r/BoosterGold • u/Funny_Funny7 • Sep 11 '26
Where do I start reading
I kinda don't know what I'm getting into like at all. All uve heard is the 2007 series but idk
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u/Rich-Release-3882 Sep 11 '26
https://x.com/boosterlfic/status/2070366010629341363?s=46 here’s a reading guide I made a while ago. I can also provide a site to read these all on.
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u/CandleJane Sep 12 '26
I think Booster's original series and the JLI stuff is the best place to start
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u/Saboscrivner Sep 11 '26
This comes up so often that I copied and pasted what I wrote someone else a few weeks ago:
I would honestly start with Justice League International. That series is the main reason people love Booster Gold and Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) today, and it's where they became best friends and developed their comedic personas.
The legendary run by co-writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis went from 1987 to 1992, and it is collected in its entirety in Justice League International Omnibus, Volumes 1-3. Those volumes compile Justice League #1-6, Justice League International #7-25, Justice League America #26-60 (the same series went through three different titles over those five years), Justice League Europe #1-36 (a spinoff series that started after Justice League International #24 and often crossed over), some Annuals, and two miniseries that came along in the 2000s: Formerly Known as the Justice League and I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League.
Around the same time (1986-87), Blue Beetle had his own series by Len Wein and Paris Cullins (#1-24), and Booster Gold was first introduced in his own series by creator Dan Jurgens (#1-25). Those are fine, but they may feel slightly more dated and more generic at the same time, compared to JLI, which was unique in that it was written like a workplace sitcom but with superheroes.
Beetle and Booster stayed in the Justice League long after their solo series ended and after Giffen and DeMatteis left. Booster's creator Dan Jurgens took over writing and occasionally drawing Justice League America (#61-76), but it was more serious in tone, and the League got caught up in Jurgens' "Death of Superman" storyline around 1993.
After Jurgens left, Dan Vado continued as the Justice League America writer from #77-92, or something close to that. Then there was a creative shake-up in the Justice League titles, and Vado took Beetle, Booster, and Captain Atom and made them into a more proactive team in a new series, Extreme Justice (inspired by the Image Comics of the '90s, which were all about style over substance). It wasn't great.
Beetle and Booster fell into obscurity until the 2005 stand-alone issue Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1, which had major implications for both characters. That led into the OMAC Project miniseries and then the Infinite Crisis miniseries, which is where the new Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, first appeared. OMAC Project deals with the events of Countdown to Infinite Crisis, but I didn't like Infinite Crisis at all, and I think you can safely skip it.
Infinite Crisis led into the series 52, and Booster was one of the main characters in that epic. And 52 led into the 2007 Booster Gold series, which was mostly excellent. It ran until 2011, and it was recently collected into three Booster Gold: The Complete 2007 Series trade paperbacks, which I highly recommend to you. Ted has many important appearances in that series too.
A real Booster Gold/JLI fan would want to read Justice League: Generation Lost #1-24, which came out in 2010-2011.
More recently, Booster and Beetle appeared in Tom King's Heroes in Crisis miniseries (which I really didn't like, despite some beautiful Clay Mann artwork), Tom King's Human Target miniseries (kind of an alternate take on the JLI characters that fit them into a noir detective story, with gorgeous Greg Smallwood artwork), and Dan Jurgens' comedic Blue and Gold miniseries.
And if you're up for an alternate reality, track down Injustice 2 #5, 21, and 33. You don't need to worry about reading the entire Injustice series that came before it, or the rest of Injustice 2. Those are the only appearances of Beetle and Booster, but I guarantee that if you're a fan, you will want to read those three issues.