Booster Gold - The comic history of DC's time-traveling himbo

Booster Gold in DC comics — (Image credit: DC)

After years of development in different capacities, DC's hapless fan-favorite superhero Booster Gold is finally get his own streaming series as part of the first wave of new projects from James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Studios.

Booster Gold holds the interesting distinction of being one of the first brand new DC heroes introduced after the major continuity reboot that took place in the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, which compressed all the timelines of the many worlds of DC's Multiverse into a single continuity, with nearly everything from before the reboot completely redefined or even discarded.

Because of this, Booster is one of the first few heroes of the era who had a completely clean slate from the start with no erased or rewritten history. Debuting in 1986's Booster Gold #1 by writer/artist Dan Jurgens, Booster Gold is actually Michael Jon Carter, a football star from 25th century Gotham City who leaves the sport in disgrace after he's caught betting on his own games.

Stealing some future technology, Carter travels back in time using his advanced gadgets to become the present day superhero Booster Gold, with powers that include flight, a force field, energy beams, and a floating robot sidekick Skeets whose computer brain provides Booster with knowledge of the present to help him get by.

Booster quickly became a member of the newly formed post-Crisis Justice League, where he met his lifelong BFF Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle. Booster and Beetle became a pair, even fighting alongside each other against Doomsday in the landmark story The Death of Superman.

Later, when Ted Kord was murdered by Maxwell Lord, it was Booster who helped uncover the truth of his death. Booster eventually went on to become a mentor to Jaime Reyes, the third Blue Beetle who is the star of the Blue Beetle film. Alongside Jaime, Booster is finally able to use his time travel technology to go back in time and save Ted's life, bringing his best friend back from the dead.

Over the years, Booster has often been considered something of a screw-up as a superhero - a reputation he has often earned. But he's also saved the DC Universe a few times, including in the year-long weekly comic story 52, which rebirthed the DC Multiverse.

In that story, Booster's robot pal Skeets becomes a cocoon for the caterpillar-like villain Mister Mind, who births into a bizarre butterfly determined to eat the Multiverse. Booster manages to save the day, overcoming his diminished reputation.

After that, Booster and a restored Skeets took on the self-appointed roles of protectors of the history of the DC Universe, which is what they've been up to off and on into the present day.

Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are some of the best superhero best friends ever.

I've been Newsarama's resident Marvel Comics expert and general comic book historian since 2011, and now I'm the Entertainment Writer at GamesRadar+. I've also been the on-site reporter at most major comic conventions such as Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York Comic Con, and C2E2. Outside of comic journalism, I am the artist of many weird pictures, and the guitarist of many heavy riffs. (They/Them)