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[you_tried]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Emilee
AGE: 26
JOURNAL: emileesaurus
IM / EMAIL: thegrimwombat@gmail & gchat
PLURK: emileesaurus
RETURNING: N/A

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Michael Jon Carter / Booster Gold
CHARACTER AGE: Roughly 35, though all that time travel makes things a little weird.
SERIES: DC Comics (New Earth)
CHRONOLOGY: After Booster Gold #39 and Justice League: Generation Lost.
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Anything goes!

BACKGROUND:

This is like 30 years of comics. I’m so sorry.

{THE FUTURE: SURPRISINGLY CRAPPY, DESPITE FLYING CARS, BUT THAT’S GOTHAM FOR YOU}

Michael Jon Carter and his twin sister Michelle were born in the year 2442 to a poor family in the slums of Gotham City. Their father, a gambler, abandoned the family when the twins were young, leaving their mother to raise them. Michael probably would have fallen through the cracks, but luckily, he got into Gotham University on a football scholarship, and by the age of 19, he was already known as one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game. His performance on the field earned him the nickname “Booster,” and he was predicted to make a fortune playing professionally once he graduated.

But before that could happen, his mother fell ill, and required expensive surgery – surgery that the Carters couldn’t afford. So Michael did the only thing he could think to do: he raised the money by betting against himself and throwing games. He quickly made enough money to pay for his mother’s surgery, with plenty left over for the family (and himself). Being well-off for once was a welcome change, and Booster was hooked. He enjoyed the money, as well as the extra attention it brought him from his family and friends.

But it wasn’t long before he was found out. His mother and sister disowned him, and he was expelled from Gotham University, ending his football career for good. With nowhere else to turn, Michael took a job as a night janitor at the Metropolis Space Museum. After night after night of mopping floors in hallways full of 20th century superhero memorabilia, an idea began to form. He could reinvent himself. He could redeem himself to his family. He could steal a few things from the museum and travel back in time to become a superhero (and get super rich and super famous in the process).

Okay, so maybe old habits are hard to break.

So he nabbed a shiny blue and gold power suit, a set of wrist blasters, a force field belt, and a Legion of Superheroes flight ring. He strapped on a pair of infrared goggles. He grabbed a 20th century Visa card (yes, they have those lying around museums). He stole a museum security robot named Skeets to be his quasi-sidekick, and they hopped into a time sphere and left the 25th century behind for the glorious 1980s.

{HOW TO FAIL AT BUSINESS DESPITE REALLY TRYING}

He chose the name Goldstar, and managed to thwart an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan and get on national TV, though he mangled his own introduction in front of the entire nation. Stammering, “Booster,” and then hastily starting, “Gold,” he didn’t get a chance to correct himself. The president introduced him as Booster Gold, and he stuck with it so he wouldn’t embarrass Ronald Reagan. What a good kid.

Within his first year in the past, Booster started his own company and managed to secure all sorts of advertising deals for himself, promoting everything from cologne to breakfast cereal. And to make things even sweeter, Maxwell Lord broke into his house in the middle of the night and recruited him for the brand new version of the Justice League. Yes, everything was looking rosy for Booster Gold.

But like so many things in his life, Booster’s time in the spotlight came to a painful, crashing end. His twin sister Michelle arrived from the future, borrowed a supersuit designed for Booster’s future female sidekick, and was abruptly killed. It wasn’t long after that Booster’s manager turned out to be a Manhunter. Booster briefly joined their cause until it became apparent that they were bent on world destruction, at which point he changed sides again. With no one left who trusted him after his double-double-cross, Booster destroyed his company headquarters, deactivated Skeets, gave up the costume, and tried to return to the 25th century. It was only when Harbinger encouraged Martian Manhunter not to give up on Booster because of his importance to the 20th century historical record that he was allowed back into the Justice League.

{I THOUGHT YOU MEANT THE OTHER JUSTICE LEAGUE. YOU KNOW, THE GOOD ONE.}

Broke and with nowhere else to go, Booster relocated to the Justice League International Embassy in New York. To many, this incarnation of the Justice League was a pale imitation of the real thing, made up of mostly B-listers. But the Justice League years were – at least in Booster’s mind – the best years of his life.

It was also where he met fellow superhero Ted Kord, aka Blue Beetle II, who had had a disastrous run of luck with his own company. The two became fast friends, and quickly developed a reputation as the clowns of the already fairly ridiculous Justice League, and developed a friendship that would last for years (despite some rough patches).

Booster and Ted’s early years in the League were marked by various get-rich-quick schemes, including, most famously, a disastrous attempt at starting a Justice League resort on the living island of Kooey Kooey Kooey – using money that the pair stole from the Justice League. The fallout from that was relatively minor (Max put the pair on dish duty) but it was the last straw for Booster. Sick of being seen as a joke again, he lashed out at Ted, who he blamed for dragging him into all of his failed schemes, and quit the League for a corporate superhero collective called the Conglomerate.

He came back, of course, because Booster always comes back.

{THE FIRST RULE OF 90S COMICS IS DON’T TALK ABOUT 90S COMICS}

Eventually, the 90s happened. Everything was X-Treme, and Booster briefly wound up in power armor that was the only thing keeping his heart from stopping (a long story that may or may not have been retconned; in any case, no one mentions it anymore). After bouncing between various Justice League incarnations a few times, Booster eventually faded into semi-obscurity, doing more commercials than superheroing, and possibly marrying a wealthy old woman for her money.

{A HETERO DYNAMIC DUO FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM}

He returned for a brief time in Max Lord’s attempt to reunite the members of the old Justice League International and Justice League Europe to create a friendly, accessible, marketable new team called the Super Buddies. Egos clashed, Booster and Ted fought like an old married couple over thinning hairlines and heart conditions, and Booster briefly sent the entire team to Hell by accident because everyone was being mean to him. Needless to say, the Super Buddies didn’t last long.

{ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD: A NOVEL}

Things began to fall apart after Sue Dibny’s murder. Most of the members of the League from Booster’s era were in various states of semi-retirement, and Booster himself was resorting to “borrowing” money from Ted’s bank account while he waited for advertising deals to come through. Booster and Ted reunited to investigate the embezzlement of funds from Kord Industries, but Booster was injured and hospitalized in a blast meant for Ted. While in the hospital, he learned that Skeets had been dismantled by a mysterious organization known as Checkmate. Worse, still suffering from his injuries, he was helpless in the hospital when Ted was killed.

When Ted remained missing, Booster organized a search for his friend, reassembling several former members of Justice League International. The results were disastrous. He discovered that Ted had been killed by his old friend Max. Another former teammate, Rocket Red, was killed in the conflict. Fire was wounded in the hospital. And Booster felt responsible for all of it. Despite coming from the 25th century, he had never paid enough attention to history to do anything about it. Emotionally defeated and powerless without his tech, Booster returned to his own time.

{YOU CAN’T BE A SUPERHERO IF YOU HAVE GOOD COPING SKILLS, APPARENTLY}

Not long after, however, Booster reappeared in the 21st century with stolen historical records and a new Skeets. Together, the pair tracked down Jaime Reyes, the new Blue Beetle, and told Batman that with Jaime’s help, they could change the course of history and track down the rogue Brother Eye satellite. Their mission was successful. In the wake of those events, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman temporarily retired, and Booster used his newfound fame to restore his public image. Using Skeets’ knowledge of future events, Booster found success foiling crimes in progress, and returned to his former celebrity status as a product spokesman.

But it didn’t last long. Booster’s old friends turned against him when it appeared that he was dishonoring Ted’s memory by selfishly returning to his old ways. Skeets began to malfunction, giving false historical data with increasing frequency. And when Booster’s former friend Ralph Dibny publicly accused him of hiring his own villains and staging fights, his popularity plummeted. To add insult to injury, a new hero, Supernova, appeared on the scene, stealing Booster’s spotlight. In his desperation, Booster tried to recapture the public’s affections by containing the explosion from a nuclear submarine, but was seemingly killed in the attempt.

In reality, Booster had been Supernova all along (time travel; it’s complicated), and had been using the secret identity to fool himself and the malfunctioning Skeets, who Rip Hunter (an occasional colleague of Booster’s, the man who owned the original Time Sphere that Booster stole, and also Booster’s secret future son – like I said, time travel is complicated) believed was endangering the integrity of the timeline. Eventually, Skeets was revealed to have been being controlled by Mr. Mind, a superintelligent alien worm, who had evolved into a gigantic butterfly that could devour the multiverse. Comics. Booster, Rip, and Skeets were able to stop Mr. Mind, but not before he rewrote history on 51 alternate Earths.

{ALL MY FRIENDS ARE STILL DEAD: THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL}

The problem solved, more or less, Booster turned down a spot on the Justice League to help Rip Hunter solve timeline anomalies. His ultimate goal, however, was to go back in time to prevent Ted’s death – which ended, again, in tragedy. Booster’s attempts to change the timeline resulted in the creation of a future where Max had enslaved the world. Despite Booster’s repeated attempts to make things right, Ted eventually returned to the moment of his own death, sacrificing himself and resetting the timeline.

Crushed by his failure to save his friend, Booster continued trying to right terrible moments in history, repeatedly attempting to save Barbara Gordon from being crippled, and failing each time. However, there was a bright side just when Booster needed it most: Rip was able to save Booster’s sister Michelle moments before her death. Booster also ended up being a reluctant father figure when he saved an orphan girl named Rani from a war on an alien planet in the future.

{NOT ENOUGH OF MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD: THE THREEQUEL}

And just when things were starting to look slightly less bad, Max came back from the dead. Booster reunited with several members of the old JLI, as well as the new Blue Beetle, to hunt him down, but Max threw a curveball when he makes everyone but them forget that he ever existed. It’s a long story, but here’s how it ends: Booster and Max got in a fistfight inside Max’s giant flying headquarters that culminated in Max shutting down Booster’s powers and Booster tackling Max out of the door and plummeting hundreds of feet to what Booster assumed would be their mutual deaths. And it would have been, if Max hadn’t given Booster his powers back at the last minute.

This was his chance to apprehend Max… except he had somehow forgotten about that whole mind control thing. God, Booster, get it together. Thanks to Captain Atom’s intervention, Max restored everyone’s memories, but got away, leaving Booster to stew and giving him yet another thing to beat himself up over. But at least Max put up a sweet internet video telling everyone that the JLI was trustworthy and awesome. So… thanks?

An aside that doesn’t fit super neatly with those events, but was concurrent: while searching desperately for evidence to prove that Max really existed, Booster took a trip into the past and revisted his Justice League International glory days. For Booster, it was also an excuse to see Ted again, while trying to hide the fact that he’s actually future Booster – which Ted eventually revealed that he knew all along.

{MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY THERAPY}

Between the trauma of dealing with Max (and subsequently letting him escape) as well as seeing Ted again and knowing he couldn’t do anything to change what had happened to him, Booster wasn’t doing so well. This culminated in Booster going to Ted’s home city, where he stopped a teenager who was planning on fashioning himself a new Robin Hood-esque superhero identity. Booster lost it, going on a tirade about how the superhero life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and eventually flew off to have a breakdown on Ted’s grave.

Which was apparently what he needed, because when he returned home to his significantly younger twin sister and his mentor-slash-secret-son and his accidentally adopted not-quite-daughter from the future, he seemed like he had finally gotten it together. At least, more together than he’d had it for a really long while. And that’s the point he’ll be pulled from.

PERSONALITY:

Booster Gold is in the unusual position of being a superhero with no secret identity to speak of. Because he’s so blatantly public about nearly everything he does, most people assume that with Booster, what you see is exactly what you get. They figure his showboating, glory hound public persona is the real thing, and he doesn’t do much to dissuade them of the idea. But the truth is that the fame-seeking, toothpaste-pitching Booster Gold is the closest thing he has to a secret identity. Sure, he used to be a narcissistic, shallow egomaniac (listen, you would be too, with a face like that), but the events of the last several years have dragged him reluctantly into maturity.

What almost no one in the superhero community knows is that Booster has to keep up his old persona, no matter how much he hates it. As a secret time traveler, the safety of the multiverse hinges on everyone believing that Booster Gold is a selfish, incompetent jerk.

The truth is, Booster is… well, complicated. People can change, but they never change completely. Booster is vain, and he is kind of a hedonist, and he’s a little whiny. And temperamental. Also his robot buddy called him neurotic, and that’s probably true. The guy complains his way through most of his important missions, and if the world was really safe once and for all, he’d probably hang up the sparkly gold super suit, have someone ghostwrite his autobiography, and retire to a beach somewhere. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

But underneath layers and layers of “how did this guy become a superhero, anyway?,” there is a real hero – or at least the makings of one – even if he doesn’t quite believe it. Booster is more loyal than anyone gives him credit for, and brave to the point of recklessness, and will do what he thinks is the right thing even if it puts the structural integrity of the timeline at risk – like rescuing a little girl from the future and winding up with what he refuses to admit is fatherly responsibility. Really, stupid amounts of bravery and a nice butt are about the only things he’s confident in anymore.

The thing about Booster is that for all his talk, he’s incredibly sensitive. And it’s only gotten worse, now that the mistakes he made as a stupid, arrogant kid have ruined his reputation. He’s screwed up a lot, and he knows it – and people love reminding him of it, too. People remember him as one half of the Justice League’s comedy duo, but he’s always been prone to sulking and storming off in a huff when he feels underappreciated.

Mess with the people he cares about, though, and that’s a different story. Booster, for all his petulance, is intensely loyal, and has only become more defensive of his friends since losing Ted. He remembers the past a lot better than it was, truth be told – his friendship with Ted was rockier than he’s willing to admit, and the rest of the world considers his era of the Justice League to be a laughingstock. But to hear Booster retell it, they were the best years of his life, and the greatest friends he’ll ever have.

That’s probably part of what makes Booster easy to manipulate. He’s so eager for attention and wants so badly to believe in the people he cares about that he overidealizes them. Which is why there are two completely different versions of Max in his head, and why he keeps Ted on a pedestal and forgets all the squabbling and embezzling and the months where they refused to answer each other’s phone calls.

He’s also prone to being reactive rather than proactive. He’s terrible at planning ahead, and makes snap decisions without thinking them through. He doesn’t patrol, preferring to stop crime once it’s already destroying buildings. It’s also why he’s not much of a leader – he needs someone to tell him what to do and when to do it, or he’ll let things pile up until he has to do something stupid and over the top to try and fix them.

But for all of his neuroses, Booster is surprisingly resilient. He’ll wallow, and throw the occasional hissy fit, but when things need to be done, he’ll do whatever it takes. Even if “whatever it takes” is incredibly ill-advised. And even when things are at their worst, he still finds a way to crack a joke. They’re a little bit drier and grumpier than they used to be, but there’s always a straight man and a funny man, and if the universe is one, then he’s the other.

In summary: Booster is prickly, kind of naive, allergic to responsibility, takes hour-long bubble baths, owns more hair products than any man alive, and splits his time between complaining and driving people crazy with terrible one-liners. He’s not the kind of guy who’d be on anyone’s save-the-world speed dial. But if you need someone who’s so loyal that he’ll literally destroy the fabric of spacetime to try to help a friend, then you need look no further than Booster Gold.

POWER:

Booster’s powers in canon are all derived from his future tech – he’s otherwise a completely ordinary human. The major elements of that are:

• Super strength - enough to lift around a ton
  
• Flight
  
• Forcefield generation
  
• Energy rays

It’s enough to stop your average, run-of-the-mill city-stampeding monster and blow up a few cars in the process, but keeps him squarely in the ranks of the B-listers.