Three times a week, I post something here about Booster Gold — a comic panel, a pop culture reference, fan art — whatever I can find to fill the space. But Boosterrific.com is much more than this blog. In fact, the blog is actually an afterthought, a net cast to catch more eyeballs for what this site is really all about: cataloging Booster Gold's comic book adventures.

If you look beyond the front page, you'll find many, many comics. If you like, you can find lists of those comics sorted by chronology or Booster's prominence in the story or every Booster Gold comic ever.

There are also lists of characters who have crossed Booster's path and lists of the comics they've appeared in together. (For example, Blue Beetle).

Do you have a favorite artist? Have they worked on a Booster Gold comic? There's are lists for those too, by role and individual artists. (For example, Kevin Maguire.)

There's a cover gallery, a showcase of house ads, a timeline of key events, a map of adventure locations. And, to coin a phrase, that's just scratching the surface!

In other words, Boosterrific.com is an amusement park for fans of the original Corporate Crusader. It's open 24/7, and it's free! What more could you want?

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Here, for your nostalgic end-of-year reading enjoyment, are the 5 most-read Boosterrific.com blog posts of 2022:

5. Friday, September 4: My Favorite Pages: Booster Gold 8
In which we take a look at my favorite page of Booster Gold's maiden flight from Booster Gold Volume 1, #8, which not coincidentally was also the original homepage image map for Boosterrific.com when the site launched in 2007. (Fifteen years of Boosterrific.com? Could that be possible?)

4. Monday, August 29: I Did Not Steal This Gif
In which we admire an animated gif of Joe Carlo's Funko digital Blue and Gold epic Non-Fungible Token.

3. Wednesday, August 24: Teen Titans Speak!
In which we talk about hearing Booster Gold speak for the first time in the seventh season of Teen Titans GO!. To actually hear Booster Gold speak (or, more accurately, hear Fred Tatasciore speak as Booster Gold), you'll have to visit CartoonNetwork.com.

2. Wednesday, November 23: Coming Soon: Lazarus Planet Omega
In which we reveal Booster Gold on the David Marquez cover to the final issue of DC's first 2023 event series, Lazarus Planet: Omega #1, expected to arrive in your Local Comic Shop this February 21.

1. Wednesday, January 27: New Release: Human Target 4
In which we read other people talking about Booster Gold in Human Target #4, a book Booster doesn't actually appear in. Nearly a year later, we're still waiting for issue #10 of that 12-issue mini-series. Originally solicited for a December 27 release, the book and its Booster Gold-including alternate cover is now scheduled for January 10. Better late than never!

Here's to another Boosterrific year in 2023!

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Longtime Booster booster Morgenstern recently asked me a very good question:

Did you ever write an article about this dropped idea of making Tim Drake Blue Beetle and the Death of Booster Gold by Scott Beatty & Chuck Dixon?

The answer is "no." And I'll correct that oversight right now.

Before I can explain, let me set the stage. The early 2000s were a lean time for Booster Gold. He made exactly two in-continuity, non-flashback appearances in 2001, both in very small parts (just a few panels) as set dressing for the "Our Worlds at War" and "Joker's Last Laugh" crossover events. Although Booster was still friends with Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle was finding much greater success as an associate of Oracle's Birds of Prey. That's where this story begins.

In Birds of Prey #39 (released in January 2002), Ted Kord is diagnosed with a heart condition that forces him to hang up his tights. However,Birds of Prey and Robin writer Chuck Dixon and his "Joker: Last Laugh" co-collaborator Scott Beatty didn't intend this to be the end of the Blue Beetle, just an opportunity for a passing of the mantle.

The plan, as Beatty revealed on his blog in a 2019 post titled "THE CLIP FILE: How Scott Beatty & Chuck Dixon *ALMOST* Turned Robin Into BLUE BEETLE!," was that "a gravely injured Ted Kord would find a replacement Blue Beetle while he convalesced... assuming that he would survive at all. It would be a *paid* position occupied by a cash-strapped Tim Drake (a.k.a. Robin III)." Christopher Irving's 2007 encyclopedic The Blue Beetle Companion confirms the plan, quoting Dixon as elaborating that eventually "an invalid Ted Kord would direct a half dozen Blue Beetles (all with different talents) to battle international crime."

What makes all of this relevant to Booster Gold fans is exactly how Beatty and Dixon intended to launch this enterprise in the pages of a proposed mini-series they called Blue Beetles. Quoting from the mini-series pitch proposal on Beatty's blog:

We throw down the gauntlet with the death of Booster Gold.

Really.

With ground-support from Ted, Danny and Star begin an investigation into the events surrounding Booster Gold's demise, a mystery which provides the backbone to the first few issues. Their trial-by-fire begins as Ted launches an ambitious campaign to reel in any Beetle foes still at-large, sending his apprentice Beetles to capture a string of rogues and offer them clemency if they swear to renounce villainy; otherwise it's a one-way ticket to the Slab. And now that it's tucked away in polar isolation at the bottom of the world, NOBODY wants to go to the Slab.

Meanwhile, Booster is celebrated on the evening news, showered in fifteen minutes of celebrity as unofficial biographies are published, how-to videos are hawked, and the promotional machine grinds dollars out of heroic sacrifice.

The kicker is this: Booster's death was faked by Maxwell Lord in order to capitalize on the cult of celebrity surrounding young stars dying young and leaving beautiful corpses. Lord plans on marketing the Booster Gold bio and telepic, then engineering a ballyhooed superhero resurrection.

Booster and Max are in cahoots, hoping to spike interest in the hero's eventual resurrection and subsequent product endorsement deals. What's worse, both Booster and Max were willing to silence Ted Kord in order to maintain the ruse.

That's... just.... Wow.

Although this particular pitch was denied by the Powers-That-Be at DC at the time for unspecified reasons — and I can't say I'm too saddened by that particular decision — it's amazing to see how many of these ideas presage what would actually unfold in the hands of other writers. Remember, this was 2002. Max's villain turn in Countdown to Infinite Crisis was still three years away, and Booster's death would be a key component of Infinite Crisis-follow up 52!

For more information on this particular footnote of DC history, I encourage you to read Beatty's full proposal for Blue Beetles on his blog, scottbeatty.blogspot.com.

Thanks for helping me correct my oversight, M.

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The news broke Monday that Warner Brothers has a live-action Wonder Twins project in the works. As a longtime fan of Jayna and Zan, I'd be super stoked about this... if I didn't remember all those times I was promised a live-action Booster Gold that never came to pass.

Frankly, if I'm in the market for some superhero stories that I'll never get to watch, I personally prefer to visit Ross Pearsall's Super-Team Family Presents... blog, where I get teased by the likes of this:

Uh, oh. Something tells me that Booster and Johnny Storm aren't going to get along at all. Let the fireworks begin!

Keep up the good work, Ross.

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We have inevitably arrived at the final Boosterrific.com blog post of the year. While I'm watching football, perhaps you'll enjoy revisiting these, the 5 most-read Boosterrific.com blog posts of 2021:

5. Wednesday, October 13: Old Friends Are the Best Friends
In which we welcome back Booster's first 20th-century friend, the original Goldstar, Theresa "Trixie" Collins to the pages of Blue and Gold #3!

4. Wednesday, June 16: This Day in History: Black and Gold
In which we take a look back at the time Booster Gold took Black Canary to Paris in Justice League Annual #1 (1987).

3. Tuesday, October 19: Coming Soon: Blue and Gold 6
In which we reveal the advance solicitation for Blue and Gold #6 with Blackguard on the cover. In hindsight, that cover was used on Blue and Gold #4. What will be the cover actually be on issue 6? I guess we'll find out on February 15, 2022.

2. Monday, April 26: The History of Blue and Gold, Part 1
In which we investigate how a comic book series first announced in 1988 took 33 years to actually reach readers. (This was the first in a three part series. Follow these links to Part 2 and the Dan Jurgens interview in Part 3.)

1. Tuesday, July 20: New Release: Blue and Gold 1
In which we celebrate the release of the long delayed debut of Booster Gold/Blue Beetle team-up book Blue and Gold #1! This was the highest hit count Boosterrific.com had received in a single day in the history of the site! (Second place isn't even close.) People sure do love them some Blue and Gold!

Here's to another Boosterrific year in 2022!

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