead, with two well-known operators as the prime suspects: Harley Quinn and Booster Gold!

An era came to a close with the discovery of the Dark Multiverse in Dark Nights: Metal and the Earth in perils in its follow-up, Dark Nights: Death Metal. Though Booster Gold doesn’t play a role in those two events, he is a supporting character in two one-shot issues picked up on threads from this event:

Booster Gold hasn’t been properly in the spotlight the past few years, and it’s time to change that with the help of his best friend Ted Kord in the limited series Blue & Gold, the only title starring our time-traveling adventurer during the short Infinite Frontier era:

Coming Soon… Dawn of DC!

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